I was down to my last 6-pack of Corona and planning to check out any specials for it this week, but the email I received today almost made me fall off my chair.
It was an offer from Dan Murphy’s for cartons of Corona together with a free Corona + Parley stainless water bottle.
The cartons of 24 bottles of Corona Extra and Corona Ligera were both $41.95 each and cartons of 30 cans of Corona Extra were $73.99 each.
I took the trouble of calling Dan Murphy’s, and after some 10 minutes, I was finally answered by their call centre.
I explained that I wanted to check whether their Cairns store in Earlville had any stock of the water bottles. The person said that she would check and let me know but I was then answered by a person at the Earlville store who said that they had 300 water bottles and there was a limit of 1 per transaction.
I drove to the store and went to where the Corona pallets are stacked only to note that the signage displayed a price for Corona Extra bottles of $49.95 per carton so I asked a pair of nearby staff members.
They could not believe the price and said that it had never been that low to which I replied that it was the reason that I had made a special trip to the store.
They asked me if I had a copy of the email, which I did not, but I called my wife who took a photo of the email I had left open on our office computer which she sent to my mobile, and after they had looked at the photo, they agreed to honour the price of $41.95.
They also said that Corona Ligera was on special for $41.95 but that their store had never stocked the Corona Extra cans, of which one staff member was not aware that they even existed.
I mentioned that as I wanted to get 2 water bottles, I planned to return for a second carton as I had been told that there was a limit of 1 water bottle per transaction, to which they advised me to simply do 2 separate transactions at the checkout, and they placed the 2 cartons in the trolley for me.
The cartons scanned at $49.95 each, but when I showed the operator the photo and said that one of the staff members had said for her to call him if in doubt, she discounted the price, and she did not require me to do 2 separate transactions.
She scanned the 2 free water bottles which were priced at $29.99 each and then credited the total of $59.98, and I paid $83.90 for the 2 cartons of Corona.
It appears that someone in the marketing department certainly got something mixed up, but much to Dan Murphy’s credit, the offer I received was honoured without any fob-offs or cop-outs, in stark contrast to Woollies and Big W, which might explain why Dan Murphy’s have their own rewards program instead participating in the Woolworth’s Rewards one.
If one was to take into account the $2.40 refund for the return of the empty bottles, and the value of the water bottle at the scanned price of $29.99, the carton of Corona Extra would have cost a mere $9.56.
“U-BEAUT DAN MURPHY’S.”
P.S. I was aware of the Corona “100 Islands” program but I had never heard of “Parley” so I have posted a link to it.
