Have you ever wondered what the most effective factor in gaining more customers is?
We will give you the answer, offers. Offers are one of the best ways to acquire new customers and to grab huge attention to your product or service; it is a proven fact. Many brands create offers on certain occasions to meet their customers’ needs while others create surprising offers to gain new customers or to market their service.
As effective as offers can be, they might lead to destroying your brand if they were not planned well or implemented well.
This is what happened with valU and Tradeline; both brands created an offer that backfired right away! Instead of satisfying their customers and gaining new ones, they are losing them all!
Tradeline and valU: An Offer Or A Scam?
Two days ago, Tradeline and valU announced that they are offering a 50% discount on all Apple products.
Tradeline is the Apple premium reseller in Egypt while valU is an application that provides its users many services including installments to make it easy to purchase any product they want. The two brands collaborated and created an incredible offer on all Apple products.
The offer attracted thousands of customers but it didn’t end well!
What Went Wrong?
It didn’t take a few hours and everyone started attacking both brands on social media platforms!
Most people –if not all of them- accused both brands of fraud. People have stated that Tradeline stores didn’t allow many people to enter, the employees told the customers that the system is down, and the in-store products and online ones were out of stock!
Many people have stated in social media posts that this was intentional and this offer’s goal was to only make people download the two applications.
Captured Voice Of Customer stated that Tradeline already sells Apple products at a very high price, which means that the discount with the installment interest will provide the original price of the product that is offered by any other distributor than Tradeline!
Angry Customers Vs Defenders
While this wave of rage surfaced on Facebook, some people actually defended the offer and stated that it was not a hoax.
We can’t exactly say that opinions were divided because most of the opinions on Facebook stated that the whole offer was not as they expected as valU also raised the percentage of interest and the security of Tradeline treated the customers with disrespect.
Other brand fans found that the offer made sense because even if the interest is a little high, it is still way less than the original price of Tradeline.
Rates Went Down In Two Days
Even though there is a huge number of people who downloaded the applications and crated profiles, the rates are incredibly low!
While Tradeline mobile App is now ranked #1 in Shopping on App Store and ValU App is now #1 in Finance Apps over Egypt due to the massive downloads over the past weekend, the Apps ratings can tell a lot about the angry customers as today valU’s rate on Google Play Store is 1.9 while on the Apple store is 3.5. As for Tradeline’s rate on Google Play Store is 3.1 and on Apple store 1.6.
This could be the biggest downfall both brands have ever witnessed!
Was It An Actual Fraud Or Just A Good Campaign Gone Wrong?
The whole circumstances are very suspicious and people had many questions in mind, like why only a few people go in and why the system is down on this day knowing there’s a tempting offer!
People also wondered if this is actually an offer since, after the calculation of the interest and price, it wasn’t 50% after all!
So, can we say that both brands’ main intention was just the number of downloads and created technical issues to allow a few people to benefit from the offer or luck was not on their side on the offer day?
We wonder what valU and Tradeline will do to overcome this crisis and win over their customers again!
What do you think?
Do you think it is a scam or an offer that wasn’t planned well?