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:
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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")
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Posted by: Bill | August 10, 2007 at 09:44 PM
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Posted by: Eve | December 15, 2009 at 02:50 AM