Conned by Continental Tyres

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Continental Types

• 

  Snoop on 01/10/2014 - 13:14

  -2

  I don't think Conti have done anything wrong here. Your case would most likely either be with the marketing company TLC, or with Dominos depending on who actually withdrew the offer!

• 

  adamren on 01/10/2014 - 13:17

  +1

  Dodgy, but happens. If it is in the T&C that they can change without notice and they usually have that than chances are the ACCC won't be much help. Unless they're flagrantly breaking the law.

  • 

    Snoop on 01/10/2014 - 13:35

    +2

    Unfortunate… but yep!
    7 . TLC reserves the right to withdraw, change or substitute the offers with another offer of equal or greater value.

    • 

      tooblue on 01/10/2014 - 13:47

      The argument is the legitimacy of such clauses, according to the ACL quoted above.

      • 

        adamren on 01/10/2014 - 14:23

        Hopefully the Chaser Boys (or the 3 that are on there) will do a case study of this on another show. Was the Checkout canned? Maybe they'll mix it in their new show. Otherwise another great ABC show, The Gruen Transfer might do it. 'How Not To Run a Promo'

• 

  Nutrino on 01/10/2014 - 13:33

  this thread should be closed and continued in other thread. Someone wants blood here.

  • 

    Speckled Jim on 02/10/2014 - 10:42

    Blood?
    Pizza?
    Blood-pizza? Is that a thing?!

• 

  Ughhh on 01/10/2014 - 13:43

  Correct me if Im wrong or missed something, but in both of the T&C linked (original + new), neither specifically mentions anything about Dominoes or Pizza.

  II.Food offers- customer to choose a venue on a dedicated website/app; claim a free, 2 for 1, or meal discount
  eVoucher and print copy and present or show via mobile at the chosen venue to claim specified meal option

  Did the original promotion advertise Free Dominoes pizza specifically? If not, the purpose of the promo was to offer you access to the Conti 365 rewards. As long as the Conti 365 rewards still contain offers for:

  II.Free, 2 for 1, and discounted dining offers
  III.2 for 1 Days Out/Free Days Out
  IV.Free Sports Lesson/Session
  V.2 for 1 Music Downloads/Limited Free Music Downloads through www.theinsong.com

  … then they have the right to change the venues.

  In addition, would you have known about the specific offers in the rewards offer (such as free Dominoes pizza) if it wasn't posted on OzBargain?

  • 

    tooblue on 01/10/2014 - 13:50

    -1

    At the very bottom of the first T&C dated 20140920, there is "Dominos"; Someone also saw it on Continental Tyres facebook page; There were people redeemed these pizzas as well.

    • 

      dasher86 on 01/10/2014 - 14:52

      what is in question here is whether or not the offer that exchanged the free dominos pizza is classified as equal value.
      In my opinion free and 20% off are significantly different and is not equal in value.

• 

  adamren on 01/10/2014 - 14:21

  It's a fantastic deal in theory to get a free feed everyday, but when it's crappy pizza, you wouldn't eat it everyday and you probably couldn't last more than 20 days or so like Supersize Me and just get all sorts of health problems from it. Even if you didn't it'd be quite a challenge just on boredom alone, even if you liked all the toppings they're essentially meat, cheese and some vegies with sauce on some flour dough.

  Whoever at Conti, TLC or Dominoes thought of this promo must have been chewed out and or fired for it.

  Say a thousand people took up the offer and did it once a week on average and say the cost of pizza is anywhere from $1.50 up to $4, within a a few weeks it would eat away at the profit on that promo. No wonder they pulled the plug on it. Say costs of $200,000 but only getting roughly $20,000-$40,000 profit on tyres. Most people would have bought 4 tyres thought right? So could be over $80k, that's around 5 months of Dominos to 'eat' away at it.

  Obviously nitpicks…the maths is more complex than that but 'back of envelope' here.

  Sometimes a deal is too good to be true, and buying

• 

  tooblue on 01/10/2014 - 15:11

  You don’t expect to make money from a single marketing campaign. Marketing is to spending money and sales makes money. Otherwise there won’t be any freebies or $0.01 deals floating here. But agree this marketing campaign from Continental Tyres is a complete failure.

  There are about 700+ downloads (Google + Apple store) of the reward app which is the portal to all the rewards, means only about 700 customers took the offer. It is only 14% of the total 5000 quota they allocated.

  If there was no such promotion at all, I would consider Continentals when I need new tyres in future because they are good tyres.
  If they continue with the pizza offer I probably would be bored after first dozen pizzas and Continentals have a loyal customer.
  But now what they did (promise, get the money, take the promise back) is far more damaging than doing nothing. Put ACCC aside, fool me once, shame on you, I would never let them fool me twice.

  • 

    Snoop on 01/10/2014 - 15:32

    You keep saying Continental, but it's ultimately not controlled by them. They would've, for a fee, signed with the marketing company (TLC) that is making the deals! It's the marketing company (TLC) that has penned a deal with Dominos. The problem here for you is that you do not know the content of the contract signed between those two companies or who is responsible for the withdrawal.
    In law it is also acceptable that someone can make a mistake in the wording/expression and is able to withdraw or amend the offer at issue! On any price list I ever released it would always contain the text E&OE (Errors and Omissions Excepted) for this reason.

  • 

    adamren on 01/10/2014 - 17:25

    Yes marketing is an investment, or should be seen as long-term and not a cost in short term.

    But this 'we'll make up for it in volume later' mentality in losing money is just plain silly. No wonder they've reneged on the deal, it's losing them money and fast.

    Anyhow, fun fact: TLC also did the 'Free Movie Ticket' with Kogan $15 gift voucher, I think. It rings a bell.

• 

  ilostnemo on 01/10/2014 - 15:59

  I still have the pizza come up on mine, but it returns an error, I however don't see the 20% off eatnow!!!

• 

  cloudy on 01/10/2014 - 16:18

  +1

  The question I think is, did you buy tyres or did you get buy a years worth of pizza?

  Now, if you bought the later, I would argue you are being vexatious, because it doesn't sound reasonable to me you would go to a tyre company to buy ur pizza.

  But good luck with the ACCC approach, and keep us informed.

  I might add I was in the market for new tyres, and was really tempted for this deal when I saw it on ozbargain, but I didn't genuinely believe it would last, because it simply made no commercial sense for continental to honour it. Mistakes by companies happen, they don't expect people to try to exploit their marketing campaigns, see ezibuy right now. Sometimes, it backfires on them.

  But in this case, it seems like it backfired on ozbargain. I think this is a good lesson, don't be greedy with free lunches, in this case pizza.

  • 

    ilostnemo on 02/10/2014 - 11:34

    Surely this company doesn't employ chimps for their marketing.

    Yes if you offer free pizza for 12 months, its going to be used/exploited.

• 

  adamren on 01/10/2014 - 17:26

  Exactly. Buying something you don't need with money you don't have (an old marketing joke) is not a wise thing to do, especially when a free 365 days of Domino's pizza is the deal to get when buying tyres you may not normally buy without the carrot/lure of the free pizza. And it seems too good to be true.

  If you're David and you're about to get something off Goliath at a loss, Goliath will do everything they can to not lose or turn it around so in the end it's lose-lose and not a win-lose deal.

  • 

    Speckled Jim on 02/10/2014 - 10:47

    +2

    Not lose-lose.
    Most Conti tyres are at (or very near) top of their respective sizes. At the end of the day, you have great tyres and enhanced safety.

• 

  Moots on 02/10/2014 - 12:41

  You agreed with the initial terms of the contract. Thus,

  T&C statement 26. Contiential Tyres or TLC reserve te right to modify, suspend, terminate or cancel the reward program, or individual reward offer, as appropriate.

• 

  Roary on 03/11/2014 - 15:15

  Have you spoken to Continental about this?

  I was so tempted to buy a couple of tyres myself and take up this offer, as I normally buy Domino's once or twice a week. I would feel cheated if they did this bait and switch tactic on me.

• 

  cloudy on 04/11/2014 - 09:29

  Any update on the ACCC action?

  • 

    Snoop on 13/11/2014 - 12:36

    Once again I could tell you that there would be no case for Continental AG to answer to. Consumer laws are not 'only' there to protect the consumer. The OP's own extracts about 'Unfair' are clearly relevant in this case, and 'unfair' towards the consumer!
    In this case, it is 'unfair' to assume that you could spend less than $300 on a pair of tyres in order to gain approx $1800 worth of pizza!