Publicity Stunt for $10 iPads Brings Out the Pitchforks
Today, a start-up company in Toronto called Fab Find decided to hold a sale for $10 iPads. It was an interesting way for the company to stand out amongst its many online coupon competitors such as Groupon. Unfortunately, this may have backfired.
Fab Find says 10 iPads were up for sale for $10, but talk on the very active Facebook group page suggests that number might be lower – in the single digits. And those who did secure the $10 iPads aren’t owning up to their purchases – save for two: both from local media companies. The fact that few who wanted to could buy their $10 iPad while those who did appear to be from the ‘inside’ is a PR nightmare.
On top of that, the site kept breaking… or did it? Some Twitter comments suggested the site downtime was also part of the stunt as their staging server was working. Others are now contacting their server hosting company asking why there was downtime, making that company answer this PR game as well. Additionally, and for me most importantly, some people claimed to have entered in their credit card information only to be told the product was now sold out, raising sincere ethical questions.
Lots of people are claiming this stunt was a scam and as we all know, the loudest people on social media are those who complain. Between threats of sending this to the Better Business Bureau and claims of never shopping with them ever agin, FabFind.com is doing its best to respond – on Facebook and its Twitter account.
The fact is – I never heard about Fab Find until this sale… and their office is literally down the street from me. They’ll release their analytics tomorrow, but guaranteed they saw more traffic this morning than they have in the last month, at least. Anger about missing out on a $10 iPad may go away, but it’s their actions over the next few days that will speak to the long term success of this start-up. In fact, many of those people who are angrily leaving messages on their social media walls suggest there is wiggle room for Fab Find to make up for “misleading” their customers.
One great suggestion on Twitter – those who wished to buy an iPad for $10 may want to instead donate it to charity.
The funny thing about this “promotion” is that the absolute best-case scenario was exactly what happened…hordes of people angry at fabfind and unlikely to ever use their service again.
Do you see what I mean? If the promotion had 10 ipads and 10 people found out and 10 people bought them, you’ve spent $5000 to earn $100 and word of mouth. If lots of people hear about it, by definition, lots of people wind up without an ipad and end up pissed.
Lose-Lose…I expect fabfind to disappear quietly and never be heard from again…it’s clearly run by idiots.
I disagree with you guys, I think being in the business that they are, this social media spike they have created (3000 new followers, number of people using their Facebook app, signing up for news letters, etc) can do wonders for business. If they can offer legitimate discounts, deals and coupons to all of their new clients they will have much better reach. A lot of people saw it for what it was, A grand opening. I feel the fact that everyone knows who Fabfind is now means that this was effective to some degree.
i was a fan of fabfind until this promotion. it was the wost promotion and so ill thought out. Yes, sometimes “.com’s” don’t anticipate web traffic accurately and servers crash, however what did they honestly expect? offering ipads for $10? They don’t have an excuse for this since it IS part of their job, it only makes sense to have an adequate infrastructure to handle the traffic. to make matters worse, they posted a video showing them giving away an ipad to a NOW journalist who was a doubter that this “deal” was a scam. this was supposed to prove to ppl that their promo wasn’t a scam – what about all the other ppl who said the same thing? clearly we have to write them emails and state we’re a journalist to get this preferential treatment. other offences:
- stating there were 10-99 ipads to be given away between 11am-9pm but only giving away around 6.
- the winners were also in social media – one of them who owns a site that directs traffic to the Toronto collective deal websites
- the buy now button with a link to itself when the page displayed 1 available
-midway through the deal, it became a popularity contest for best story and they had ppl try to tell them why they deserved the ipads. ppl then had to vote for each story.
lastly, where they went irrevocably wrong is the way they talked down to customers who complained. They wrote very belittling, …scathing, insulting, smug and even accusatory replies to people on their FB page. they didn’t even bother to address any concerns but instead deleted comments to add fuel to the fire. they had their friend’s come on as moderators to tell ppl to “chill”, “relax”, “you can’t blame them for this”. FF’s operations were disrespectful to the customer and i will never be buying from them again.
Thanks for coming by my site and linking me to this article. I admit it was odd when people who were in marketing/developers were winning all the ipad yesterday, they either are very quick with super-human powers or they are somehow in katoos with the company. Whether or not they are, I have no idea and cannot say otherwise, but, Fabfind definitely created a lot of attention and buzz about their company with this offer, and that is good on them! I blogged this offer the second I heard about it and got insane hits to my blog, so it’s win-win for everyone. Congrats to whoever was able to score one, I hope some “normal” people got to, I was on the site the entire day and got nothing, but I never expected to anyway so not disappointed at all.
Hi everyone
I read on the internet that I wasn’t the only one who got through the step of entering my credit card info and personal info to buy the ipad and then got no icon button to click in order to complete the transaction…I wonder if who could start a class action? Because if we got through that step, it’s because we clicked on BUY while there was an ipad available for sale, and there is no such thing as ” someone else bought your ipad” while you were entering your info…
Thanks for your help!!