Kraft Foods created a facebook page for their new liquid flavor product, MiO, and ran a promotional offer through facebook that if consumers "liked" their page and submitted their personal information they would receive full sized free product samples in the mail.
Once MiO received 100,000 friends the company withdrew their free sample offer and informed their facebook fans all samples had been claimed. Weeks later many unreceived samples and shill facebook accounts raise doubts if offer was genuine or just a ruse aimed to generate leads and stimulate false buzz for brand's facebook page.
When Facebook users who had signed up before this announcement was made began to inquire about when / if they would receive their free samples, Kraft Foods, their MiO subsidiary or perhaps an ad firm working on behalf of MiO / Kraft, began to employ the use of shills. These individuals, clealy working with the company, verbally assaulted members of the facebook community who publically questioned the shimpent status of their free sample or raised any concern over the products chemical ingrediants.
It is clear the company does not want consumers questioning the whereabouts of their free samples with shills making reponses such as "they don't owe you anything at all", "it took you as long to type this complaint as it did to submit your information", and "Ummm, they are like $3.50 in the stores, just go buy one."
One shill account, "Jenn Beeson" on Facebook, badgered and berated users using words like "idiot", "retard", and "tw_t" (with an "a" not an "i") in response to negative feeback about the company. All the while making relevant, informative and educational contributions to the company's page containing internal company information conumers could not know or have access to from the same account.
Why would MiO / Kraft use intimidation tactics on users following up on the whereabouts of there free samples? Why would the company tell customers the company didn't "owe" them a sample or insist they quit being cheap and just buy one instead of reassuring customers the samples are on their way? Why? Maybe because they never intended to incur the cost of shipping 100,000 samples.
Kraft now has 100,000 new marketing leads they can promote new products and offers to, also 100,000 fresh leads they can sell off to other companies or marketing firms. To solicit information from a customer based on a ficticious offer is fraudulent.
MiO / Kraft - fulfill your orders and call off your dogs. Misleading consumers and and verbally assaulting people waiting for a product that may never come will not be tollerated.
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