A little while ago, I posted about a freebie for your dog from Happy Trails. Today I got an email from them. Normally, this type of thing doesn’t happen with free samples. But it looks like this small company was way over their head and didn’t understand how viral marketing can be so impactful! In short, you won’t be receiving this free sample. But, they are offering you special promotional codes to use. Read their apology below:
“It was a simple plan; add a free sample banner ad to Dogster’s email, what could possibly go wrong?
We were expecting (at the very most) 2000 requests. Then someone was kind enough (?) to post the link to several “free stuff” web sites (you probably know the ones I’m talking about) and within minutes we were receiving thousands of requests per hour. So far we have received more than 50,000 requests, yikes! This far exceeds the 500 per week we had promised to send (& which we have sent).
We’re a small company, but we thought that if all four humans and all three dogs worked 24 hours a day to make and send samples we could finish by the end of the decade. But then the dogs brought up that whole “lack of opposable thumbs” thing and we knew we were sunk.
We could have just ignored this whole episode but we don’t want to own a company that does that kind of thing, you made the effort to write and the least we could do is thank you and apologize.
We’re SOOO sorry.
So, here’s what we’re gonna do:
1. Give you a $15 “gift certificate” to be used on any order $35 or more. Good through January 31, 2010. Just use promotion code: $15DOGSTERGIFT
2. We already gave you a 20% promotion code (DOGSTERDISCOUNT) good through Feb. 15th. But as our way of apologizing we are going to make the code good through the end of July- you can use it as many times as you’d like. Just go to www.happytailsspa.com to redeem it.
Again, we can only apologize for mix up, next time we’ll be sure to add a little more fine print.
Lorna, Kevin, Lauryn & Jason (the humans)
and RiQui, Brie and Jimmy (the dogs)
To order call: 866-427-7920
or email: SweetPea@HappytailsSpa.com”
Kirsten
It's nice to know a company is willing to admit their mistake and make up for it! Way to go guys! Anyway, I got a code for diapers.com in the mail the other day. Not sure if you've seen this one, if you haven't, please feel free to post them. $5 off for new buyers w/code PTGNOV09.