Tarkblog

No, faithful readers, this blog isn’t about cars. It’s about customers.

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Last night Caleb and I got our third Comcast bill in about three weeks. So, I’m on the phone with Comcast right now.

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We ordered a pizza the other night and had a coupon to get free breadsticks and two free drinks. That reminded me of this blog:

In high school, when I’d go to a certain friend’s house we would always order Papa Johns because his parents would give us money to do so. He found out that if you called Papa Johns and told them you had a coupon for something they would just honor it since they didn’t track the coupons they handed out (and they handed out a bunch). So we would always just do something like:

“Yeah, we have a coupon that says if you buy a large one topping you get a medium one topping and a 2-liter of coke for free”.

And they would deliver it, no questions asked, and never even ask for the coupon.

Obviously, the trick is you couldn’t go overboard (”Yeah, we have a coupon for buy 1 get 10 free”). But we did a good job staying within the limit.

Later in high school, when I worked at the telemarketing firm, we were very close to the Papa Johns. One of the guys I worked with also was a delivery driver and was notorious for ordering pizza while he was off duty and pulling this “no-coupon” trick.

One day, Papa Johns wisened up. They installed a computer system that kept track of valid coupons and used that when creating orders. No more of this made up coupon deal.

That was a sad day for all of us.

No, I’m not getting one. But I thought about the word yesterday.

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It’s Friday, and I’m stoked.

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