We called shenanigans on the Groupola £99 iPhone offer yesterday and as avid Bitterwallet reader Dane told us by email, “Right again BW”.

To refresh your memory, the Guardian ran an advertorial tech story about the £99 offer – which offered Groupola newsletter subscribers the possibility to get a £99 iPhone 4 this morning starting at 9am. There was of course no mention of how many units would be available for these lucky subscribers.

This morning at 9am the Groupola site promptly went into meltdown making it nigh on impossible to get through checkout never mind load the page. Groupola claims 200 iPhones were available but the masses seem to disagree. The Groupola blog and Facebook page are in revolt with members claiming critical comments are disappearing as fast as they are posted.

Meanwhile the PR continues with the media eating up the spin. Techcrunch EU ran the official Groupola statement which claimed the site failed as “more than 5 million people have attempted to log on to the site” between 9am and 9.30am.

Put your thinking cap on for a minute folks. Despite the Apple hype there are not even 5 million iPhone owners in the UK (worldwide iPhone sales in all of 2009 were only 20m) never mind 5 million interested in one iPhone 4 model who knew about the Groupola offer and were able to login between 9am and 9.30am. As Penn & Teller say – Bullshit.

So where does that leave the consumer sucked in by the Guardian’s poor reporting and Groupola’s clever tactics? As WillOfThePeople notes in the Guardian comments about Groupola’s privacy policy: “The data we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination located out side of the European Economic Area (”EEA”). By providing information to this Site you expressly consent to such information being transferred or stored outside of the EEA.”

Disclosure: I am a founder of HUKD which could be considered a competitor to Groupola’s owner Markco Media

Three lions on the shirt, three goals scored in the World Cup. And that’s it. Rubbish. Rampant hysteria before the World Cup began would have seen England tuck away ten in the group stages alone, and it’s that sort of delusional national thinking that several retailers played on when it came to pre-tournament offers.

For example, we told you how O2 offered customers an England-branded PAYG SIM before the World Cup began, that paid a fiver for every goal scored by England or, if you were a realist about such matters, every goal scored against them. The only condition was that you topped the SIM up with £15 to be eligible. If you went with England, you’ll have your credit plus another £15 in cash, and if you bet against England, you’ll have the credit plus £25.

As far as bets went, it was a no-brainer because the worst case scenario was always that you’d have £15 worth of credit to spend. But ramping up expectations of the national team probably led to plenty of people taking a far bigger gamble with Currys, who offered customers £10 per England goal – if they purchased a television costing over £599. At the time, we reviewed the stats and predicted the likelihood of six goals – we can only apologise for heightening expectations ourselves – we predicted England would score a single goal against Algeria.

Somewhere, there’s some poor bastard staring at a boot-shaped hole in his flatscreen, put there yesterday afternoon when he realised the can’t-lose offer Currys sold him on – that the euphoria of the occasion convinced him to take – was nothing of the sort.

It’s no secret that billions are spent studying how best to screw with the heads of consumers, in order to better screw their wallets. Like a Las Vegas casino, every twist and turn of a supermarket layout is staged, the signage, the lighting, the colour schemes – it all conspires to see you spend as much as possible during your visit.

Our bodies are there to be manipulated and toyed with, because our heads are psychologically complex and work in curious and extraordinary ways. Even stupid people. So when new research suggests ways our brains can be adversely stimulated, you can be sure the retail industry is listening. A recent study published the Journal of Consumer Research provides scientific proof that the sensation of the shop floor can affect a customer’s purchasing decision. And it’s not the way you might think. From The Consumerist:

Researchers discovered that subjects who were able to stand relatively close to a vase (as one might in a store) found it more comforting while standing on a hard tile floor than on a soft carpeted one–that is, the more uncomfortable a shopper, the more comforting they might find the objects on a shelf in front of them.

“In most cases, when people’s distance from a product is moderately far, their visual access to the product’s features and, thus, the representation that they form of the good will be relatively poorly defined. This encourages the assimilation of their bodily sensations with their product assessments.

“Alternatively, when this distance is close, such that the visual acuity of the product and its representation is clear, people’s bodily sensations are apt to be used as a comparison standard and prompt a contrast effect on their product assessments.”

Supermarkets obviously don’t bother with carpeted floors anyway because it’d be entirely impractical. But for smaller high street retailers, it’s time to buy linoleum and start screwing with our heads.

[The Consumerist]

Humans – are we really a collection of free-thinking individuals, unswayed by external influences? Or are we just a rambling gang of Pavlovian dogs, there to be manipulated by cunning marketeers?

Some recent research suggests that it’s the latter. A study by some boffins in Toronto has shown that just looking at the logos of fast food companies can trigger the kind of behaviour that they suggest – namely instant gratification.

The Consumerist report that “Participants who looked at fast-food logos and were asked whether they’d like to get less money now or more in a week said they wanted the cash now. Those who looked at more generic images were willing to wait.”

The boffins concluded that “Fast food seemed to have made people impatient in a manner that could put their economic interest at risk,” and that “logos or other situational cues all have the same type of effect of “automaticity” — [triggering] regulatory behaviour that is beyond our control.”

Right, fuck this, we’re off for a bargain bucket…

An old-fashioned penguin-killing lightbulb yesterday

Yesterday we reported on the demise of the 100 watt lightbulb, which is slowly disappearing from shops’ shelves for good. But one man has spotted a gap in the market and is poised to make it big once the powerful bulbs become as rare as hen’s teeth. Plus, he’s an estate agent by day, so you can trust what he says!

He’s Jules Bending (crazy name, crazy guy) and he has been stockpiling thousands of the bulbs in a secret location near the Mendip Hills. Jules’ logic is that once Old Hundred Watty disappears for good, naysayers of energy saving will gladly pay him his asking price for a single 100 watt bulb. And his asking price? Why it’s between £40 and £60 of course!

On trade website EstateAgentToday, Bending is quoted as saying: “Everybody hates an estate agent: the horrible suit, the nasty jargon. If you introduce a note of humour people seem to like that. They trust us. And trust is the holy grail.”

No Jules. We’ll never trust estate agents. You’ll never make us laugh. Ever. Apart from when the credit crunch forces you out of business. We’ll always hate all estate agents Jules. Especially you. You’re a twat. Now do one.

[Guardian]

Over the past year or two, most of us have had to cut expenses. While it’s relatively easy to go from eating out twice a week to eating out once a week, some of us have had to go beyond that, doing our best to cut out unnecessary expenses wherever we can.

But grocery shopping presents us with a complex psychological environment in which it’s deliberately not easy to fill our trolley with the things we need, pay for them, and leave.

Supermarkets have played on consumer psychology for decades. For example, the produce greets us first thing, because it appeals to our sense of going to the market to get things we need, whether we buy the fresh produce or not. Here are three other ways supermarkets try to pry more money out of our wallets.

1. Locating emotionally invested choices away from the ends of the aisles. For example, people are particular about their coffee. If the coffee is placed at an aisle end, customers will feel rushed into grabbing a tin of coffee and moving along so as not to block shopper traffic. If coffee is placed in the center of an aisle – requiring the maximum number of steps from either end – the shopper is more likely to pull his trolley over and evaluate his coffee choices.

2. Stores want their customers to do three things: shop the high-margin areas of the store, fulfill their needs, and fulfill their wants. Placing the needs so that you have to pass through the “wants” and high margin areas first maximizes the chance customers will stray from their list.

3. The least expensive items are set out so you’ll encounter them after having bought your more expensive items. The theory is that you’re more likely to spend on little extras if you’ve already invested in the top-end items on your list.

There are numerous ways to fight the temptations supermarkets are so good at presenting. Everyone knows not to shop when they’re hungry, but there are a few other strategies, too.

1. Use shopbots and price comparison websites. Try www.mysupermarket.co.uk, www.madaboutbargains.co.uk, and www.fixtureferrets.co.uk. These sites will also alert you to special offers.

2. Visit the butcher late in the day when you’re more likely to see items marked down for quicker sale. You can freeze extra servings for later.

3. Some coffee lovers say that if you mix a jar of cheap coffee and your favorite coffee, the cheap coffee will absorb some of the full bodied flavour of the expensive brand, and drastically cut your coffee expenses.

Got proven tips on how to make it through shopping day unscathed? Please share them with us below!

If you’re having problems with debt, it helps a little to know that you’re not alone.

With high unemployment, there are millions of Brits wondering how to manage their bills, let alone enjoy a few extras like a trip to the cinema.

Here are five steps to coping with your debt:

1. Make a budget and stick to it. This may be the hardest step of all, because this is where the problem is laid bare. Knowing how much money comes in and how much goes out is the first step to getting a handle on debt. You must realize that sticking to a budget can be like sticking to a diet: you endure serious deprivation until you can’t take it anymore and then blow it all with one trip to the store. Therefore, you should include a few, selected, “carrots” in your budget (fancy coffee once a week, getting your hair done, etc.) to help you deal with the enormous “stick” of ongoing, severe financial problems.

2. Be honest about “needs” and”wants.” Again, it’s a matter of personal honesty and also knowing which of your particular wants can be reasonably incorporated into your budget. For example, buying a new car is probably unreasonable, but buying a new pair of trainers so you can walk in the park regularly is probably reasonable.

3. Get out of debt and get help doing so. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, get out of debt! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Ninny.” But it’s the huge elephant in the middle of the room that nobody wants to talk about. I’m not talking about borrowing from friends and family. The perils of that situation deserve their own post. But once you know the ugly truth about how much you owe and how much you have coming in, then you’ll have the figures you need to take to legitimate debt help services like the National Debtline. They can help talk you down from the crisis and find someone to help you, and perhaps most importantly of all, will help you stay clear of the the vulture “debt counselors” who scam people who are in serious financial straits.

4. Rethink your attitude toward money. It is extremely hard to have a positive attitude when every day’s mail brings yet another angry creditor demanding payment. But you have to do it. For some people, rather ironically, giving away small amounts of money changes their attitude. Knowing that you gave a few quid to the Salvation Army or the RSPCA often has a profoundly positive effect on attitude. Sure, money is important, but you need to know that you can control it, rather than the other way around.

5. Persist. There is no substitute for this when it comes to getting out of debt. Once you start making progress, however, you’ll be more motivated to stick with it long enough to get your finances back in order. And on that special day when you finally pay off that last creditor, have a cake, or a glass of champagne, knowing that you had a mountain of debt, and that through hard work you conquered it.

Cumulative financial stress does take its toll on the body, and the longer you put off dealing directly with your finances, the longer that stress will continue to take its toll on your mental and physical health and perhaps on your relationships as well. So while the steps themselves can be quite stressful, the upfront investment in some unpleasantness can prevent much more of it in the future.

Buyer’s remorse is something we’ve all experienced in life. It may come in the form of waking up on a Sunday afternoon in a stranger’s house with no recollection of the evening past. Or a poor attempt at explaining to your children about how spending their allowance now would mean they won’t have it to spend later.

But it’s sometimes harder to apply that logic to ourselves. We therefore have to put all hope on these five tips that claim to help us psychologically combat with impulse spending:

1. The generous stranger. Weblog Five Cent Nickel comes to the rescue with the following tip for curbing impulse purchases:

“When considering a purchase, picture a stranger offering you [the cash value of the purchase] or the item in question. Which is of greater value [to] you? Which would you choose?”

In situations where you find yourself tempted more by the cash than the purchase, you can probably wait, and vice versa. The reasoning is simple; if you have the cash equivalent of the product, you have the flexibility to purchase it at some later time, which means there is no urgency. The idea is therefore a thought interruption to break impulse purchase habits and help you see the situation more clearly.

2. Work hour equivalent. When faced with purchasing an item, ask yourself: how many hours of work would it take you to pay for say item at your current rate of pay? Converting your work hours into the price of the game/DVD/handbag you are interested in could help evaluate the cost/benefit of your purchase a bit more realistically.

3. £100 / day keeps the consumer away. Wait one day for every £100 the prospective item costs, as discussed before. Of course, you can scale this up or down according to your income.

4. Talking to your spouse about it. Imagine explaining the purchase to your spouse or significant other. How would it feel saying,”This awesome T-Rex wall sculpture was on sale for only £999!”? Bargain.

5. Switching on your logical brain. You lived without it just fine yesterday. So ask: can you can live without it just fine tomorrow? This shifts your thinking from an emotional purchase to a more logical one, to really look at how the item is actually going to contribute to your life.Is there a point in actually buying it?

We all have our own coping mechanisms for spending money instead of paying off debt, and make our own rationalisations. The idea is not to institute a personal policy of soul-crushing self denial, but rather to give yourself the time to at least consider the options before impulse purchases that will leave you with buyer’s remorse.

Some useless organic food yesterday

Food snobs and chancing farmers have been rocked on their heels after a new study concluded that eating organic food is no better for you than the normal stuff.

The organic food industry is said to be worth £2.1 billion every year, but the findings of Dr Alan Dangour, a public health nutritionist, for the Food Standards Agency, could have proponents of the mud-covered grub looking at the floor, whistling and then shuffling away quietly.

Dr Dangour (who must be fearing for his life right now) says that the only thing organic food has more of is acidity and phosphorus, neither of which benefit we humans in any significant nutritional fashion.

His report doesn’t actually say “If you buy organic food you’re wasting your money” but hints at it as strongly as is possible. Gawd strewth, they’ll be telling us that massive carbon emissions are okay next…

If you happen to be 2 metres tall and drop things a lot, you will appreciate the Land Rover S1 Sonim mobile phone. Described as “virtually indestructible”, Lance Batchelor, CEO of Tesco Mobile (the only place you can get the phone) concedes that “it’s the first phone in the world to be as tough as a Land Rover.” (The Land Rover, according to Which? magazine’s reliability surveys is regularly listed as one of the most problematic new vehicles.)

First unveiled at February’s Mobile World Congress event, the S1 Sonim is, in fact the only IP67 military rated GSM mobile phone. It has since been ran over by a Landrover, stomped on by elephants, put into 300 degree ovens, and thrown out 2nd floor windows. It is now available from Tesco stores or the Tesco website. The phone resists humidity, shock, dust, salt, and heat, and is water resistant to 1 metre for 30 minutes. It can also survive falling onto concrete from a height of 2 metres.

The phone is finding ready markets amongst men who love gadgets, but one Techradar reader believes a market could be found with young parents who know first hand how damaging baby drool can be to electronic devices. “As a marketing ploy this should be aimed at parents with toddlers. How many parents complain that their child(s) has dropped their mobile in the tea/coffee/bath/toilet and sink?” That’s right. You’ll also be happy to know that the Land Rover S1 Sonim is made to survive being dropped into a public toilet. The question is whether you can survive fishing it out.

Though it doesn’t have all the extra goodies of an iPhone, it does have a 2 MP camera, 110dB speakers (for when you need to make a call while standing next to turbine engines of a Ferrari or a windmill), a GPS, 1,500 hours stand-by time, a torch, and an FM radio.

The phone is made from hardened plastic that is resistant to water, oil, and petrol. It is then covered with hardened rubber to absorb shock from being dropped. A non-porous coating is applied to keep substance from penetrating the case, and it has a scratch-resistant screen and hardened rubber keys.

Available only from Tesco and its website, you can get the S1 Sonim with an “unconditional three-year” warranty on the phone, which can be bought unlocked for £250, or
from £25 a month on contract.

From Mondays through Thursdays, human beings can be total paragons of responsibility and discipline. But on Fridays, we go out for a laugh, but spend and drink, scream at the top of our lungs, then spend, and spend. But why is it that we do that?

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) states that for many events in life, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. With 5 work days a week, Friday equates to 20% of the work week. So one hypothesis would be that we’re applying 80% of our play time and spending to that momentous evening.

Sure, we should cut ourselves some slack for making it through another week of the daily grind. But keeping the excesses of Friday (that so often ooze into Saturday and Sunday) controlled to some extent will prevent turning next week’s Monday through Thursday into a financial guilt-fest.

How can you be a sociable creature, yet avoid abusing your bank account in the process? Let’s get the “ruining all the fun” one out of the way first, and you can do as you wish with it:

1. You don’t have to go out on weekend nights, do you? You probably have all kinds of things to do at home that you’ve been meaning to get around to for ages. This weekend could be that time. Besides, the drinking and dancing is all fun and games until somebody puts an eye out. The additional benefit: your mother would also stop asking you to apply yourself.

2. If you’re invited to join your more well-off friends for a pricey dinner out, you can tell them you have plans, but will join them later. You’ll get there in time to enjoy some Irish Whiskey Cheesecake, and with luck, they’ll have drunk enough that they’ll forget you weren’t there all along.

3. If it’s customary for each person in your posse to buy a round, go first. Nobody will remember who bought the fourth or fifth round. Don’t shirk your drinking-buddy responsibilities, though. Making your phone buzz and then stepping out to “answer” it when it’s your turn to buy is not cool.

4. Arrange to share cabs if possible, or better yet leave in time to get a train before service stops for the night. Particularly on Friday which is a work day followed by a raucous evening, everyone will understand if you say you’re dog tired and want to beg off rather than continue the pub crawl.

The main thing to remember is that you’re the same person Friday night and Saturday night that you are the other five days of the week, and while soul crushing self-denial isn’t healthy, neither is waking up with a credit card slip for £253.39 at a place you have no recollection of going to.

(image courtesy of yuwietwist)

Plastic Bags

RetailWeek recently reported that the seven food retailers (Asda, Somerfield, Co-operative Group, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Waitrose) who set for themselves the goal of cutting the number of carrier bags used by 50% compared with 2006 levels have made actual reductions of 48%.

This was done on the group’s own initiative rather than by government mandate.

This May, 452 million bags were distributed, compared to May 2006, when 870 million were distributed in the UK. This came at a time when the participating supermarkets’ sales volumes actually grew by 5%.

The different stores used a multitude of ways to encourage customers to use fewer bags, with reuse of bags being the most popular. Peter Woodall, the spokesman for the Carrier Bag Consortium says that “70% to 80% of shoppers are reusing their bags already – for school lunches, as wet gym bags or as bin liners.”

Other retailer initiatives include:

1. “Bags for Life” programs in stores

2. Charging 5p for single-use bags

3. Simply asking customers if they need a bag. The answer is “no” often enough to make this work.

4. Placing bags away from the checkout, so that customers have to ask

5. Using bags with higher recycled content

6. Providing recycling facilities for bags at the front of the store

7. Rewarding bag reuse with loyalty card points

8. Media promotion of cutting bag use

9. Recording bag use at each store to motivate reduction in usage

The British Retail Consortium says the figures demonstrate that “the voluntary approach is very successful and can lead to better informed customers and lasting change.” Whether this will successfully change our plastic fantastic habit and cut down on the number of carrier bags going to waste is still yet to be seen.

For a minute or two, let’s just imagine that you’ve been assigned to create an online shopping site that takes advantage of everything you know about consumer behavior and psychology. Your goal would be to get people to part from their wallet in as quickly a time as possible, all while maximizing your profits without asking for much money.

Is that really possible?

Yes. But Swoopo.co.uk has already beaten us to the punch. The auction site assumes that human beings collective act in a stupid way, and have proven that theory since 2005. Bloggers are calling this new way of auction is “manipulating game theory to tap stupidity, the greatest resource on this planet”, and Swoopo is raking money in faster than the Bank of Money’s printing presses can handle quantitative easing.

Here is how it works: customers buy “bids” in advance. Each bid cost 50p. They are sold in packs of 25, 50, 100, 250 or 500. Bids always start at 10p, and there is no reserve price. Every bid placed increases the product price by 10p, and the auction countdown by a further 20 seconds. You can place individual bids, or bid electronically using Swoopo’s BidButler. Or you can bid by phone. You also see your current spending on bids and “overall savings”, which get continually updated.

So, how do you “win” an auction on Swoopo? By getting very lucky. That bid you put in is little more than a virtual raffle ticket, because there’s almost always someone on the planet willing to spend 50p further to beat you. Every time someone bids, the auction is extended for a few more seconds to keep it going for as long as possible. The “last bidder standing” at countdown wins. Swoopo says that winner save an average of 65% off retail.

So is there a way to beat Swoopo? Harvard Law Blog has an interesting guide, suggesting that by having bidders create an “Association of Swoopo Bidders (ASB)”, it could collectively shape how bidders work:

Example:

One item is posted on Swoopo, and its value is 225$. The Association of Swoopo Bidders (ASB) figures that if the item worth 225$, the highest bid should not exceed 37.5$. (Just follow this formula: highest bid=value/6)  THe ASB then makes a dicision that no member should bid more than 37.5$.

Then ASB will enforce the rule, meaning for any rule-breaker bid more than 150$, the rule-breaker’s name will be published on the ASB website immediately, and at the same time ASB will appoint its enforcement force (some members with free bids provided by ASB) to bid against the rule-breaker, who therefore will not be able to get the item or pay substantially more than the price the rule-breaker wanted.  The enforcement force will continue to punish the rule-breaker in the future auctions ruthlessly until the rule-breaker apologizes and convinces ASB nothing against rule will happen again.

–Note the point is whoever places the first bid above 37.5$ will NEVER get the item. In addition, the rule-breaker bidder will not get anything in the future.

But as we all know, this is unlikely to happen. Mark Gimein of The Big Money recently called the site “the evil bastard child of game theory and behavioral economics”, but also refers to it as “the crack cocaine of auction sites”. Some of their policies have received harsh criticism recently, and is provoking some plans to change. The way it is now, you can spend hundreds of quid bidding and receive nothing. Losing bidders simply lost the amount they’d spent on bids, and the site was widely criticized for this policy.

Swoopo plans to change their policy so that it losing bidders can apply the amount they’ve bid toward buying the item from Swoopo at its retail price. This will weed out some of the less serious bidders, and at least gives losing bidders something they can do with all that bid money they spent.

Recently, frugality has gained a certain mystique. Suddenly it’s “OK”- trendy even- to buy from thrift shops and clip vouchers for the supermarket.

There are plenty of us out there, however, who have always been frugal, even through the dot com boom. The World War II generation were thrifty by necessity, and most of  today (even cheapskates) can learn from them about the things we’re capable of living without, like premium satellite channels.

But at what point does frugality cross the line into plain craziness? Perhaps it is like any bad habit in that when it interferes with your daily life, you know you have a problem. Here are a few examples:

1. Thrifty, not crazy: investing £69.99 in a decent coffee maker and not stopping at the local “Fourbucks” on the way to work. In less than two months, the coffee maker will have paid for itself in what you save from not buying fancy coffee.

2. Crazy thrifty: trying to recycle coffee grounds

3. Thrifty, not crazy: buying things like baby wipes in bulk to get the best deal

4. Crazy thrifty: cutting each wipe into four pieces in an attempt to minimize the price further

5. Thrifty, not crazy: trying to walk, bike, or take public transportation to keep petrol costs under control.

6. Crazy thrifty: hitchhiking

7. Thrifty, not crazy: reusing carrier bags

8. Crazy thrifty: reusing dental floss

In other words, thriftiness should be about getting the most for your money, not just being Mr. (or Ms.) Skinflint. The people over at stopbuyingcrap.com have a good take on this philosophy. We’ve all had moments of thinking, “If I hadn’t bought this thing, I could have bought that thing that I really want.” The key is figuring out what “this” is so you can avoid buying it next time. If you do that enough, you’re being thrifty without being crazy.

[Wisebread]

Della, yesterday

Are you an attractive, slender blonde bird who likes reclining with a notebook computer that matches her couch? Or a woman who likes to sit in a meadow with your laptop, checking out new recipes for risotto or something equally exciting? If so, you’re in luck.

The recent launch of Dell’s site “Della,” made especially for women, was so tone deaf that I’m pretty sure I heard Simon Cowell making retching noises and grumbling angrily in the background.

Yeah. Other people have complained, too, perhaps none so eloquently as Kate Craig-Wood, the managing director at Memset Ltd. Dedicated Hosting. Seriously, go read it then come right back.

So, for the corporate suits who think they “get” women, here are some thoughts:

1. Painting/wearing/carrying something pink doesn’t automatically make women love it. Or a man gay. Ok, just a little.

2. Women use computers for things other than fashion and makeup tips. Think: Twitter.

3. The year is 2009. Women do things like win the Nobel Peace Prize, fly the Space Shuttle, and die on battlefields.

Furthermore, as Lindsay Lohan has proved, most women have better things to do than worry about their house looking perfect.

In other tech news: Dell has a new job opening for a corporate damage control expert. Oh nevermind. It looks like they’ve just filled the post, and made some changes to the Della site already…

[Della]