Wouldn’t have seen that coming
Here’s an unusual one. The Bulletin is offering a "Deal of the Day" service to site visitors and mobile text messagers:
Bendbulletin.com is pleased to offer our site users a special Deal of the Day every day from Aug. 8 through Aug. 14. The deals and merchants change daily, so check back each day to get a new special offer from a Bend merchant.
Just text "deal" to 20123 and you’ll receive a bar code on your cell phone. Present that bar code to the participating merchant to claim your special deal.
I’m not sure why the cell phone component is there, unless it’s really exclusive to cell phones? Plus a bar code on the cell just seems so random.
I’ll keep an eye on their site for the Deal of the Day, but does someone want to report back on the cell phone component when it goes live?
I agree, when I saw this I was a little confused. So, I sign up and get a barcode sent to my phone, then what? Do I whip out my phone and say, "check out this barcode and gimme my deal of the day!", or what? I think giving your email address makes way more sense, because then you could get your deal of the day barcode and then print it out.
The last thing I want is daily text messages or whatever from the Bulletin on my phone.
I agree with Monkey. What are the terms? If I text them, do they add my cell phone to a list of numbers that can then be used for, gosh, who knows what? I would like to know what I’m getting into before I decide to participate.
And since I am *not* a Bulletin subscriber, I can’t comment on their article to ask for that information. What a perk!
OK, I am a chump. I tried it.
Twice.
Both times (more than an hour apart) I got the following reply:
"Service is temporarily down. Please, try again later."
I did try it. I’ll try new ideas esp. if it will get me a break. But it was pretty lame. I did try it every day, and out of the six days, 4 of them were for the same place. I do not go to the cleaners every day, sorry. And the other ones I just was not able to use. Soooo…not very user friendly.
However, I am noticing a lot more companies using texting for bargains/password stuff, but there is always the opt out/stop feature that they pose right up front.