Call for help: US Airways Mileage Mall offer w/ EasyCGI

Oh I agree totally. I did the same thing. But if 'they' do not or cannot give them to you despite all that, what then? Whose heads should roll for this pain?

Let's go at this from this perspective--weather a team of people who put forth web ads is internal or external, or is a big or small group or ad agency that does work for EasyCGI or FC or both:

~Web guy/graphic productionist makes the actual page and code and artwork that says this purchase earns this many miles.

~Manager/production coordinator who told him to do this checks off that off on the daily production sheet. Job ticket fulfilled.

~CSR for client or internal rep for projects signs off on this and possibly many other pages that will go up that day. It is done.

~Web proofing team shows to marketing. Marketing signs off.

~It goes live. Guy who runs Dreamweaver application and lets it go live sits back and says let er rip!

~Sales team waits by a ticking clock as they would with any ad on theie websites.

~Next project.Repeat process...

Ok, so which of these people is responsible? Who should have looked up at some point and said, "Um guys um uh do we really want it to say this?" And if someone did but someone else said, "shhhhh dont say nuthin... just do your job," then who was that person?

This could be who we are after, or the higher ups who employed him!

Will they in the end say, "sorry mates, it was just human error?"
Ok, well, if a plane crashes, will the airline get away with that same excuse?
Something needs to be put in place to prevent this. Same thing at Cartera. Maybe in their case they had some computer generated algorithm that placed the 83,871 mileage number on their Verizon ads, but what dude working there made THAT code and didnt catch the error? If anything, all entities in all these big deals need better ways of handling the angry customers.

I should work at one of them to be that guy and I have skills in Web, graphics, marketing, promotions, travel and customer service. And also to entice them to give the miles too. I could use you all as referrences and I am local to EasyCGI, FC and Cartera

I have also made valid purchases from EasyCGI, but of course nothing posted to either HA or US.

One thing this does set is a precedent of mileage mall offers not being honoured at all if the company sees that it may be losing money - why should we now trust any mileage malls and toolbars - if they are not going to be honoured. I'll just go and buy stuff thru cash back sites instead...

my feeling has always been that when a company makes a promise, they should stick by it.
in this case, it seems they used a bait and switch to attract business. when they realized it was too much for them to handle, they just pretended like they never wanted to participate in the first place!

Yes, and when it comes to 'miles' being the thing that is promised, many people on the outside hearing the story would say something like:

• Well you should have known better.
• those miles things aren't worth anything anyway--wait til you try to redeem them
• miles and airline things are all scams anyway. It's like that battery rebate scam or something.
• what tricks were you playing to be involved with this confusing thing to begin with?You must have been up to something
• you don't deserve this many miles. For the fact it is so many, you should never have believed you would get them
• It's not like someone stole money from you. Why are you complaining?

And sadly, in the end, it is possible that companies that are shady that know people think like this are making a killing.

And if the cash site said "Earn $50 for a $1 transaction" would you hold them accountable, too? Because that's effectively what this is.

Just make sure you're going after the correct company. Going after EasyCGI, which didn't have anything to do with publishing the offer, is foolhardy. FreeCause screwed up. The only mistake the others made was working with them.

Do you really believe that there are all these people involved in each of these transactions? I certainly do not.

So go apply for the job. Make sure you let them know that you've previously identified flaws in their process as I'm sure that will endear you to them.

Ok... where to go with all this:

1) so how, Wandering A, do the consumers know--when do they know--that an offer is not good/too good to be true?
If a cash back offer on a $1 item is $50, then is it or is it not? Are we supposed to have built in radars? Who knows this and is it not subjective? Who do we employ to tell us what's right or wrong here?

And even if we did know this going forward, what about all past offers or pending ones? What about what we think we are supposed to get from ones we just participated in?

And, should the retailer who put that offer out there do a better job at designing their ads or is it all on us to figure it out?

What if the cash back offer on the $1 item were $2, 3, 5, 10, $49... oh wait, $49 is too high! Wait, how do we KNOW this? HOW?

Why is Costco's return policy so liberal? Why is the gas at the Mobile $3.69/gal but the Exxon across the street is $3.65? And yet the no name gas guy down the block is $3.22? Which one is scamming or not? How do we know? What if no name gives away 5 gals free too?

On another note related to $50 possibly being a trigger for people, I was in a unique situation last week where I was in a line and found I had to get to where I was going a lot faster suddenly. So as calmly and non-rudely as possible, I approached the man in front of me and offered him $50 to go ahead. I said, it's not cuz I have money or I am trying to flaunt or be pushy or buy my way through... I am desperate and will offer what I have in pocket to get there. Can you help? He would not.

Was this because he thought it was too good to be true, he wanted me to suffer and somehow gets off on that, or what?

2) I mentioned a chain of people who might be involved in making sure some ads or printed and web materials are done correctly before being published. Ok, maybe not ALL of those people are involved in some of the clickable things we see on airline malls--and today much of it may even be automated, but still, the main concept is real:

PROOOFFFFFFREADINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG your offers on the public domain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I dont mean the internal memos, the emails or postings like this... I mean the ultimate ad as put forth online or in print by a company to its public prospective consumers.

Some A hole did not do their job--no matter which of the above job examples I mentioned--to make that ad exist as it was when we saw it.

We read and adhered to the terms and then we bought.
They now need to deliver.

OR they end up in court and/or go out of business.
End of story.

next time?
Well, ok now we know better for next time. News flash: Do not buy from easyCGI and do not use FC.

And maybe THIS is why you have thrown your hands up and chose not to go thru airline malls to buy anything.

But should those malls even still be in business then? Isnt it our duty to either change them or put them out of work? Otherwise everyone not reading all this gets screwed for next time.

What if the companies like EasyCGI know this and just hope there are hundreds of others they can rip off later?

3) I think your devils advocate notes on here have been worthy and I thank you for them... but I also wonder:

Do you work for any of these guys? You seem TOTALLY against our ability to earn a single mile here. Either that or you are jealous you werent involved in the gig as well.

MM

PS: I had applied to Cartera. They gave me the HR run around--we don't need you at this time story.

+1

of course, with these devils advocate thoughts, might not he just be another 'what if' guy who happens to have a blog and writes a bit more clearly than I do sometimes?

This is the same debate that gets hashed out each and every time there is a mistake fare. The "how was I supposed to know?" bit gets old after a while. Certainly when you look at it in dollar figures anyone who sees the reward being orders of magnitude higher than the investment is likely to at least consider that a mistake was made. With miles it is a bit harder because there is not a fixed value assigned, but that doesn't mean that seeing something that is completely inconsistent with previous offers - to the tune of orders of magnitude different - is usually a tip-off that something might be amiss. So are you supposed to have a built-in radar? IMO, yes.

Doesn't mean you should not go for the "win" when something like this comes up, but I believe that having a rational view of what the market is rather than the view of complete naivete is a much more reasonable approach to take in any scenario.

Of course the merchant should do a better job. I've never disputed that. In fact I believe I have quite explicitly placed blame every time.

IMO any time the value of the rebate is greater that the value of the spend that's a pretty good hint. And I'd probably personally raise a flag when it is at 50% or where the rebate is unlimited versus a 1x type of thing. Feel free to have your own views of what makes sense, but I think we can all agree that no rational business operates by rebating more money than they bring in as revenue in an unlimited manner.

Please keep the red herrings out of the discussion.

Indeed. That was missed this time. No doubt at all.

For someone who claims to be showing no vengeance this seems like a very vengeful statement.

None of the above observations are anywhere close to reality.

Well WA, Thanks for your disputes/answers.

I am not saying (in the case of EasyCGI) that I didn't know it was a mistake fare. I could see where that argument may get old, but that's not even the case here. Fact still remains that they too have never said it was a mistake fare. Others here have mentioned the fact that no party involved in fact (EasyCGI, FC, US AIr, Kobie Marketing, Hawaiian Airlines, etc) have EVER used the terms 'mistake fare/mistake anything' in this deal at all. Not as far as I can see, that is.

As well, you mention that someone should compare things against other offers. Well this is the first time some of us ever bought anything from that merchant. To what do we compare it to then?

Also, I am NOT a vengeful person but why is it in your mind --why would it be in anyone's mind-- considered 'vengeful' to take someone/some company to court over things that cannot be otherwise resolved? Isn't the court system set up to AVOID otherwise real vengeful acts? (for example, if I told you I would like to key the cars of the execs who work there or something, well then yah. But the court system in this country is set up to argue cases and solve issues that two or more parties cannot solve on their own). So seriously, there is no vengeful act or thought in my words above... They (Fc or Easy--have not yet figured out exactly who, which is WHY we are only at this stage now anyway) need to produce or they may end up in court. It's not a threat, it's just the way things may go. And if it were to go that way, if anything, I would be merely adhering to the laws of the land.

And guess what: If we lose, so be it. But based on what we have shown, I cannot really see how we would.

Last point: Glad to see you dont work for one of those companies and are not the jealous type. there, that's out of the way. Onto the rest of our debating.

MM

This was not a mistake...Freecause made a legitimate offer of X miles/purchase with no restrictions...simple as that. There was no asterix on another page, there was no fare code booking into the wrong class...all the T&Cs were straight forward and were followed from my end and it sounds like others had the same experience as well.

yup, and you have said that before. It was NOT a mistake. Never was. Never should be classified as one. Wandering A, please do take note of this.

So you're saying that it is not possible for someone to publish something with all the details 100% specific but not have that be a mistake? When someone misses a digit on a fare and it is $25 instead of $250 that is most certainly a mistake, even though the numbers are 100% straight forward, the T&C followed, etc.

Mistakes happen. People screw up all the time. Even when they write everything down clearly.

The earning rates are based on a premise of miles earnt per dollar spent. Even if this was the first time you used this merchant finding a deal where the number miles per dollar is severely out of whack would have warning bells going off in my mind.

Taking them to court is not what I was commenting on when I suggested your comments were vengeful. The suggestions that people should lose their jobs and companies should go out of business for making a mistake was.

As for taking them to court, have fun. As I mentioned a few times up-thread your contract with FreeCause limits their liability to $50. You might be able to claim $50/transaction and come out ahead in cash versus the equivalent value in points, but I don't know that would work out that way.

Just because an offer is written down - and even if you actually make the purchase - that does not mean you are legally entitled to the fulfillment from the other party. Mistake fares are a prime example of this. Unless you can show actual financial harm delivered rather than loss of potential value your claims will be quite hard to win on. I'm not saying you shouldn't try if that's what you want, but I think it might be worthwhile to recognize what the laws actually state.

So wait, you are saying I am vengeful because I think the joker who got paid to make these 'mistakes' as you call them should just be, what, forgiven?

All of that, while other people who may be more careful at their jobs simply do NOT make these errors--and if they do, they have people to check their work?

And all that, whilethere are indeed other people out there who would be better at these jobs but they may be out of work for other circumstances and WISH they could have a job like that joker now has.

Yes! I think that joker should lose his or her job.

I am by no means saying they have to hire me to fix it all either, but I do think someone has to pay for the problem.

I think if this entire schema means the company loses money or even goes under because of their obvious inability or unwillingness to be concerned with these matters, then that is in a way a form of justice. But then again, that still leaves us all losers.

Lemme ax ya this, Wandering A, what, precisely, do YOU think should happen here? Nothing?

Say for a moment it is a mistake like the 25-250 example you gave above. What would you have people do?
What would you do? Are you going to pre-find all of us would-be buyers and tell us NOT to do an offer we see? (I tell people all the time to avoid Points.com because of all the scam offers they have been involved with, and I get flack for helping in this area all the time, but have probably saved people trouble as well)

Tell us what you think should happen from the business side, and what you as a consumer should do/think/feel/act on or not act on when seeing an offer like ours?

A few bulletts ought to 'educate the masses' eh?

Yes, we will have a link on all websites everywhere to what you say and that way companies can go rampant and post anything they want but we will know the real deal.

I hope there are commissions involved.

Sure mistakes happen all the time, but that wasn't the case here...there was no digit missing here or a decimal place off. In your example, someone mistyped something...no one made a mistake here, they plugged in the numbers and made an offer of X miles/purchase and posted the offer that they vetted as they saw fit. Their offer may have been a stupid business decision, but that's it.

HP is currently selling their 16gb touchpads at $99.99 which is estimated to be somewhere between 1/3-1/2 of what it costs them to build and they're losing money on every one they sell...mistake?

Look, Wandering Aramean, I think it's clear that you won't agree with us on whether or not this is a "mistake" but I think we can both agree that it appears Freecause, a company that both US Airways and Hawaiian Airlines are doing business with, put up an offer that was fully vetted by multiple individuals and that they may not have done all their homework and should honor the deal that was put out there and that we all agreed to take part in.

That's not entirely true. I feel like you might not be understanding the EasyCGI deal here. Some, like this deal, are per purchase (like EasyCGI was), per subscription, etc. I found the following on a quick glance:

http://usairways.skymall.com/mall/info/usairways/WeightWatchers
http://usairways.skymall.com/mall/info/usairways/Peapod
http://usairways.skymall.com/mall/info/usairways/Dentalplans
http://usairways.skymall.com/mall/info/usairways/ETrade
http://usairways.skymall.com/mall/info/usairways/Boston_Globe

The difference between these and EasyCGI was EasyCGI listed "no restriction at this time" whereas many of these have limits like "first time customer" "limit one per customer" etc.

and in the case of Cartera/verizon/AA... Verizon's 'hockey puck" Palm Touch items retail for $49+ but were sold to many of us for about $5 a piece or $15 for 3. Is this an error or a sale price or what?

Wandering Aramean,

I think that we might be using "mistake" in different meaning. It look like to you "mistake" means that the result was different then my intention; e.g. I throw a pass and it was intercepted. To me this may or may not be a mistake, if the defender made a great play or if the ball took a bad bounce off the receiver, there was no mistake by my definition.

In order for something to be classified as mistake by my definition several conditions have to be true:

• The execution was different from the plan (e.g., the play called for a post and the QB thought it was a hook, the price should have been $250, and it was entered as $2.50)
• There is "documentation" as to what the plan was.
• Normally during the execution, always very shortly thereafter there is recognition of the mistake and acknowledgment that a mistake was made.

By my definition, in this case FC can't claim "mistake", you seems to believe that this is a case of mistake, by FC. In support of my position, I can bring the fact that so far, 11+ weeks since the offer was made, they have not claimed "mistake". If nothing else, doesn't this lead you to believe that this is not a case of mistake (as in a typo or poor execution), but a case of a plan that looked good on paper failing to deliver expected results. This is the same as me selling stocks short and a week later the price jumps by x%, yes you can call it "mistake" if you look at the result, but for me this falls into a different category. Otherwise, whenever there is a good deal the other side can yell "mistake" and get the deal undone.

It was a mistake in terms of 'error in judgment' or 'they misunderstood the terms under which they would get paid a commission' and went forward without properly vetting the offer or understanding its terms.

It wasn't a mistake in terms of a fat finger pricing, hitting a button to publish an offer before they had intended to do so, etc.

And which of those per subscription deals offers the same number of points for a $1 or a $100 purchase?

I think you are underestimating my knowledge of all the details associated with this deal. I am quite aware of what was advertised, where the mistake was made and what the various liabilities are.

Almost.

I believe that FreeCause screwed up here, just as you do. I do not, however, believe that FreeCause is legally obligated to honor the deal and if I were them I wouldn't. Sorry, but I'm not bankrupting my company to satisfy a few folks who thought they won the lottery. I do believe that some compensation should be forthcoming, likely offered by the airlines to protect their brand, but I do not at all believe that the deal should be honored.

I am also not convinced that multiple people vetted anything in the process that saw the deal published.

I am not suggesting that products are never sold below cost or on sale. I'm suggesting that a company doesn't do that across their entire product line for an extended period of time and expect to remain in business. Given that very few companies exist solely to go bankrupt I find it unlikely that a company would offer their entire product line with a 5000% rebate program over an extended period of time on purpose.

"I am also not convinced that multiple people vetted anything in the process that saw the deal published."

What does this mean? By my count there are anything between 50-100 people who got in on this offer. Can we all be fools?

Also, we do not know how long before we got into ordering from EasyCGI they had the offers online. We also do not know how long they would have left the offers up had we never come along. We just know they were in fact available when we did it. For all we know that was the only time they would have offered any sale. So in the end they may have planned it this way but just not known so many people would get on it, and they got surprised--and then reneged-- when we all did.

Again: They may have done it "across their entire product line for an extended period of time," but that time frame could have only been say, 2 weeks, in which one of these weeks we all jumped on it.

The context I was applying to the "vetting" comment was on the part of the people offering the deal, not those making the purchase. The previous claims have been that any number of folks from EasyCGI, FreeCause or US/HA had to approve the marketing copy, offer details, etc. I'm suggesting that it is entirely possible (even likely) that only one or two people ever saw the details of the offer before the purchases started.

Only if you actually believe that this was a 100% bona fide offer from the company and that you are legitimately due the points. Fortunately I do not think that most of the folks in on the deal believe that, but I could be mistaken.

I was under the impression that there is a decent amount of documentation for a minimum period in which this was on offer. And maybe they would have discovered the mistake eventually without all the traffic generated. Or maybe they would not have. Doesn't change the underlying details.

And I'd say that was 2 weeks longer than is rational. Show me another instance of any company ever offering 5000% back on purchases on purpose for even 10 minutes.

Yes, I believe these statements represent a vengeful attitude.

Particularly given that the level of demonstrable actual loss/costs is nearly nil in this scenario. Suggesting that you have suffered real damages and that those must be paid for is a ludicrous assertion from my point of view.

I took BA to small claims court over their India mistake fare a couple years ago (read about that here and here). Sure, I knew it was a mistake, but I felt the initial offer they made for compensation was inadequate and insulting. Plus I was bored. But I knew going in I was not due anything from them. There is a difference between wanting to win and believing you are actually due said win. A very large difference.

Here's a great example of a company taking responsibility for a similar screw up: Zappo's took a $1.6MM charge for selling their entire inventory at $49.95 instead of the retail price. They saw the value in taking the financial hit to keep their brand reputation intact. They did it because from a customer service perspective it was the right thing to do, not because they were obligated to.