Over the years, like most everyone, we have had a few horrible fiascoes with various large corporate machines. It’s not that we expect every company to get it right every time, but at least they have to step up to the plate when they don’t. Restaurants have often been a culprit, but at least we’ve had our share of free meals (and even booze on occasion) to make up it. There’s a reason I’m sad to see Circuit City fade off the consumer map – a fallout with Best Buy over a dozen years ago sealed their boycotted fate for us forever. Then sometimes, and man I mean increasingly rarely, you see a company really handle things right.
Early in ’08, Dr Pepper had announced a media stunt where they would give everyone in the country a free soda if Guns N’ Roses ever released their much anticipated and perpetually delayed new album. Last November, to everyone’s astonishment (and disappointment) Axl actually delivered the Duke Nukem Forever of the music world, Chinese Democracy. Dr Pepper vowed to honor their deal and setup an online coupon distribution system. This is when I really became interested. At work we commonly plan different promotions, and with online registrations and redemptions properly gauging bandwidth is always important. We deal with tiny numbers compared to this, but it’s still web app deployment 101. Things went south for the Dr. when they decided to limit the claim period for the coupon to a single day. So, not only have they invited some 200-300 million people to hit their site for something free, but to do it all on the same day. As expected, their site was quickly overwhelmed and their server crashed. Here, you can see how their site traffic instantly went ballistic:
I was one of the throngs of people who were unable to get through to cash in. So, I sent an email to their customer support and surprisingly soon got a reply stating that I’d still get into the promotion if I send my info through email. Well, it took quite a while, but today I finally got a coupon in the mail.
Yeah, it was kind of a insanely long road to a free bottle of soda, but I was more curious whether the company would make good on their claim and save their failed redemption plan. In this case, the big company came through…it just took a little Patience. (you all may begin whistling now)
