AquaStupid

Being the firm believer in good dental hygiene that I am, I decided that it was time to invest in a new toothbrush after the last one I purchased quite literally disintegrated into a fine mist from overuse. I read somewhere that a new toothbrush removes something like 40% more plaque than a toothbrush that has seen only 3 months of use. I was clearly scheduled for an upgrade.

I went to the supermarket and was faced with 250 types of toothbrushes, each of which claimed that your decision to purchase a different brand toothbrush would result in your teeth veritably launching themselves from your mouth spontaneously and condemning you to a long penance of that liquid-only diet you've always meant to get around to until you realized how much it would make you want to throw yourself in front of a bus.

I picked an Aquafresh Extreme Clean Medium (side marketing rant: Why must everything be "extreme"? In the history of the dental profession, I don't think the adjective "extreme" was ever used to describe anything. It's one of those idiotic code words considered by marketing people as a secret means to hypnotize young, hip, tattooed individuals into buying their crap. It doesn't work. I know three young, hip, tattooed individuals, and I asked each of them). The Extreme Clean is a very modern looking toothbrush- the kind you envision Austrian scientists suspending in wind-tunnels to test for maximum aerodynamic throughput, or something. That being said, I had no reason to pick it over the other comparable, maximally aerodynamic toothbrushes. The price didn't really factor in, and presumably as a result of the manufacturers' never-ending quest to be different, they all looked exactly alike.

The reason I went with the Extreme Clean was the promise of 3 free music downloads. That's it. All things being equal, I might as well add a few good tracks to the old ipod. I get most of my tunes from eMusic, but I figured I could actually pick 3 major label tunes, and the thought of adding Neil Diamond's Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show to my Holiday Playlist was too much to resist.

Toothbrush in hand, I raced to my computer to get my free tracks. The following represents a partial list of hoops you have to jump through in order to get your tunes:

1. You have to register for an account at Aquafresh - Why? I opted out of letting them send me email, so what possible reason is there for this?
2. Their website plays incredibly assy techno music on a loop - If there's a way to turn it off, I didn't see it. Perhaps they are doing a cross marketing thing with Excedrin.
3. You have to bring the packaging with you to plug in a 16 digit alphanumeric key - Ok, I get that fraud could be a problem here, but geez.
4. Once you register, you are given a NEW 12 digit alphanumeric key for a New site -  Here's a challenge: Go watch any spy movie where there is a bomb or missile with launch and/or deactivation codes. Millions of people's lives are at stake in these circumstances, and I defy you to find an example where you need to enter two separate codes, totally 26 alphanumeric characters.
5. Aquafresh warns you in no uncertain terms of all the sinister-sounding things you will have to do and agree to at the new site - I don't have the copy (you can't get to it again via the back button - nice), but they must have hired the same people who wrote the disclaimer text for Xenical (starts with "o" and rhymes with "doily spotting")
6. You go to the site (connect.com) and they tell you that they will not play with Firefox - It must be nice to be doing so well that you can afford to cheese off 12% of your potential customers. Oh, and you have to go to the new site by way of an interim "softcoin.com" site which sounds creepy. By this point, I have about 4 new windows open for this transaction.
7. DRM - The connect.com's terms and conditions are representative of the stupidity of the entire record industry. I can only keep my music on one machine. I can only download my music to a predetermined number of registered devices. I can only burn my music 7 times. Blah, blah, blah. None of these restrictions makes sense, and they more often than not make me want to run screaming from the page.
8. Software - Oh, yeah, and you have to download software to your computer in order to get the tracks. No way. One can only endure so much.
   

All I wanted was the music Aquafresh promised me. To be fair, I'm sure that if I did everything they required, eventually I would have had 3 additional songs on my computer. But at what cost to me? Can you imagine if you had to do all of this to get the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box?

So Aquafresh can get bent, as far as I'm concerned. They've taken my 3 dollars and turned a customer loyalty program around 180 degrees to the point where I'm actually angry at them. I'll buy another aquafresh toothbrush when I get a $3 check in the mail from them so I can get the songs they owe me on itunes. At least Apple is upfront about what you do and don't get.

Comments

[Eve]

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