Do you want to win a shiny new coffee machine?
Well, it looks remarkably simple.
All you have to do, apparently, is tweet to online agent HouseSimple saying how you would spend the £5,000 you would save by not selling through a high street agent.
There appear to be no ifs, buts or small print, according to HouseSimple’s energetic Twitter campaign.
“We save our customers on average £5,000 each. To win a Tassimo coffee machine simply tweet us how you’d spend your £5,000 saving.”
It is a remarkably generous offer. On the official Tassimo website, the machines range from £99 up to £150.
But could the offer be too generous? What would happen if 1,000 people sent tweets? (We’re not of course suggesting that all 1,000 should be high street agents – perish that naughty thought.)
But remember what happened when Hoover offered free airline tickets for everyone who spent £100 on one of its products? It cost the company almost £50m.
We asked HouseSimple if they were concerned that their promotion could end up Hoover-style.
A spokesperson told us: “They’ve had a look and they think not.
“The Terms and Conditions page was very clear, but they’ve now tightened these still further to avoid any confusion.
“The argument hinges on the wording of the Tweet ‘to win’, rather than ‘for a chance to win’.
“But looking at other competitions on Twitter, this seems to be fairly common.”
Comments (2)
I’m no lawyer (anyone who is care to comment?), but I can’t imagine House Simple would be expected to give a coffee machine to everyone who tweets. This is clearly clumsy wording rather than an attempt to mislead and (apart from raising their Twitter profile a bit) the company hasn’t materially gained from it.
The Hoover fiasco was different. When they launched the offer it wasn’t clumsy wording. They really did intend to offer free flights to anyone spending more than £100 on a Hoover product, and people went out and bought Hoover products as a consequence. The fact that Hoover had disastrously miscalculated both the popularity and cost of the promotion was what turned it into a disaster for them.
You could be right!!!
If some sharp eyes kept the original conditions then they are most likely due a coffee machine.
You cannot change the rules for the people who have already entered.