Wednesday, November 30, 2011

AREZZO's scam

          Last Tuesday, (29 Nov 2011) my friend, my friend's parents, and I went to Carrefour in BP, when we were greeted by a pair of enthusiastic promoters as soon as we walked in. They claimed that they're promoting this AREZZO brand, and they're not asking us to buy anything. In fact, they were giving away prizes for free.
sounds good so far, right.
          So just for killing time, (we were there just to buy time until the lunch break is over) we went ahead and joined them to chit-chat. So this guy showed us this new technology to replace the microwaves. He claimed that AREZZO is an Italian-based brand. The new AREZZO heater induction oven use water-heater instead of microwaves to cook things, same with their electric stove-top. Both are priced at RM3+++. These technologies seemed not half bad.
Then came the best part. *rolls eyes*
          Time for the prize voucher!! Before giving us some voucher, he explained about them first. There's two kinds of voucher: one, there's no picture of any products, but only a value, usually RM200 voucher. This one is like a discount. You buy something, and you can subtract RM200 from the full price. Two, there's a product picture on the voucher. The one he showed us for example had the fruit blender/food processor thing on it, and a value of RM100 written beside it. He explained that this one works like this: you buy anything from AREZZO store amounting to or more than RM100, and you'd get the product in the picture for FREE.
wow this is so awesomeee. orz
          He pulled one out from the voucher box, a small white envelope containing one prize voucher for my friend's mom. Then he stamped it with the day's date and something.. this seems so official and legal right. Only then he opened the envelope and revealed to us a voucher that has a picture of the electric 3-stove top and RM100 beside it. So by his own previous example, we should get that stove-top for free if we buy anything amounting to RM100, right. But all the promoters had this shocked faces, saying that no no this couldn't be right. There are not supposed to have the electric stove-top for the prizes. My friend's mom got up and just said that so are we getting this for RM100 or not? and when they kept on with the surprised act and said no, she just got up and intended to leave, saying that she knew it's a scam, but it's all right, she was just chit-chatting to kill time anyway. Then one of them handed his phone over to her, saying that it's his manager, and asked her to talk to the manager herself. I don't know what the person on the phone said to her, but she just said no it's okay, she needs to get going and that she didn't believe in the promo since the start. Then the Chinese guy called a tudung-wearing Malay promoter, asking her to help smooth over the scene. My friend's mom kept on trying to leave while saying this is all a scam, and the female promoter just got all defensive, saying "auntie, you can't call us liars. if so, where's the proof? this is bla2 business". yeah right. Then my friend's mom said, "you just said I'd get the product on the voucher for RM100, but now you said I am not getting it, so wasn't that a lie?" and you know what she (the promoter) replied? "of course, you can't have that stove-top for RM100. Get real. That's worth RM4000. It would be a big loss for us"
At that point I was positively constantly rolling my eyes in my head. dude, that's what promotion is.You take the risk of getting some losses for hope that your buyers would then spread the words and increase your clientele, which in turn increase your future profit. haven't you learn any economics or just some business logic? Please, there's tons of ways to do promotions and make money, you don't have to resort to these types of scams.
fyi, only people who knows what they're doing is wrong will be that defensive when found out. Who are you trying to convince, us or yourself?

p/s: since we walked out of there financially unharmed, I wouldn't know how bad can they harm you financially, but here's a link of who does know, first hand.

moral of the story: if anything, go online and check it out.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

go italian technology~ go arezzo~ ha3

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