Tailgater

Has anybody received correspondence from a Nigerian source stating that if you send additional personal information, along with a processing fee, Nigerian gov't officials will work on your behalf in the matter?

Cohall

You'd be wrong.

Ever seen slot machine that malfunctions and incorrectly indicates that someone has won a jackpot? Guess what? That person doesn't get the jackpot, they get their quarter back. And please quit trying to fool yourself into believing you thought it was a legitimate offer. Everyone here knew it wasn't. It's embarrassing.

gfowler-ord-1k

Yep, I found that message in my spam folder when looking for the 2500 point email that some people have received. If I don't get my miles I will be contacting them. It should be far more cost effective than the litigation that some people are threatening

FOX85

While I did not expect 83k+ miles I do expect to get something for the purchase.

FOX85

Since I still bought it through the shopping portal which should earn me miles.

mreed911

I got $200 for *nothing* for the CapOne card (aside for applying for the card). Not even a spend requirement. Assuming that Verizon pays half a cent per mile (which is still probably high for bulk purchases), that's still "only" $420 or so per item.

It's surprisingly high, but not significantly more than $200 for absolutely nothing.

Besides, there are benefits to Verizon for these sales beyond mere margin on an individual sale. This impacts their cash flow, their inventory cycle time, all sorts of things that look good on financial statements. It's even possible that Verizon is getting a SPIFF or rebate from the vendors behind the scene that we're not aware of. In the volume technology industry this is VERY common (someone sells $1MM of Cisco product at $900,00 to the customer but gets $150,000 in rebates, "marketing dollars," etc.). The money is made up elsewhere, or is used to induce a certain level of volume/commitment in key accounts.

sonofzeus

A: Failure to fulfill a promised rebate valued at $X. (plus court costs and attorneys' fees)

MrHalliday

What, you didn't get $2000 by getting both Cap1 cards ?

Now that was an "unbelievable" deal,
and honored properly !

divmember

I thought I would throw out my timeline from participating in this fun little AA miles game:

August 10, 2011
10:24 pm (EST): Ordered 1 charger/hockey puck for $5.28 and received the email from Verizon Wireless confirming order.

10:47 pm (EST): Ordered 1 pink glitter case for $3.16 and received the email from Verizon Wireless confirming order.

August 11, 2011
3:26 pm (EST): Received shipping confirmation and Fed Ex tracking number Verizon Wireless for the charger.

3:28 pm (EST): Received shipping confirmation and Fed Ex tracking number Verizon Wireless for the pink glitter case.

10:24 pm (EST): Received the email from AAdvantage eShopping Mall ([email protected]) with my AA number in the email saying:

** We will automatically post 2,500 AAdvantage bonus miles to your AAdvantage account within the next 10 business days.
** We will earn an additional 2,500 AAdvantage bonus miles if you make a new purchase through the AAdvantage eShopping mall in the next 30 days*. AAdvantage bonus miles will be posted to your AAdvantage account within 45 days after the date the merchant notifies Cartera of a qualifying purchase.

* In order to qualify for the 2,500 bonus mile purchase offer, you must shop with a participating online retailer through the AAdvantage eShopping mall website by September 10, 2011.

Even though the email looks like it came from AA, it was signed by:
Maurice Blaustein
Director of Customer Care
Cartera Commerce

mreed911

I got $200 for CapOne for doing nothing more than being approved for their card. No spend requirement.

I get a $400 Admiral's Club membership/equivalent *and* $200 in airline fee rebates from Amex, plus significant other benefits ($100 Global Entry fee rebate, etc.) for a $450 annual fee.

Both of those are credit cards that expect to get merchant fees from use (and interest from balances), though, so let's find more concrete examples.

Ever watch the "extreme coupon" shows? Smaller scale, but people walk out with thousands of dollars in items absolutely (or near) free. Significantly more than the at-most $420 offer here. And that doesn't include the cost to manufacturers of creating offers, designing coupons, printing coupons, distributing coupons, and redeeming coupons from merchants (which are included as advertising cost or cost of sales).

Fact is, despite what you assert, this isn't unreasonable. Uncommon? Sure. But there are so many possible motives that it's just not possible to decipher. More importantly, it's not my job as a consumer to do so. If anything, it's the seller's job to advertise properly. And in cases where adverts go wrong (which they do), it's their responsibility to notify me of that fact BEFORE the sale is made (i.e. posing a "We're sorry, we goofed in our ad" on the door of the store or at the register prior to checkout). In this case, I have a completed sale at agreed-upon terms. If the merchant goofed, that's on them and I'm not ethically or morally wrong for holding them to a mistake. It's the cost of a mistake and a good reminder to more proactively avoid such mistakes in the future. [Caveat: If it were proven to be a glitch in the Cartera e-commerce engine, which I have no reason to believe it is (or isn't), I'd think Cartera's contract with AA EShopping would determine/set the limits of liability for Cartera. Discussion of that is probably premature, though, given that no official statement from AA EShopping has been released.]

heat_fan1

Credit card sign-on deals are common. Giving 83,000 miles for a $5, or even $60, purchase is not common. You knew it was a mistake just like the rest of us.

mreed911

Was it $1000? That was so many deals ago I've forgotten (and the card, unused past the travel rebate (which I used for DEQM flights on AA) is in a drawer somewhere.

Maybe I made out more than I thought (and it's even more relevant then!).

ScottC

Every single time one of these insane pricing/mileage errors pops up on Flyertalk, there is always someone like you -- who uses what they consider to be logic to claim they fully expected this to be a valid deal.

In that world, it is perfectly logical to expect 83000 miles to be awarded on a $5 product, even though all the other products on the site show 20 or 30 miles, and the following screen showed the actual (correct) number of miles.

Comparing a $5 charger to a credit card signup deal is just plain silly -- you can't tell me with a straight face that you don't understand the difference between a long term credit relationship with a bank, and a charger purchased off an e-commerce site.

There are times in life where you just accept the loss and wait for the next big error to pop up. It would have been awesome if we got the miles for these, but to see this come to an end then claim we've been robbed of our hard earned miles is just plain silly.

mreed911

Prove that.

leebids1

I'm a frequent reader/infrequent poster here and, yes, I am an attorney. And I've sued some cell phone companies in the past. NO I am not trolling for plaintiffs for a class action suit (not my gig these days). And I am NOT PROVIDING ADVICE on the legal merits of any claim. But I have something to point out to people who are not satisfied with how this is going.

If you are a Verizon Wireless customer, you likely "agreed" to be bound the arbitration clause in the customer service agreement and this outlines the process to follow "if there's an issue that needs to be resolved" related to Verizon. (Look about 2/3rds down the agreement) http://www.verizonwireless.com/customer-agreement.shtml Read parts 4 to 6 especially close- note the ways that you can get up to $5000.

Since cell phone companies are so afraid of class actions, they try to ban customers from bringing them- and the Supreme Court has gone along with it. In order to be able to tell courts that their customer's rights are still protected, the companies have drafted arbitration agreements that are supposed to make it relatively easy to bring small claims against the company. In fact, their agreement potentially requires them to pay the full costs of an arbitration, which is not cheap.

I've been very curious about how these arbitration clauses are likely to work out in practice. Arguably, the arbitration agreement outlines the process you must follow if you want to pursue a dispute involving Verizon in any way, but I doubt many people have ever actually gone through the process.

If anyone is going to do this, I'd like to know how it works out- please pm me or update us on this thread.