A debacle from the beginning.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The Google and Nestle Nexus 7 contest has been a debacle almost from the start, and has now found itself in fresh controversy after failing to give prizes to two contest winners after a delay of four months.
Mayur Patil and Parimal Sen were both among the winners of the contest, which ran last year, in which specially-marked packages of Kit-Kat chocolates contained eight-digit codes that consumers could text to a given number; 1,000 of these codes were winners, meaning that those whose candies had them would receive Nexus 7 tablet computers.
Prizes were sent out beginning in November, and there was an initial scandal over the fact that Indian winners were not given the latest Nexus 7 model as implied, but rather the previous year’s model. After that controversy subsided, however, things appeared to be on-track, but now Patel and Sen have come out saying that they never received their devices, and have been stonewalled by Nestle at every turn when trying to claim what is rightfully theirs.
The contest rules say that the winners must send in their winning Kit-Kat wrappers via mail in order to receive their tablets: “According to the Terms and Conditions the wrapper of the winning KitKat bar must be included along with the documents sent by winners.†However, Nestle says that the mails sent by Patil and Sen did not include their wrappers, so they cannot get their Nexus 7 prizes.
The solution? Simply re-send the wrapper and additional documentation to claim your prize. The only problem is that both young men have allegedly already sent their winning wrappers, so how they can send them again?
Tracking information from the DTDC Courier Service also indicates that at least Patil’s package was received by GroupM, a third-party company handling the organization of the Nexus 7 contest. For his part, Sen called a Customer Service Representative at Nestle and recorded the phone call, which can be listened to below, and was politely denied his prize unless certain documentation was sent.
But the most irksome part is that Nestle made both men wait for four long months before notifying them that there was any problem with their prizes, something both men content is a deliberate tactic used in the hopes that the men would simply forget or give up on trying to get their tablet. Additionally, email communications from Nestle – or some account purportedly belonging to Nestle – have been suspiciously unprofessional and vague, with language looking incredibly child-like and unprofessional.
Now, social media is coming together to support Patil and Sen, and to make sure that Nestle and Google make good on their promise to give these young men their Nexus 7 tablets. The Twitter hashtag #Nexus7forSen&Mayur is making waves across Twitter, while Kit Kat’s India Facebook page has been inundated by complaints and postings that urge the contest-runners to make good on their promises.
Such an outcry on social media doesn’t guarantee any results, but the earlier controversy regarding Indian winners receiving an older model tablet did get overturned as a result of the public outcry and the public relations nightmare that Google and Nestle were facing. Therefore, there’s a good chance that if enough people make noise, the companies will have to reverse their decision on this latest snafu. And, hopefully, it will also mean that the next time they run a similar contest, these problems can be avoided (or just avoid creating a contest altogether).
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com