Domino's Ends Free Pizza Promo With T-Mobile Due To High Demand (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In addition to giving customers stock in the company, T-Mobile announced last week at its "un-carrier" event that it would be offering freebies every Tuesday through its new app, such as Domino's pizza and Fandango movie tickets. One week has passed since then and Domino's is now backing out of the free pizza promotion due to higher-than-expected demand. T-Mobile CEO John Legere posted an internal memo from the company that read, "After reviewing yesterday's results and taking your feedback into account, the decision has been made not to continue the T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion unless we can find a solution that is best for the brand." Customers of T-Mobile were upset to find that Domino's was limiting the number of free pizzas per store due to promotion limits. Some stores simply stopped accepting the coupons. What may have led to the extremely high demand was the fact that under the deal's terms, T-Mobile customers on a single family plan could all use their own codes to place large orders of multiple pizzas. That is to say, each line warranted a free pizza.

Comments

Not surprising

[zelbinion]

Okay, so let's do the math.... T-Mobile has something like 63 million subscribers. Every Tuesday EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM could get a free pizza at Domino's. Even if one half of one percent of the people eligible actually took advantage of the deal, that's still 315,000 free pizzas per week. Domino's only has around 5000 stores in the U.S., so that works out to 63 free pizzas per store, every Tuesday. Since I'm sure the number of free pizzas would not be evenly distributed, There were probably some Domino's locations that did nothing but give out free pizza's all day. How anyone thought that was sustainable I don't know...

Re:Not surprising

[Travis Mansbridge]

Apparently it doesn't have to be sustainable. They got the word out, the promotion worked, and now nobody has to give away any more pizzas.

Re: Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but now I associate Dominos with broken promises, and will never eat there again. It did not work.

Re:Not surprising

[Golddess]

There were probably some Domino's locations that did nothing but give out free pizza's all day. How anyone thought that was sustainable I don't know...

Free to the T-Mobile subscriber does not necessarily mean Domino's does not get paid for the pizza. It isn't clear whether or not T-Mobile was paying Domino's for each and every pizza.

Re:Not surprising

[Opportunist]

Actually Dominos not only handed out free pizzas but also got in return bad publicity as someone who doesn't fulfill made promises. Great deal, really. Please don't apply for that PR job we've posted, thank you.

Re:Not surprising

[wierd_w]

Even higher than that even.

As the article points out, the freebie elegability was PER LINE, not Per Subscriber. Most subscribers are not single people with only a single line: This means that 63million figure works out to over 120million, if we consider that most people with multiple lines will have more than two, and tha they will make up the bulk of the population of subscribers. (we give it at nod at averaging out to about 2 lines per subscriber.)

You can easily multiply that finding by at least 2.

Re: Not surprising

[SvnLyrBrto]

This. I had not eaten Dominos pizza in years... probably since college. But for free, I figured I'd given them a shot. They must have changed their recipes at some point, because it was much better than I'd remembered. It was on par with the local pizza shop I usually goto, and certainly adequate for a quick lunch or on a tipsy night. They came close to winning me as a customer, and not just on Tuesdays.

It was not, however, so good that they get a pass for reneging on the deal. I won't go so far as to say I'll never eat there again. But they'll have to give me a really good reason to trust them again.

Re:Not surprising

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Apparently it doesn't have to be sustainable. They got the word out, the promotion worked, and now nobody has to give away any more pizzas.

Exactly.

Earlier: "Hey kids, want some free stuff? Sign here!"

Now: Hey kids, remember that free stuff we promised you? Well, you're not going to get it, ha ha ha!"

Re:Not surprising

[amRadioHed]

Actually a limitation of free pizzas for the first 100 customers per store was specified in the promotion's fine print. Of course fine print can't protect them from the anger of customers who didn't bother to read it.

Re: Not surprising

[HaZardman27]

That's still nothing lost for Domino's. You didn't eat their food _before_ the deal, and now you still won't eat their food. They lose nothing from irritating people who already had no intentions of being their customer.

Re:Not surprising

[SvnLyrBrto]

That's really not a good way to handle it though. It shouldn't issue the coupon code, only for it not to work for a customer, at all. Rather, a "spin the wheel to win a free pizza" system or similar would control the numbers of free pizzas being issued, whilst still maintaining customer goodwill and not exposing Dominos to the perception of having broken their promises. T-Mobile does, after all, not only know where you live, but where you ARE. (Even if you disable location services or deny access to the TMO app, they can still place you with a couple hundred meters via cell tower triangulation.) So they could easily have controlled the numbers going to any given Dominos location.

Re:Not surprising

[amRadioHed]

Yeah, the implementation was certainly poor. I think something as simple as limiting the offer to one per customer could have helped a lot. It was one per line, so there were some customers getting as many as 7 pizzas for just their family.

Re:Not surprising

[jackspenn]

So I can say that when I picked up my "free to me" pizza, the guy printed out the receipt and asked how people were paying with cash using online purchase. I found it interesting that it didn't show up as a coupon or something, but paid in cash. The manager was holding all of these odd receipts off to the side and there were 6-10 at that point. Neither the manager nor anybody on his staff was aware of the T-Mobile promotion when I told them. This suggests there was a lack of planning at level(s) to have caused issues.

Re:Not surprising

[tlhIngan]

That's really not a good way to handle it though. It shouldn't issue the coupon code, only for it not to work for a customer, at all. Rather, a "spin the wheel to win a free pizza" system or similar would control the numbers of free pizzas being issued, whilst still maintaining customer goodwill and not exposing Dominos to the perception of having broken their promises. T-Mobile does, after all, not only know where you live, but where you ARE. (Even if you disable location services or deny access to the TMO app, they can still place you with a couple hundred meters via cell tower triangulation.) So they could easily have controlled the numbers going to any given Dominos location.

Better yet, just have the customer text T-Mo for the coupon code. LIke text the store number to a T-Mo number, and you'll get a coupon texted back for a free pizza. If there are no more coupons, it would say so "Sorry, all free pizzas at this location have been given out. Try again next week!"

And it's an incredible marketing opportunity - now you know where people go at what time Market it right and you could get other businesses involved too - after all, if you stopped by for a free pizza and didn't get a coupon, chances are you probably will go to a place nearby for food still. Not to far away, so neighbouring businesses can get in on the traffic. If a particular store runs out and gets 100 people wanting food, a nearby restaurant would pay to get that sort of information so they can target passed up users.

Re:Not surprising

[hankwang]

"T-Mobile does, after all, not only know where you live, but where you ARE. (Even if you disable location services or deny access to the TMO app, they can still place you with a couple hundred meters via cell tower triangulation.)"

Even though the T-mobile organization as a whole may have this information, I would expect that it is not so easy to transfer this information in real time from where it is normally kept to the marketing department that is in charge of these promotions. The reasons would be technical, legal, and security-related. It is highly sensitive data; imagine the uproar if the customer database is leaked including detailed location logs after a breach.

Re: Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, stfu. A company not honoring their promises is a perfectly valid reason to stop doing business with them. In fact, ANY reason is a valid reason. We're not obligated to any company for anything. You're acting like he was stabbing his mom in the back or something. Domino's doesn't care about you, you shouldn't care about Domino's.

Re:Not surprising

[Zaphon]

Actually a limitation of free pizzas for the first 100 customers per store was specified in the promotion's fine print. Of course fine print can't protect them from the anger of customers who didn't bother to read it.

Yeah, I know it's there now, but when I looked the first week I didn't see it. I think it was added after the fall out started to happen. And from what I understand, the biggest problem is T-Mobile issued the codes to everyone (I have 4 lines, I got 4 codes each week) and then it was up to Domino's to actually limit the orders. However, when you went to order online at Dominos and use the code, instead of getting a message saying something like "This stores 100 free pizzas have already been claimed, please try another store", it came back with a generic error. So people obviously called or even better showed up to scream about not getting their free Pizza. I got mine both weeks, and I never had to go to another store, but I also ordered them for Lunch at 10:45am each day. Yes T-Mobile could have handled this better, but so could have Domino's. I was a regular subscriber to Dominos prior to this, and I did end up with 8 free pizza's, so I doubt it's going to change anything (though I'm sure I would be on the other side of the fence had I not got my free pizza's), but both parties need some percentage of the blame. I think Domino's more than anyone (they did sign up for this knowing how big T-Mobile's customer base is). I'd love to hear how many people actually redeemed it on the T-Mobile app (vs the 100 x Number of Domino's Stores) to see how big the actual discrepancy was (aka how many people got screwed).

Those who don't study history?

[MrLogic17]

Did no one at Domino's ever hear of the Oprah/KFC fiasco?

A Blessing in Disguise

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped eating pizza and bread about five years ago.
Suddenly I could lose weight.
Best thing for your diet.

Re:A Blessing in Disguise

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Eat two or three pieces of pizza, not the whole goddamed pie,

It's these kind of authoritarian restrictions that makes me hate America.

Re:A Blessing in Disguise

[dfghjk]

"Here's the real truth, kids..."

Kids preaching to kids. It never ceases to amaze how the most ignorant on this subject brag that they know the "real truth".

Re:A Blessing in Disguise

[TeknoHog]

This isn't the whole story, your gut bacteria also make a difference. People have different distributions of gut flora, and sometimes a fecal transplant makes a huge difference, but different diets also promote different bacteria.

$50 account, $60 in freebies

[raymorris]

Another bit of arithmetic. T-Mobile charges about $50 per line, depending on how many lines you have. Every Tuesday, each line gets about $15 of free stuff. That's $60 in free stuff, $50 in revenue. Plus the costs of providing the phone service ...

Re:$50 account, $60 in freebies

[misexistentialist]

They make it up on volume

Now that we've signed you up...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Now that we've signed you up for a cellphone plan by promising you stuff, we're discontinuing the thing that made you sign up. Why? Because fuck you! ha ha ha!

Sign of the times

[Spudboy2003]

People are desperate to the point of eating this shit.

Re:Sign of the times

[drinkypoo]

I assume you mean T-mobile promos / promises.

While those are also bullshit, I'm pretty sure he was talking about the warmed-over-barely-better-than-little-seizures-cheese-covered-cardboard excuse for pizza that Domino's pushes.

I got mine!!

[BeemanIT]

Well, I got my Free Pizza.. Who would turn that down unless on a diet. Everyone loves free food.

Groupon Redux

[mentil]

This reminds me of Groupon. Seems people stopped offering free stuff through Groupon (due to incidents like this one), and I never heard of them again.

Re:Groupon Redux

[thegarbz]

The idea of Groupon was slightly different in that it was an advertisement service to get people into the store for the first time. That is why it was mainly used by small unknown stores rather than large well known brands. The only problem is the idea that a consumer getting something really cheap would be converted to an increase in sales didn't eventuate since it turns out the consumers were only chasing a bargain. Combine that with groupon's advice that completely screwed the stores by not setting sensible limits on the deal and it all turned into a massive loss.

By comparison this kind of partnership between T-Mobile and Dominos serves a different purpose. It's not about new customers or getting people to realise that Dominos sells pizza, we knew that already. It's more about restricting the amount of traffic opposing stores get while at the same token offering something unique to T-Mobile customers. It was still a bad idea, but with a different purpose than Groupon which intrinsically was actually quite a good idea that simply didn't work quite right.

Oddly enough I did the same with meat

[rsilvergun]

and with much the same results. Whatever keeps you away from large quantities of junk food. For me it was fast food cheeseburgers. No meat means no fast food cheeseburgers (plus the attendant fries and soda pop). The weight came right off after that. That's why Atkins works. You stop eating cake for breakfast :P.

Re:No nice things

[davester666]

Each Domino's store can only hold so much of the cardboard that they use for their crusts.

Re:No nice things

[alex67500]

Who cares as long as you have the garlic dip !!

Who says no ...

[allo]

to free pizza?

Obligatory...

[bmo]

SCHNIFTER: Das ist immer alles Aulung und ist rauch mit and potzen Volkswagen und niemann stint und "Swell Pizza!!"

--
BMO