There’s this prestigious charge card company that has an on-going sales promo with a shopping complex whereby you could redeem some gifts when your total purchases charged to the card reach or exceed a certain amount. Well, I am always a sucker for sales promo (otherwise how do you think I have all these stories?) and I promptly set out to ensure that all my purchases at that shopping complex would be charged to that card, together with my wife, the supplementary card holder.

So imagine my chagrin, when I am told by the Card Staff that we cannot combine our purchases as the card numbers are different. Hey, why not, after all the supplementary charges all appear on my single monthly statement and I pay all the bills.

I cannot help but think that the Marketeer’s intention is to encourage more purchases on the charge card and in that case, it would not matter whether the purchase are on the main card or the supplementary card. It is just a case of someone not paying attention to the DETAILS when designing the sales promo.

Don’t laugh….it could happen to YOUR sales promo, if no-one thinks through the details of the execution.

Care to share a similar experience? Tell us about it!