Nectar - Everyone's a Spinner

What you need to know about the latest Nectar fuck-you-up-the-arse-for-your-email-confirmation-please-don't-block-our-emails-we're-not-spammer-honestly "offer".

What a load of old BOLLOCKS!

Here's what you do: Get one of the freaky Nectars (you remember the animated cartoon family that Nectar claimed was the first of it's kind ever - liars!) to spin the wheel and potentially win a prize.

There are 5651 prizes up for grabs which are split thus: One grand prize (£2074), 5 x 50,000 points (£1250), 30 iPods (£6599.70), 15 digital cameras (£1949.85), 50 x 10,000 points (£2500), 50 DVD Players (£2249.50), 500 x 1,000 points (£2500) and 5000 x 500 points (£12,500)

This makes a total prize fund of £31,623.05

Now that value is RRP, so the actual prize cost to Nectar is much less, but for the sake of argument let's says it's £30,000. Add on the marketing costs, the cost of the mailshot, and the technical cost of the website and competition, this could easily treble the cost. So let's say £100,000 as a nice, round figure. In fact it's probably much more.

But to enter the competition you must validate your email address.

All that effort to validate YOUR email address? I guess they need email addresses badly. Well, actually what they need is for you to validate you email address. They already have it, in fact they already have over 2 MILLION email addresses, but they can't validate all of them. This has caused them problems such as being classed as spammers by some of the email clients (email clients like, but maybe not including msn, hotmail, etc.)

Oh, wait, this just in, I didn't win, quel surprise! (Yes, I know, I played, what a twat!) But I got another email from the Nectards saying:

"Thanks again for playing Everyone's a Spinner. Although you didn't win a top prize we didn't want you to walk away empty-handed"

Aaaargh, they're going to cut my hands off!

No, but they are going to offer me the chance to have 8 FREE rentals at Blockbuster (when you sign up for their Unlimited DVD Rentals)

So I go to the Blockbuster website about this promotion and the first thing I notice is that it doesn't state a price. WAHAY! It must be free? No?

In the "10 reasons to join blockbuster.co.uk" it also states that:

3. We’ve got the fastest turnaround times in the UK *
4. We send more new releases per customer per month than anyone else *
6. We send more discs per customer per month than anyone else *

And that little asterix means "* based on mystery shopping survey by Tango Communications"

Ah, a mystery shopping survey, well that's ok then.

It's all BOLLOCKS. AAAARGH.

Sorry if you read to the end. There isn't much of a point to this. I just wanted to rant. :)