MSE News: Colgate forgets its toothbrush in promo fail, as it's kicked off...

mrcol1000

I find it quite funny how outraged people get when they fail to get something for free. Colgate should have realised how many people they were going to get and how greedy people act when there is a chance to get something for free but really what they could have done in the situation? It would make better sense to get people to register before hand and give them time slots. It would have cost more but saved them embarrassment. Really though once you set up a stall in a train station giving away free electric toothbrushes you have set yourself on a route to failure.

ian9outof10

This scheme is also running in Boots isn't it? It may not be exactly the same, as I think you might need to trade in an old electronic toothbrush, but still, this one Colgate is giving away is really rather good.

bdb303

mrcol1000 wrote: »

I find it quite funny how outraged people get when they fail to get something for free. Colgate should have realised how many people they were going to get and how greedy people act when there is a chance to get something for free but really what they could have done in the situation? It would make better sense to get people to register before hand and give them time slots. It would have cost more but saved them embarrassment. Really though once you set up a stall in a train station giving away free electric toothbrushes you have set yourself on a route to failure.

I think the entitlement comes from the fact that some have got up early enough to be amongst the first 750, but because of the shambolic organisation of this promotion were unable to swap their toothbrush!

chick1006

I lined up from approx 6.45am. Even then the queue was at 200 strong before me and another 500 behind me by the time i got near the Colgate stand. Then they just stopped the promotion due to numbers of people in the station at rush hour and safety concerns this caused. There was talk of re-starting the promotion once the morning rush hour had died down so they started providing (including me) with the forms everyone had to complete and promised if we came back at 10.30am those with forms will recieve the toothbrsuh. I've now learnt from this forum that isn't going to happen.
My suggestion is for those people that have the form why don't they as a way of making amends advise them to send the forms into there offices and they then honour the promotion at least?
Good product but massive failure on organisation

vaderag

I agree.

There were a lot of people there, but I took a form as I'd waited and was planning to head back in my lunch break... (as they said after 10.30 but if you had a form you'd get one)

Well, looks like they've just been talking rubbish all along!!

[Deleted User]

I bet most the the MSEers that went just wanted them so they can flog them on for £££profit.

Vikkivikki2

Hi

I was there at 6.15 this morning and was the tenth person in the queue. My details were taken and I had a toothbrush literally 5 mins later.

After my details were taken we were moved from the left hand side of the stand to the right to receive the brush. Even at this point early in the morning before the eventual crush happend this caused confusion with passers by. Passers by automatically joined the queue I was in as they thought that it was the shorter queue - the staff at this point pointed them to longer queue that snaked around waterloo. I think this was probably what caused the initial confusion.

From what I saw later on, various queues were being moved due to health and safety concerns.

I don't think all of the blame can be aimed at the Colgate staff - there were clearly far too many people in the queue and they should have informed exerted some sort of crowd control. I looked down on the crowd later on and there were clearly people pushing and shoving to get the toothbrush which hampered the issue.

I do feel sorry for anyone that didn't receive a brush.

Pincher

I have a perfectly good Philips electric tooth brush, but it's about five years old, so I would love to swap it.

Waterloo is crowded enough already, what are they thinking of?

Come to Brent Cross, do it in BOOTS, where it belongs.
Loads of free parking. Do it during off peak hours, like 10am to 4pm.

It sounds like I need to queue from 06:00 to make sure I get one,
but I can't get there by tube that early.

epm-84

liz545 wrote: »

A busy commuter rail station at rush hour is a terrible place for this kind of promotion

Busy commuter railway stations at rush hour are usually popular for companies who have promotions to offer and Network Rail (who own and manage the major stations in Britain) must allow companies to run their promotions there at peak times.

bdb303

epm-84 wrote: »

Busy commuter railway stations at rush hour are usually popular for companies who have promotions to offer and Network Rail (who own and manage the major stations in Britain) must allow companies to run their promotions there at peak times.

In fact, there would have been no problem if they had just handed out those toothbrushes without requesting people to fill out their market research forms... There wouldn't have been such a large queue then.