Comments on: The great fondue air miles disaster

The great fondue air miles disaster

w0mbat — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:54:26 -0800

Swiss cheese company offers 500 AA air miles in every packet. Straight away the frequent flying geeks spend a ton of money on buying case loads of cheese and fondue just to get the air miles. Almost immediately the scheming cheese makers say they've run out of air miles, retrospectively cancel the offer, and try and fob off customers with a cheap swiss army knife, one per household.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:01:38 -0800

Sounds like both sides studied the parable of The Pudding Guy. Note that the title of the Wikipedia entry is David Phillips (pudding).

By: I Am Not a Lobster

I Am Not a Lobster — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:19:45 -0800

We have fondue.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:25:10 -0800

*cough* retroACTIVELY *cough*

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:49:25 -0800

Wait a minute.. How can they be allowed to print coupons for air miles they don't even have?

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:53:34 -0800

What's that smell? Mmmmm, fresh lawsuit!

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:53:53 -0800

Shouldn't they have to back up there unit of exchange with something that has actual, you know, value, or something? Like a commodity! Maybe gold? They could store it in a big fortress.. Made of cheese!

By: freetshirt

freetshirt — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:14:45 -0800

What interests me the most is the surreal spectacle of unknowing supermarket managers trying to figure out the huge spikes of purchases -- and subsequent returns -- of Emmi cheese products over such a short period. "So, sir, you um... Decided to return the four hundred dollars of fondue, did you?" Also, I'm sure there's a valuable lesson we can all learn. Never listen to the siren songs of internet message boards.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:19:44 -0800

A bottle of Remy, some ladies, and an empty hot tub and I can turn all that cheese into one hell of a fondue party!

By: Joeforking

Joeforking — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 01:26:31 -0800

Cheese selling surrender monkeys.

By: dhammond

dhammond — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 01:27:39 -0800

I love cheese and frequent flier miles. This was too good to be true.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 02:18:32 -0800

Cheese is milk on it's way to infinity (culled from their website)

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 02:20:11 -0800

though their copy didn't have the grocer's apostrophe which seems to have weasled its way into mine. That'll teach me not to cut and paste.

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:20:48 -0800

Also, I'm sure there's a valuable lesson we can all learn. Never listen to the siren songs of internet message boards. You missed out on the cameras, didn't you?

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:30:58 -0800

The nice thing about this is that Emmi can just change brand if it is ruined somehow....or change the product name to Fondue New with 66% more love ! More then boycotting, negative viral marketing could be a nice swift punishment for being assholes...for instance do you know that this other completely unrealted Emmi product is known to cause intestinal gas ?

By: jbickers

jbickers — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:33:50 -0800

Clearly, the good people at Emmi forgot the many, many lessons of Punch Drunk Love.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:46:17 -0800

This is an outrage.

By: caddis

caddis — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:52:33 -0800

44 pages? 15 comments per page? agggh! This is a study in why we don't want to do that to large threads here.

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 04:22:31 -0800

I imagine that Emmi will make good on the promotion for people who are persistent. It's hard to see that they have an alternative. Of course, as people at Flyertalk have pointed out, they might get away with pulling the wool over some people's eyes and fob them off with a crappy Swiss Army Knife instead. In closing, I am reminded of the Simpsons: Cletus: Give us three hundred pretzels. Marge: [to Homer] You see? A little persistence and patience paid off! [to Cletus] That'll be three hundred dollars. Cletus: Hey I don't think so. I got me three hundred coupons. Marge: [growls] I should've said "Limit: one per customer." Cletus: Should'a but didn't so hand 'em over. Hey! Kids! We're eatin' dinner tonight!

By: sequential

sequential — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 04:56:40 -0800

Just before Thanksgiving, I was approached by a client who wanted to hire me to do some work for him. I'm a computer programmer by trade, so when it turned out to be about cheese, I was curious. Essentially, I was to purchase enough cheese to cover two million miles, and automate the process of submitting the codes. The pay was obscenely good, so I took on the client. I couldn't find the cheese anywhere in stock. I didn't know at the time, but I had the disadvantage of an eleven day lag from when the promotion started. I checked stock in my local stores for three days, made connections with managers, and didn't even see an Emmi product until the third day. On the fourth day, I started calling around to corporate headquarters of different retailers. In the end, no one could find 4,000 wheels of Swiss Knights cheese. Heck, no one could even find one. I never even saw the product with the codes in it, just some other random cheese made by Emmi.

By: Mutant

Mutant — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:20:47 -0800

Pretty interesting how those frequent flying geeks have it all sussed...in that huge thread they discuss which credit cards to use when purchasinig the cheese, to earn miles on both sides of the transaction. Some even factor into the cost / mile calculation tax benefits received by donating the cheese to a food bank after purchase. I do the same thing when I trade into and out of a position, sorta neat to see the same detailed analysis into something so retail.

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:38:08 -0800

which credit cards to use when purchasinig the cheese, to earn miles on both sides of the transaction Of course they use their mileage awarding credit cards all the time, so it's not like they had extra analysis for this transaction.

By: Floydd

Floydd — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 06:18:58 -0800

Just before Thanksgiving, I was approached by a client who wanted to hire me to do some work for him. I'm a computer programmer by trade, so when it turned out to be about cheese, I was curious. You have the beginning of a real page-turner there, sequential.

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 06:21:29 -0800

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 06:33:30 -0800

See also the 1992 Hoover free flights fiasco.

By: papakwanz

papakwanz — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 06:44:39 -0800

The customers should have known better. Anyone could have seen that this deal was full of holes.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 06:49:22 -0800

That was cheesy.

By: papakwanz

papakwanz — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 07:02:37 -0800

Hey, I'm milkin this thread for all its worth!

By: craven_morhead

craven_morhead — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 07:50:38 -0800

They should make a harrier jet out of the cheese.

By: bra1n

bra1n — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:20:50 -0800

Did anyone besides me browse through the FlyerTalk thread just to bathe in the sweet tears of unfathomable sorrow? The saying "If its too good to be true, it probably is" and the history they mention with other companies pulling similar stunts should have served as a warning.

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 09:29:09 -0800

I read through parts of it. The absolute funniest shit is the two guys who want to purchase $24,000 worth of cheese to get 2M miles each.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:26:23 -0800

Oh, to be the pudding guy...

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:54:58 -0800

On this page someone gets the idea that the company might not redeem the miles... It's just a theory at that point. Something tells me the company may not be interested in providing everyone millions of miles (as well as the cheese). I wonder how many miles they even purchased.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 14:45:10 -0800

More forshadowing on page 22. Of course they want to sell their stock. But at 500 miles for three bucks, there was probably a disconnect somewhere. One possibility is they may have assumed only a small percentage of their customers would be mileage junkies and that only a small percentage of coupons would therefore be redeemed. Maybe they never heard of Flyertalk or Pudding Guy

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 14:53:08 -0800

Hehe, bomb drops on page 24. Nice.

By: caddis

caddis — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:10:34 -0800

Thank you delmoi, that made this whole post much more accessible. From page 24:

Due to the popularity of this promotion, our supply of AAdvantage miles has been exhausted. However, we are pleased to offer a Swiss Army Knife, valued at $20 with a valid code. One (1) redemption per person or household. If you have a code, click here.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:40:51 -0800

That Swiss Army Knife switch is a bit like adding insult to injury...

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:48:33 -0800

Does anyone here think that "while supplies last" refers not to the supply of specially marked packages of cheese but Emmi's supply of miles? Gee, you think?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:51:11 -0800

Thanks Caddis. On the bottom of page 29 someone asks how many codes people bought and entered (after the initial shock and calls to class action lawsuits) On page 30 people start talking about how much they bought and were able to redeem.

By: Fofer

Fofer — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:48:18 -0800

Emmi USA has waffled apparently, and is now honoring the coupons, but are limiting it to two per person. Seems fair to me. "We are pleased to announce that we have extended the mileage promotion and will honor customer redemption requests. Effective 12/07/2006 redemptions are limited to two (2) 500 mile awards per AAdvantage® member. All redemption requests must be submitted by midnight (EST) on January 31, 2007." I'm having a hard time feeling "bad" for folks like this guy who bought 248 cheeses... hoping to cash in mileage on all of them?

By: grouse

grouse — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:03:35 -0800

I'm having a hard time feeling "bad" for folks like this guy who bought 248 cheeses... I doubt he cares whether you sympathize or not, only whether Emmi fulfills their legal obligations or not. Anyway, looks like they'll do that.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:16:52 -0800

I'm laughing so hard at the swiss army knife... "Here's something you can use to uncork a bottle and drink yourself into a stupor, or maybe slit your wrists, after realizing you just bought $10,000 in internet cheese."