** Click here for Episode 170 **
Well obviously we’re not giving away a car. But it looks like you people are more than capable of winning them elsewhere. Several of you have sent in stories, from which we can deduce the following common themes: 1. you nearly threw away the winning ticket; 2. you didn’t believe it anyway; 3. you couldn’t afford to keep the free car anyway.
Here are a couple of your tales of free cars. Salvez from Portland, Oregon writes:
Believe it or not, my parents won a brand new Mustang convertible back in the mid-90s. The brief story goes as follows:
My mom and dad rarely go out. They live in a very small town in eastern Oregon. In a town about 30 miles away, there was a resort/casino opening. In celebration of the casino’s grand opening, they had a draw for a car. The entry forms were placed in the local papers. It was free and a way to encourage business to the new gambling center.
My mom and dad sent in their entry. A month or so went by and my father received a phone call.
“Yelll-oh” my Dad said (he always answered the phone like this).
“Is this Mr. Dodd?” the voice on the other end said.
“Speaking.”
“You, sir, have one the convertible Mustang from the Wild Horse Resort & Casino drawing!”
*crickets….*
“Hello…sir?” the voice inquired.
“Riiight.” said my Dad in utter disbelief.
“No, really, sir. Yours was the name drawn from the lottery out of all the thousands that came in. You won the car!”
“Uh-huh…”…
Well, my Dad did not buy it for one minute. As a matter of fact, he didn’t believe it until he was sitting in the car the next day. I believe my Mom was pretty much jumping up and down. She’d always wanted a fancy convertible.
Anyway, my parents drove to pick it up. They went through all the rigmarole that is required by law. They got their pictures taken driving it back and forth in the driveway, then proceeded to turn around and sell it. It was so expensive to insure they couldn’t afford to keep it. AND since they had won it, no one in the surrounding area wanted to give them what it was worth because everyone knew they got it for free. Stupid small town. Basically, they ended up selling the damned thing for half of what it was worth.
So, there. Winning a car does happen. My folks are proof.
Also proof is Alistair from Cheshire:
Back in ’96 there was the Britannia Music Club, a music by post service that would send you an “Editor’s Choice” CD every month that you didn’t want, which you would invariably forget to return in time and then be charged for. Like renting DVDs from Blockbuster but with added financial penalties for staying as a member.
For their 21st anniversary they ran a competition to win one of 21 Rover Metro cars. Initially this was in the form of a scratch card in the monthly magazine. Scratch off three Rover car symbols and you’d won. Except hardly anyone had and halfway through the promotion, the competition changed to a “Spot the Ball” style game, looking for pictures of the car in the magazine and sending back a form with the page numbers on.
I thought “I’ll never win, but what the Hell” and sent the form off.
About 3 months later I got a phone call saying I’d won and I nearly hung up because I thought it was a friend playing a practical joke. The nice woman on the phone persuaded me it was genuine and a week later the car turned up on a low loader with company rep and photographer in tow.
I sold the car straight away and it is as much a long and distant a memory as is the Britannia Music Club, which failed to hang on long enough for broadband to be available, to start download service.
Interestingly (or not depending on your perspective) while I was chatting to the Britannia rep while waiting for the car to be unloaded, he told me why they had changed the format of the competition.
Apparently as they had been seeding the winning scratch card tickets at timed intervals during the promotion, they weren’t getting the responses back as quickly as they thought and had actually issued 30 winning tickets before they found out most people were just assuming that their ticket wouldn’t be the winner and just throwing them away.
In conclusion: a free car is a mixed blessing, both for the winner and for the company proffering it. Here endeth today’s lesson.
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