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

Dave_save

I wasn't there as I already have a toothbrush, thereby saving me valuable time and reducing the risk of stress!

Exile_geordie

Mentioned in 2 separate MSE newsletters. the things that are mailed to about 4 million people each time they are sent. Id not even heard of the promotion at all till I got sent the newsletters so Im wondering how many others hadnt till then and swamped onto the concourse.

Manticore

Having read, the article on here 2 or 3 weeks ago, we booked tickets to London, especially for this event. We were so very disappointed when we got there, do discover the whole fiasco had been canceled. We wont have the been the only people who went especially for this. It was sad to read some of the comments earlier, about "greed". My thoughts were, that it made sound economic sense to spend £45.50 on a return ticket, to get a toothbrush that you wanted anyway, and in Boots would have cost almost £90.
I thought this site was about saving money, and making such choices?
I would appreciate the name and address of Colgates MD, I have a letter just waiting to post. . .

I-LOV-MONEY

Wouldn't it be easier for them to send out vouchers to lucky people that contact them, to exchange in Boots (or similar)? No queues! Money saved from not employing staff at Waterloo, can go to Boots as a handling fee.

RaspberryFool

When I read the article in the MSE weekly newsletter, I could almost have predicted that this would happen. Remember the Hoover 'free flights to New York' fiasco? However, having said that, by pure chance we were travelling through Waterloo on Monday 8th, so I took my old toothbrush just in case. Arriving around 10:30am, we only had to queue for about 10 minutes and managed to get a new toothbrush in return. So thank you Colgate. Good luck with the PR!

I-LOV-MONEY

RaspberryFool wrote: »

However, having said that, by pure chance we were travelling through Waterloo on Monday 8th, so I took my old toothbrush just in case.

They said the promotion was not going to start until Tuesday :mad:

Newway

I am really interested to see how Colgate attempts to solve this. If I were in the team to suggest a resolution, my advice would be announce to cancel the promotion immediately (sure in their T&C they have the right) - It doesn't matter what they do, people will be angry, and the longer to wait for a solution the worse (and exponentially costly as more people know about this). Either way, Colgate is now (in)famous, everyone's heard of it, brand "promotion" goal achieved.
The twitter "half-life" of #Colgate mentions will be less than 1 week, and after a month or so, people will forget the whole thing.

Many people queueing tuesday morning, like myself, were given forms and rumour has it that it guarantees a free toothbrush, which I don't think is true, as the form can be easily photocopied and available to EVERYONE thanks to our digital world. any there is absolutely NO WAY to authenticate the form.

Alternatively they can reopen the online redeem system, but it is bound to crash the instant it is online, and of course the whole country will try to redeem, likewise if they offer redeem at any boots, now EVERYONE will try to get one.

Is Colgate ready to dispatch millions of free toothbrushes? Likely not.
(Not because the toothbrushes are expensive,as they are only expensive at retail, but the whole logistic and labor cost)

Manticore

RaspberryFool wrote: »

Remember the Hoover 'free flights to New York' fiasco?

The free flights were just a matter of writing two times and a phone call. We got two free flights to Florida, and had a great time.
That did happen, and Hover had the honor to forfil its commitments to those who correctly applied.
Much respect to Hover for that.
Will be interesting to see if that kind of corporate loyalty by Colgate-Palmolive to its customers, is shown here. . .

Mungers1

It was so poorly contrived and very frustrating. I went to Waterloo at 7am on Monday to be told it was now 'starting tomorrow'. I then went again on Tuesday at 7am only to encounter the queues, with neither enough people on the stand and nor, probably, enough toothbrushes. Useless.

Loving_a_freebie

I have to say I was very pleased with this offer. I arrived on Monday at about 0820, queued until just after 0900 and after providing a few details to the very kind, happy and helpful assistants got my free toothbrush. I then returned after work at about 1745, queued until about 1800 and got a second for my wife.

While there had been some issues between the promotions team / Waterloo security in the morning about the length / position of the queue it was all good natured and well managed. It must have been from Tuesday onwards that everything started to go wrong at Waterloo!

Anyway – this was a great promotion for those that got it so thanks to Colgate, and MSE for promoting this.