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That's around the average price of a person's dignity.

And it's not like they didn't have any precedent to learn from. Back in the early '90s, the Hoover Company ran a promotion offering two round-trip airline tickets to Europe or the United States with the purchase of a vacuum (which gives you an idea of how much some of these vacuums cost). They for some reason thought this would encourage customers to buy the more expensive models, because the free tickets would justify it.

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For a multinational corporation, they sure do have a lot of faith in human nature.

But, as you can now guess, customers who didn't even need a vacuum, but did need airline tickets, figured out that Hoover did in fact have cheap models (the fine print set the minimum purchase at just 100 pounds). So suddenly it was worth buying a vacuum you would never use, just to get the far more expensive free tickets out of it. People bought several vacuums they didn't need with the sole point of getting the tickets. Let's just say a lot of hobos and orphans got vacuums for Christmas that year.

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"I empty the bag into Paul's dumpster. He hates it."

Hoover was absolutely overwhelmed with demands for tickets and started desperately fighting the claims, either stalling or trying to convince customers to buy something else in order to offset the loss. It became a media firestorm, and Hoover ended up losing 50 million pounds in what would be the single biggest failed promotion ever.

While parent company Maytag sold the European Hoover company off as a result, claims for flights were never fully settled until 1998. This fiasco ensured a new rule in marketing: Always make sure the free item given away never exceeds the cost of the product it is paired with. Especially if it, you know, can fucking bankrupt you.

See some more poor corporate decisions in 5 Corporate Promotions That Ended in (Predictable) Disaster. Or check out the 6 Global Corporations Started by Their Founder's Shitty Luck.