The $39 Experiment

Under the “Why didn’t I think of this?” category, I found about this guy, Tom Locke, who decided to use a roll of stamps and mail letters to 100 different companies asking them for free stuff. He has received all sorts of things back, but what I find typical of mis-managed companies is what some of the companies wrote back in their rejection of his request. Amazing. Tom includes all the text of his letters, each individually tailored to each company he wrote to. My favorite letters of Tom’s are the ones he wrote to Energizer (hysterical), Subway, and Industrial Tool & Die. While some cool companies sent him a few coupons or a free product sample, a special few sent him some big time stuff. Fellowes sent him 4 cans of compressed air! What? I pay through the nose for that stuff. It’s like crack to a techie.

I found about his website from Yahoo’s site of the day, which is now called “Yahoo! Picks“. I never even noticed the name change, but I’m sure they must have had a few board meetings and work “teams” agonizing over it. Weird. Anyway, it is a very good thing to subscribe to - I get the weekly digest. There’s always a site or two which is interesting to me, so if you have a bit more broader interests than I do, you might even enjoy it more. You can see all their old “picks” online, too. It is rumored that if Yahoo picks your site that day, the resulting increase might even crash your server. I’ll take that risk by publicly begging here for Yahoo to pick mine, even though I just criticized their managerial tomfoolery a few sentences ago. I’ve heard that if your site ever gets mentioned in USA Today, you’ll even get a bigger boost to your site.

Technorati : Yahoo, free stuff, management

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