UK beer company pulls "free beer" April Fool's prank, makes everyone mad
Turns out that people don't like thinking they've won free beer for life when they haven't
Every April 1st, the world is flooded with bad jokes. At best, we get easy-to-ignore pranks like Krispy Kreme saying it’s going to change its name. At worst, we get a K-pop star lying to his adoring fans that he contracted COVID, or an official government channel cracking wise about interfering with foreign elections on Facebook.
Somewhere in between are stunts like the false promise of free beer for life from UK beer subscription site Bier Company.
Bier, as Newsweek explains, decided to invite the wrath of customers by sending out text messages and emails with “URGENT” in the subject line and the exciting (untrue) news that the reader was “this month’s winner of free beer for life.” The recipients, livers shivering with excitement, were told to click on a link and input a special promotional code to get their prize just before learning that the whole thing was a prank. Oh, and that by following the prize instructions they’ve also been signed up for a Bier subscription for £22.95 a month.
Unsurprisingly, those who tried to claim their nonexistent prize weren’t too happy with how the joke played out, especially when they learned that canceling the unwanted subscription is such an opaque process that one woman contacted by Newsweek said she was in touch with her bank to stop payment.
After what must have been a very exciting day of fielding messages and inquiries, Bier Company tried to flip the whole mishap on its head and tweeted that everyone who used the promo code (“SLOOFLIRPA,” or “April Fool’s” backwards) was actually going to receive a free month of its subscription service.
“Congratulations to everyone that used the SLOOFLIRPA code,” the tweet reads. “You will ALL receive a first free month of Bier Club, absolutely FREE—well done!”
Bier also stated that customers could use the code for the rest of the day and, in a presumed attempt to make us all feel bad that its crumby prank backfired so horribly, added the gloomy observation that “Our accountants are going bananas—it will cost us £££’s [sic] to fulfil this promise!”
Let this be a lesson to all companies for April Fool’s to come. The person in your marketing department with a “hilarious” idea must be ignored for the continued financial health of your operations.
[via Boing Boing]
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