No Purchase Necessary

[Modeps]

I went to Burger King for lunch and got a meal. They have their 'Spiderman 2 Spidey Sense' Game on some of their products where you scratch off something and win. Now, I saw the infamous NO PURCHASE NECESSARY text in the rules and got to thinking of the movie "Real Genius" where Lazlo Hollyfeld entered a Frito-Lay contest "as many times as he could" and calculated how much of the prizes he would win... Interesting concept, albeit a bit off seeing that Lazlo's contest had him filling out cards and mailing them in, our scenerio has a random piece sent to us with the possiblity of winning.

Ok, if there's no purchase necessary, then how do you get a piece? You've gotta mail BK a self addressed stamped envelope and they'll send you one. For you and me, that equates to 74 cents for the possiblity of winning some food or a prize. I dont know about you, but I'd rather drop 74 cents into the slot machines or play some video poker.

So, how would we make this worthwhile? I guess we could possibly send them one box of envelopes with stamps on them... Say, 100 stamped envelopes ($37.00 + envelopes and shipping costs + computer labels for envelopes, so I'm guessing roughly $50 for this) in an attempt to win some prizes. Would that really be worth it? Is there a way to beat the system?

Your thoughts...

 

[Gunslinger08]

If you guarantee a win on every piece (by using a flashlight to see through the scratch off stuff), you would win atleast several hundreds of dollars in prizes off of $37 in stamps/envelopes.

 

[Garet Jax]

You would need to look at expected value. If say 50% of the tags are winners and the average prize is $1, then each envelope would expect to yield 50 cents. If the average cost is 74 cents then you are losing money. If on the other hand, the average cost per envelope is 35 cents, then you are making 15 cents (of incredibly hard to realize) income.

 

[Modeps]

Alright, reading the rules more closely, I found this:

WITHOUT PURCHASE BY MAIL. To get three (3) free Game Pieces, while Game Piece supplies last, and a copy of the Official Rules by mail, send a hand-printed, self-addressed, postage-stamped #10 envelope along with your name, complete address including ZIP/POSTAL CODE, hand-printed on a 3" x 5" piece of paper, to: "Spidey Sense" Official Game Piece Request, P.O. Box 1287, Elmhurst, IL USA 60126-1287. Vermont and Canadian residents may omit return postage. Write-in requests must be postmarked by July 26, 2004 and received by August 2, 2004. LIMIT: One (1) request per outer mailing envelope. Typed, computer-generated, or otherwise mechanically reproduced outer envelopes/requests are NOT allowed. In the event restaurant distribution of Game Pieces extends beyond July 26, 2004 as outlined in Section 7 below, the Game Pieces will continue to be distributed for free by mail as outlined herein.

So basically, they wont let you do a box of envelopes, you've gotta mail them individually, plus write them all by hand... but you get three per envelope so each piece costs .25 cents.

 

[yukichigai]

If you live close enough it may also be cheaper to do Metered Mail. I'm unsure as to the specific costs involved but you could pay as little as 20¢ per letter. Add in the 37¢ return postage stamp and you're talking only 57¢ per 3 pieces. Not bad.

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: yukichigai
If you live close enough it may also be cheaper to do Metered Mail. I'm unsure as to the specific costs involved but you could pay as little as 20¢ per letter. Add in the 37¢ return postage stamp and you're talking only 57¢ per 3 pieces. Not bad.

How does Metered Mail work? (what do you mean if you live close enough?)

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: yukichigai
If you live close enough it may also be cheaper to do Metered Mail. I'm unsure as to the specific costs involved but you could pay as little as 20¢ per letter. Add in the 37¢ return postage stamp and you're talking only 57¢ per 3 pieces. Not bad.

How does Metered Mail work? (what do you mean if you live close enough?)

Metered Mail is where you only pay the exact amount it costs to send the letter to the location. The amount they charge is based in part on the distance between where it is mailed from and where it is mailed to, though this is by road/flight miles. Difficulty to deliver is also a factor. Some place in the middle of nowhere, far off of major roads and highways may be more expensive than a location twice as far away as the crow flies.

I'm not sure what you have to do to use Metered Mail. You may have to pay it all at the beginning of the month, or something similar. You can enquire at a Post Office.

To put it in perspective, when I got Metered Mail from San Francisco (when I lived in Dayton, about an hour away from Reno) the cost whoever mailed it paid was anywhere from 18¢ to 21¢.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Do you have a link to the rules and odds? That's how you figure out if it's possible to break the system

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Do you have a link to the rules and odds? That's how you figure out if it's possible to break the system

Here's what they got for the rules:
http://www.burgerking.com/spidey_adult/rules.html

 

[sciencewhiz]

Just randomly picking the places to scratch off, your expected return is $0.60 per gamepiece. If you have a method to guarantee a winner on each gamepiece, your expected return would be double that. So, for 150 gamepieces, you could expect to make $90, or $180 if you're that good.

In real life, however, you can't expect to win one of the big prizes with only 150 gamepieces. The odds of winning the Dr. Pepper is 1:186 while winning the next prize ($20) is 1:34880. So if you assume that you will only win the Dr. Pepper and lower prizes, your expected return is $0.59 (or $1.19). All that really shows is that almost all of the money is in the low valued prizes.

What would you do with $90 worth of Burger King food?

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
What would you do with $90 worth of Burger King food?

Probably just give it to the homeless.

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
What would you do with $90 worth of Burger King food?

Probably just give it to the homeless.

Dude, that'd be awesome. I mean you always see panhandlers asking for money for food. Give 'em the next best thing: a coupon for food. Hell, you'd probably be featured on the news for giving out $90 worth of those.

 

[othiekan]

i work at BK, i just give mine away... i can always get food for free.

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: yukichigai

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
What would you do with $90 worth of Burger King food?

Probably just give it to the homeless.

Dude, that'd be awesome. I mean you always see panhandlers asking for money for food. Give 'em the next best thing: a coupon for food. Hell, you'd probably be featured on the news for giving out $90 worth of those.

The panhandlers say they are asking for money for food, but I thought they were really asking for money for malt liquor, in which case a BK coupon won't get you very far.

"I'll trade you this Whopper coupon for a 40 of St Ides. Come on, man! A Whopper costs twice as much as St Ides! That's a great deal!

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: othiekan
i work at BK, i just give mine away... i can always get food for free.

That and you aren't eligible to win.

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: Jzero
The panhandlers say they are asking for money for food, but I thought they were really asking for money for malt liquor, in which case a BK coupon won't get you very far.

"I'll trade you this Whopper coupon for a 40 of St Ides. Come on, man! A Whopper costs twice as much as St Ides! That's a great deal!

Yup. There's always a risk with giving the homeless money when they say they're asking for food. But if you give them food coupons you're giving the honest ones what they need while cutting the dishonest boozehounds out of the equation.

 

[MacBaine]

I wwas trying to figure out something to do with the McD's monopoly game, as it's the same situation... the one interesting thing I found out is that if you live in virginia, you don't have to put postage on the return envelopes. nobody in virginia wanted to help though