Business Tools Blog

Tim Locke has a website dedicated to his $39 experiment.  Basically, he decided to send 100 letters to 100 companies to see if they would send him free stuff.  His letters are very entertaining …

I especially like Tim’s random conclusions.  It does seem strange that contacting companies is so difficult.

A surprising number of companies (mostly big companies) have no mention of their company address anywhere - not on their products, not on their websites, nowhere… I guess big companies don’t use snail mail these days.

Of the products which did have company addresses on them, most were either products from small companies - or pet products. Almost every bag of dog treats that I looked at had a company address on it, whereas not one human snack product that I looked at did… I guess they’re not afraid of dogs writing in and complaining to them.

The majority of “cosmetic” products (soaps, detergents, toothpastes, cosmetics, cleaning products, etc.) that I looked at were made by one of only three or four companies. I plan to start using shampoo as mouthwash and shaving cream, being that they all come from the same general place.

Some company addresses were so difficult to find, it almost seemed intentional. In a few cases, I had to resort to a consumer advocacy site like my3cents.com or a site like CNN Money to find a company address.

Tim wrote a clever letter … and is tracking and posting the results.   Click here to see a full summary, and get more detail by clicking on the company names on his site. 

Tim’s experiment is another illustration of how customers impact your company’s image.  Customers used to go to the Better Business Bureau, now they add you to their blog.  Click here to read about Bennigan’s embarrassing typo.