Hanlgt

There is divine justice! I opened my last box of cheese that I had purchased just yesterday and found FIVE certificates!

dhacker

Please elaborate on how buying a product and redeeming the codes in accordance with the rules is abuse. Especially after having been assured there were no limits and nothing to worry about.

Is it abuse to buy lots of Coke and redeem those codes for MyCokeRewards points and then convert to Delta miles or Hilton points? I thought that's what the Coca Cola Company wanted people to do. What's the difference? The only difference is that Emmi offered more miles per dollar and didn't use their own point currency to allow "price" adjustments. How is that the customers fault? How does that stop any other company from offering a well thought out, well executed promotion?

rbessler

Well, with regards to your MCR example, you left out that Coke quickly devalued and then removed the 500 HHonor Points reward, and has adjusted several other ones. While thats obviously not the same as what Emmi tried to do with this promotion, it has the same rationale behind it.

I wouldn't call this thread abuse, and the customer certainly isn't at fault. You're simply taking advantage of an offer made by the company. Emmi certainly has quite a bit of blame in this, and their attempt to end it in this fashion is very disappointing. But I can appreciate the situation they're in -- they undervalued the AAdvantage award, and as a result, have probably been flooded with people trying to recreate the magic of Pudding Guy.

Frankly, I lay most of the blame with the folks with the AAdvantage Marketing . In many senses, the AAdvantage Miles are a form of currency, and the Emmi promotion has been a sort of market disruption. Its one thing to get miles various ways; however, the introduction of something like this isn't healthy. AAdvantage should have realized this was going to happen, and protect everyone involved, including the AAdvantage image, by creating a fairer and correctly-valued promotion.

birdiebob

I also received this same e-mail this afternoon. All my codes were entered between Nov 15th and Nov 20th. No miles have posted to my account yet.

Landing Gear

I'm not laughing.

"Chilling effect?" Do you know how these words are used in court decisions?

This event should have no chilling effect whatsoever on business. It teaches an important lesson that most companies already know:

YOU HAVE TO OBEY THE LAW.

Can anyone imagine what would happen if an American company tried to pull a stunt like this in Switzerland?

Landing Gear

Granted this thread is very long but if you read it carefully, you will find multiple people who contacted Emmi prior to making any purchase and were assured they could buy as much as they wanted.

I am bewildered as to the last two sentences quoted above. Frankly, whose side are you on? And how would I as a consumer and AAdvantage member be protected?

What, by the way, is a "correctly-valued promotion?"

It is no longer 1981. Since the introduction of the AAdvantage program, it has become possible to get miles in numerous ways that do not require flying. Obviously AMR management likes these ways or they would not be approving these deals.

Are you against the Citicard AAdvantage Mastercard too?

Unless I misunderstand you, I suspect you are in a very small minority on this forum and maybe even FT.

Please explain further, if you are so inclined.

Hanlgt

I think it was gouda them to reverse themselves on this. They found out they bleu it and couldn't get awhey with cheating customers.
Emm I right?

martian

Discussions about the ethics of buying massive amounts of cheese are best carried out in other threads.

We should stay focused...We have cheese, we want miles. Lets get this sorted.

rbessler

Alright, well, I just have two comments/clarifications I want to make:

1. I do not believe that anyone in this thread is abusing this system, and I also strongly believe that everyone here is due the miles for the cheese they bought (and I also believe everyone from here on forward is ethically due the miles, too, if the cheese contains the offer). Emmi made the offer, and they need to stand by it.

2. That being said, we're witnessing a company that clearly underestimated what they were doing, and is now trying to save itself. This promotion will undoubtedly cost them money, rather than make them money, which is why they'd go to the extraordinary step of effectively canceling the promotion. AAdvantage Marketing, if not Emmi, should have realized that they were effectively simply giving away money -- many people in this thread have gotten the cheese at prices that make the miles alone, let alone miles+cheese, worth more than the price of the cheese.

In economics terms, its riskless arbitrage -- buying these miles was a sure fire way to get free money, and in potentially unlimited amounts. Thats a recipe for trouble.

How would you the consumer be protected? First, you wouldn't be in the situation you are in now -- having to consider your legal and media options to try to force Emmi to give you these miles. AAdvantage should have forseen this. Second, and this promotion didn't quite reach this level, but when you have a way for people to effectively get free miles, all it does in the long run is just force American to raise redemption rates.

What is a "correctly-valued promotion?" Its one that is sustainable. Of course I'm not against the Citi AAdvantage card; Citi is making oodles of money off of us, and rewarding us with a small amount of miles. If I buy $100 worth of stuff on my credit card, I get 100 miles. Its at a level that makes the miles reward a bonus and not an objective -- I'm not going to charge a $1 on my credit card just for the mile bonus. With this promotion, if I spend $100, instead of a reward, I'm getting potentially 10,000 miles and $100 worth of cheese.

Thats insane. If there were perfect information, everyone on the planet that travels some should be buying this cheese. And if thats the case, then the value of our miles would fall even more. We need AAdvantage Marketing to look out for this sort of stuff.

jabrams72

so the emmi website has been updated--quoted below and seems to follow the messages that have been sent here.

"NEW INFORMATION TO BE POSTED HERE ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2006 REGARDING SWISS KNIGHT PRODUCT PURCHASED ON OR BEFORE DECEMBER 1, 2006"

As well, attempting to blame this on AAdvantage marketing is absurd. There have been better (and worse) promotions over the past 25 years. The company making the promotion should be aware of what they are getting into, and to make an assumption, which is what seems implicit in this backpedaling, that many (perhaps even most?) people would not submit the codes seems counter to the very concept of why one finances such a promotion.

We all assumed that there was a cap to this promotion--the issue is with their printing more vouchers than the miles they were prepared to provide--a stunning miscalculation on their part. So, if you want to read this as riskless arbitrage, fine, but Emmi were getting something out of this--market share and recognition. They had the choice as to doing this and clearly felt that their return would be sufficient for an outlay of capital. Aadvantage (most likely) had no way of knowing that Emmi was not purchasing as many miles as they needed, nor is it their responsibility to know this information. They sell the miles--that's their business--how Emmi prices the miles is irrelevant information. If I feel that my product is worth X and I sell it at X, if the buyer turns around and sells it in a package combined with their product at Y, I may want to revalue personally, but it's not my responsibility to make sure that the X:Y ratio is consistent.

wrose99

I love the Swiss "don't bother us on the weekend" thing. Probably the poor guy Emmi sent to the U.S. has no hope of reaching his Swiss bosses on the weekend to get appproval of his plan to avoid a massive loss.

I agree it was a stunning miscalculation. They probably figured no more than 10% would be redeemed and budgeted their promotional express accordingly. Instead it was 90%.

They probably also assumed that X number of new customers would be induced to try their product by this offer, leading to Y future sales from those new customers. However, the number of new customers they have obtained per $100 spent on miles if far less than they planned, because the miles packages have been hoarded by a small group, few of whom will ever buy the cheese again.

I don't know whether AAdvantage had an inkling what the redemption rate would be and therefore shares some blame for Emmi's fiasco. At any rate this will never happen again, as it would be fraudulent for AAdvantage to sell miles to a consumer packaged good company without revealing what AAdvantage knows from this exprience (that offering miles at 1 cent per mile or less will lead to an organized interception of your product at the distributor level, and that your redemption rate will exceed 90%).

Since there were a finite number of packages, I feel it was partially the greed of flyertalk members that prevented me from finding any packages. The reason my store never had any is that someone showed up earlier that day and bought 40 packages, or bought 1000 from the distributor specifiying mileage packages only. It's free country and no crimes were committed, but I don't have to feel warm and fuzzy about the gluttony either.

With this incident as a case study, I would be amazed if any consumer packaged good company offered anything near to 1 cent per mile again. It may be that as a foreign company Emmi was somewhat ignorant of the american cultural frenzy for someting for nothing. But now any company must know that if you offer a deal that works out to 1 cent a mile, your product will be hoarded by a small number of determined shoppers.

If you find yourself stuck with 100 worthless coupons, consider giving them to 100 households who can each send them in for the knife. At least you'll have the satisfaction of costing them some money.

I do think Emmi will have to pull the product from stores immediately, much like a tainted product recall. If a California consumer walks into a store today, sees a 500 mile offer on a package of cheese, buys the package of cheese as a result, and is then told sorry, you had to buy before December 1st---that consumer will have a cause of action in this state and in fact I believe the attorney general would take action on such a clear cut case. I don't think it would benefit me, however, if I buy cheese now, because I can't deny I am aware that Emmi has stated no miles for purchases after December 1st.

GDIW

I think it is likely that the promotional cheese products have been or will be recalled from the stores. In an e-mail I received from Emmi on Nov. 28th I was politely questioned as to where I bought the product. I found that a little odd at the time, but now it makes more sense.

tmcneill

.....

maggie6872

it's almost worth the effort to get a free swiss army knife to see if you can get it through security.

shoodawg

redacted