Comment On "Special" Offer

OMGWTF! Has Alex fulfilled his purpose in life and eradicated all bad code? Time for a BBQ! YEEHAW!

It's a VERY special offer indeed!

Can you give me two twenty's for this ten?

My boss once put up a poster in a shop I worked for, saying '£3 each, two for £5 or three for £10'...

Captcha: Onomatopoeia. The least onomatopoeic word in English...

To be fair, it's quite reasonable to have alternatives that cost more, perhaps there are differences in item condition, quality, shipping costs, etc, that make the $7.49 item a better overall value.

The name Worse Than Failure is the real WTF here.

It's a WTF all right...

The special offer is for a 3+ month subscription to the site.
So, not much of a WTF.

What did I miss? Nothing in the article says they said "Special" offer. They were just expanding the math for some folks, so they didn't have to work it out.

Seems normal...

I was in a grocery store recently buying soap, and you could get a single bar of soap for something like $0.99, or a pack of six for $8.99. (My numbers may be off, but that's the general idea). I was amazed at the bargain I had found!

...where bingo cards were advertised as being "$5 each or 5 for $25."

This is actually a rather useful advertising technique. It presents a false choice of buying 1 or buying 5 (rather than 2, 3, or 4) cards, so someone who wants to buy more than one card is inclined to buy 5 rather than just 2 or 3. Buying bingo cards is likely to be a snap decision and recasting it as a choice among two options leads people to spend more.

This is a glorious day for IT. Clearly we have run out of bad code, fscked projects, dimwitted techies, and clueless managers if the WTF is effective advertising.

I sincerely hope the next commenters have more comprehension skills than the ones above.

(1) The '5 for $25' isn't actually the WTF, but your mistake can be explained by...
(2) Only a few of you saw the screenshot!?
(3) 'Special Offer: find out how to get this for $7.49!' Says to me they're talking about getting that particular item for $7.49. Otherwise it'd be 'get this and even more' or similar.

The real WTF is the readers, as we all knew anyway :)

Haha, I thought the WTF was the Ektron ad. Seriously, that's worst CMS ever.

Haha, I thought the WTF was the Ektron ad. Seriously, that's the worst CMS ever.

<insert "real wtf is the forms code" quote here>

At McDonalds you can get 4-piece chicken nuggets for $1, 10 piece for $3 and 20 piece for $5.50 or something like that...

Anyone notice the theme today? Okay, I'll spell it out! "Special" offers, "Special" characters..... see a pattern?

Anyone notice the theme today? Okay, I'll spell it out! "Special" offers, "Special" characters..... see a pattern?

Mike:

At McDonalds you can get 4-piece chicken nuggets for $1, 10 piece for $3 and 20 piece for $5.50 or something like that...

I noticed that too. One time, I asked for three 4-piece nuggets, and the teenybopper behind the counter looked all confused. So I explained why 12 nuggets for $3 is a better deal than 10 nuggets for $3. She seemed to think that was cool, but I don't know if it really sank in.

Also, look at the pricing for packages of indivdually-wrapped cheese slices at the grocery store. The smaller package is almost always a better buy, at least per slice. I noticed, though, that sometimes one size has 3/4 oz slices, while the other has 2/3 oz slices. Now *that* is a WTF situation.

Search for "This American Life". You can get one episode for 0.67 or "Find out how to get this for 7.95".

I especially like Amazon's 'Better Together' option, where you can get couple of books at exactly the same price as, well, two of them. Still, they might have in mind something more important than money.

to be honest: at first glance I thought the picture was an ad, and not part of the story

Once I went to a church fundraiser and cookies were 1 for 10 cents, or 2 for a quarter...

I think so, since it seems to be used for special offers of dubious types.

See the 787 (!) comments on this article:
http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Validating_Nothing.aspx

Indeed, it seems to me that nothing is validated.

A higher subset of the population than you'd imagine assumes such offers are a "deal", without calculating the numbers.

There's the story of a New England hot dog restaurant with the following coupon: "Buy one hot dog for the price of two, and get the second one free!" I can't verify it, but I can't imagine someone hasn't tried it at some point.

victordk:

I especially like Amazon's 'Better Together' option, where you can get couple of books at exactly the same price as, well, two of them. Still, they might have in mind something more important than money.

Shipping.

Fluffy777:

The special offer is for a 3+ month subscription to the site.
So, not much of a WTF.

the WTF is not so much the subscription, but rather that you pay more for the special instead of less.
But if you are happy to pay that, then I have a special on bridges to sell you.

I had a girlfriend who stopped at a country roadside produce stand. A sign said "Pecans $1.00 per sack or all you want for $5".

GF filled up one sack and took it to the register, where the lady asked, "Do you want any more?"

"No", said GF, and the lady said, "That'll be five dollars."

My middle school had a little store for supplies in the cafeteria. Pens were 1 for 10 cents, 2 for a quarter. I used to buy 2 pens a day just to mess with the little suck-ups minding the store.

I'd have to agree that pinning a "SALE!!!1" note to anything makes it sell more. A friend of mine sells lapel pins to the goth/geek/punk teen croud (read: all teens but Britney fans), and at one LARP con, sold one for 3 NIS*, or 3 for 10. The sad thing is that he didn't realize the WTF of that sale. The good thing, though, is that neither did many of his customers, who were happy to pay the extra 1 NIS premium for getting three pins.

* NIS = New Israeli Shekel.

Daniel C W:

to be honest: at first glance I thought the picture was an ad, and not part of the story

I did the same thing and instinctually adblocked it. Then I read the article and said "I don't get it. Where's the WTF?"

Jojosh_the_Pi:

A higher subset of the population than you'd imagine assumes such offers are a "deal", without calculating the numbers.

Only 40% of us have the presence of mind to stop and think about the actual numbers involved. The other 80% instinctively reach for their wallets when they hear the word "deal".

Greed, it's a part of human nature and smart advertisers know it.

benc:

Jojosh_the_Pi:

A higher subset of the population than you'd imagine assumes such offers are a "deal", without calculating the numbers.

Only 40% of us have the presence of mind to stop and think about the actual numbers involved. The other 80% instinctively reach for their wallets when they hear the word "deal".

Greed, it's a part of human nature and smart advertisers know it.

Hmmm, wouldn`t that be 20% having the presence of mind and 120% buying it?

themagni:

Shipping.

Not sure. Adding 'Better together' to shopping cart or each book separately (or any other two similar books) resulted in the same Shipping & Handling as well as overall price. At least for my country.

Apparently this occurs everywhere...perhaps the movie Idiocracy is closer to life than we think.

I was at Blockbuster a while back where i think the deal was 2 movies for 12.00 and i had 2 4.99 movies and he was trying to get me to agree to take the "deal" for 12.00 instead of paying 4.99 each.

Ancient_Hacker:

To be fair, it's quite reasonable to have alternatives that cost more, perhaps there are differences in item condition, quality, shipping costs, etc, that make the $7.49 item a better overall value.

Well, you'd think so, until you realize that audible.com supplies digitized recordings over the 'net, which one assumes are more or less in the same condition and have the same shipping cost.

victordk:

I especially like Amazon's 'Better Together' option, where you can get couple of books at exactly the same price as, well, two of them. Still, they might have in mind something more important than money.

They do have something else in mind: making another sale. If you buy a hammer, it does not hurt to ask if you want nails as well. They see you are buying one thing, and they know there is a good chance that based on that you would like a companion item as well. No price incentive needed.

I find it interesting how ingrained the idea that if a store offers a basket of goods, their must be some sort of price break involved is. That is exactly the logical mistake that leads someone to assume that a sign saying "One for $3, three for $10" must mean that 3 for $10 is the better price somehow.

victordk:

themagni:

Shipping.

Not sure. Adding 'Better together' to shopping cart or each book separately (or any other two similar books) resulted in the same Shipping & Handling as well as overall price. At least for my country.

Sometimes there's a discount, sometimes there's not. It's all an effort to cross sell to you, making you buy two books when you were only intending to buy one.

It's pretty effective, bringing in more bling for Amazon's execs.

XML Hater:

Anyone notice the theme today? Okay, I'll spell it out! "Special" offers, "Special" characters..... see a pattern?

"Special" WTF commenters? Yeah, absolutely... oh wait, sh...

FredSaw:

I had a girlfriend who stopped at a country roadside produce stand. A sign said "Pecans $1.00 per sack or all you want for $5".

GF filled up one sack and took it to the register, where the lady asked, "Do you want any more?"

"No", said GF, and the lady said, "That'll be five dollars."

Nice attempt at a scam --- personally, I would have taken one out of the bag and said "Now it's not quite all-I-want, so it's $1.00", dropped a buck on the table and walked away

KNY:

I was in a grocery store recently buying soap, and you could get a single bar of soap for something like $0.99, or a pack of six for $8.99. (My numbers may be off, but that's the general idea). I was amazed at the bargain I had found!

HEY!! You're no computer geek! You bought SOAP!

Eggtastic:

victordk:

I especially like Amazon's 'Better Together' option, where you can get couple of books at exactly the same price as, well, two of them. Still, they might have in mind something more important than money.

They do have something else in mind: making another sale. If you buy a hammer, it does not hurt to ask if you want nails as well. They see you are buying one thing, and they know there is a good chance that based on that you would like a companion item as well. No price incentive needed.

I find it interesting how ingrained the idea that if a store offers a basket of goods, their must be some sort of price break involved is. That is exactly the logical mistake that leads someone to assume that a sign saying "One for $3, three for $10" must mean that 3 for $10 is the better price somehow.

<Nitpick Rant="True">
"Their", as in possessive
"There", as in over there or there is
"They're", as in the contraction: they are
</Nitpick>

I'd just like to note that the article's association with the Klan and the south is offensive to me.

<a href="http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp?T=35&m=5">

There are hate groups all over the country, not just in the south. Please be mindful of your sterotyping.

The "unit prices" that vex me are when you can get something at the price of 3/$1 or 4/$1.50. What if you go into the store looking for 4 items? You get screwed one way or another.

You buy 3 and you don't have enough.
You buy 4 and you're paying more per item than if you bought 3.
You buy 6 and you spent more money than if you just bought the 4 and you have 2 extra.

For some reason this all reminded me of a local overstock store that was selling IBC Cream Soda for $5 per case (24 bottles). That was a good deal to begin with, but it was in Michigan and they weren't charging the deposit. So you got 24 bottles of IBC for $5 minus $2.40 when you returned the bottles to the grocery store.

Joe McCarthy:

HEY!! You're no computer geek! You bought SOAP!

It could have been a gift. Giving gifts to the woman in your life is perfectly allowable. Helps cut the rent on the basement too. (The RWTF! is that there was a grocery store involved, an action which involves going outside...)

pwned

Actually, as far as bingo cards, this likely wasn't an attempt to fool someone. A lot of places that run bingo events sell two types of cards. One is a large sheet with multiple cards and one is a much smaller paper with a single card. Generally speaking, most players buy the larger sheet. The few purchasing the single-play cards are doing it to supplement the larger one.

RobertB:

Mike:

At McDonalds you can get 4-piece chicken nuggets for $1, 10 piece for $3 and 20 piece for $5.50 or something like that...

I noticed that too. One time, I asked for three 4-piece nuggets, and the teenybopper behind the counter looked all confused. So I explained why 12 nuggets for $3 is a better deal than 10 nuggets for $3. She seemed to think that was cool, but I don't know if it really sank in.

Also, look at the pricing for packages of indivdually-wrapped cheese slices at the grocery store. The smaller package is almost always a better buy, at least per slice. I noticed, though, that sometimes one size has 3/4 oz slices, while the other has 2/3 oz slices. Now *that* is a WTF situation.

Over time, those extra nuggets cost $40,000 for two bypass surgeries rather than $20,000 for one. How much are you really saving?

RON:

Daniel C W:

to be honest: at first glance I thought the picture was an ad, and not part of the story

I did the same thing and instinctually adblocked it. Then I read the article and said "I don't get it. Where's the WTF?"

WTF?

If you are a regular here, you should know that the gray barred Error'd items have a short parahrpagh or two of copy, followed by a picture. The copy usually doesn't really have anything to do with the picture, except to indicate what the WTF in the picture is. Sometimes the picture is a dialog box. Sometimes it is a picture of a real world item that is controlled by computers. And sometimes it is an ad.

But geez... Read the text.. Chuckle. Look at the picture. Say WTF! Read the comments and say WTF again and again.

Andrew:

RobertB:

Mike:

At McDonalds you can get 4-piece chicken nuggets for $1, 10 piece for $3 and 20 piece for $5.50 or something like that...

I noticed that too. One time, I asked for three 4-piece nuggets, and the teenybopper behind the counter looked all confused. So I explained why 12 nuggets for $3 is a better deal than 10 nuggets for $3. She seemed to think that was cool, but I don't know if it really sank in.

Also, look at the pricing for packages of indivdually-wrapped cheese slices at the grocery store. The smaller package is almost always a better buy, at least per slice. I noticed, though, that sometimes one size has 3/4 oz slices, while the other has 2/3 oz slices. Now *that* is a WTF situation.

Over time, those extra nuggets cost $40,000 for two bypass surgeries rather than $20,000 for one. How much are you really saving?

FTW!!