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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

$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 ...

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:No nice things

[davester666]

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

Who says no ...

[allo]

to free pizza?