You are a Winner! Oh wait...

[Jason_Henge]

(We need more threads here.)
Full story: http://business.gather.com/viewArtic...81474978581673

This is all about McDonald's, the Monopoly game, and a serious mistake.

This guy, Ryan Doon, got some fries from the Golden Arches and surprise to him, he got a Park Place sticker, worth up to $1,000,000. He was skeptical at first, as we all would be, but after checking the official website, he found out he held a ticket for $1,000,000, after he found out he just needed the Park Place sticker.

From riches to rags, McDonald's refuses to pay Mr Doon, and said it was a typo. They don't even offer a free meal or small fortune for his troubles... they don't even use his name.

To me, this is horrible. McDonald's could at least offer up something to say sorry and man up to their mistake. Doon is opting on some kind of legal action against the mistake and the insulting brush off McDonald's did to the poor man. What do you think?

[Ningamer]

Originally Posted by Bob Black

I ate at McDonald’s on Tuesday night. I tore off a “Park Place” game piece from my medium Coke. When I opened it and looked at it I noticed that it says right on the game piece “#770” and “REQ. 770, 771”. This can be seen in the photo at the end of this article. I immediately concluded that I also required game piece #771 (and that game piece 771 was “Boardwalk”) to win the million dollars.

I think anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence would look at the game piece, and draw the same conclusion that I did and quickly realize that game piece 770 AND 771 are required to claim the prize SINCE THIS IS STATED RIGHT ON THE GAME PIECE.

This is similar to the actual game of Monopoly where property sets are required to erect houses or hotels. You can not do anything with a single property, you require the set.

Given that the gentleman in the story is an engineer for IBM Canada I assume that he is literate and of reasonable intelligence and that he could therefore read what is on the game piece. This leads me to conclude that he was actually well aware that his game piece was not sufficient to claim a million dollar prize and that he just wants some attention.

I THINK MCDONALD’S SHOULD GIVE HIM A FREE HAPPY MEAL AND A PAT ON THE HEAD TO MATCH HIS CHILD LIKE INTELLECT AND NEED FOR ATTENTION!!

I think that, while this comment is a bit harsh, it's true. It says right there on the card that both pieces are required, and he should've thought to read the whole card.

HOWEVER: I do think he deserves some sort of compensation. After all, he did point out a flaw in the official rules, the least McDonalds could do for him was offer him maybe $100 out of their vast trillion-dollar fortune. But in my opinion, this has been blown far, far out of proportion.

[Jason_Henge]

Like I said "skeptical at first", but he checked the rules and found out he was able to get the cool million. Even as a typo, McDonald's shouldn't just ignore this as if it's nothing.

[FreezeWarp]

Heck, even a $100 gift card could work (I doubt he would mind).

Really, I think he is blowing this way out of proportion but at the same time you have to think they could at least offer up something. None-the-less, they aren't legally bound to anything: even if he got Board Walk they wouldn't /have/ to give him a million dollars since no legally binding contract was signed saying they would. Instead, its just all promotional. Certainly legal action would just mean wasted attorney fees for himself.

[Alakazamaster]

Meh, I don't think he is really entitled to anything. McDonalds made a typo on their website, so for all this trouble and heartache of him typing a URL and ordering a Coke this guy should get something in return?

" it just gets really annoying to the underdogs when they are left "holding the bag" time and time again." You mean the underdogs who should be able to exploit companies when they make mistakes and expect free rewards? What? Where does THIS logic come from? Maybe if McDonald's outright refused to give the man his prize if he got both Park Place and Boardwalk there would be a bigger issue, but in this case it just seems silly.

[Jason_Henge]

Originally Posted by Alakazamaster

" it just gets really annoying to the underdogs when they are left "holding the bag" time and time again." You mean the underdogs who should be able to exploit companies when they make mistakes and expect free rewards? What? Where does THIS logic come from? Maybe if McDonald's outright refused to give the man his prize if he got both Park Place and Boardwalk there would be a bigger issue, but in this case it just seems silly.

Good. It seems like I wasn't the only one confused by this part. xD

It is silly, but I would like to think McDonald's would have acted better on their end. It would be bad if they refused all the good prizes due to "typos" and the only thing you win is more of their disgusting food.

*changing the topic some* Has anyone heard about the lady that bought a Happy Meal six months ago, took a picture of it every single day and found out that it didn't even mold? Ewwww!

[JC]

Gotta Love those typos...

anyways it happens by mistake, maybe he can find the boardwalk later on.

[Sableyed]

Park Place is a useless piece, this guy really doesn't deserve any money for finding it. Today my father and I went to McDonalds for dinner and two of our six pieces were Park Place. It's the Boardwalk piece that's rare, and getting it pretty much means you've won since the Park Place is easy to get.

No, the really interesting thing is that for about 10 years, NO ONE won the million dollars, or any major prizes.

McDonalds started up it's Monopoly contest giving out a million dollars. The useless pieces were made en masse in factories and shipped out to random Mcdonalds. However, the very rare pieces were made specially, since they were so valuable. Mcdonalds hired security services to send the pieces to specific Mcdonalds areas to add them into the mix, that way they could have a general idea of where the valuable pieces were, so they couldn't be counterfeited. And so this process goes on over ten years. Then in 2000, one of the winners came forth and admitted fraud.

As it turns out, Jerome Jacobson, the head of the security at the company Mcdonalds was hiring was paying them for fools. He figured with so much money at stake he might as well steal the pieces. The pieces were supposed to go to a person in accounting, put them in a briefcase and be handcuffed. But Jerome said that that was too obvious people would try to steal a handcuffed briefcase without knowing what was in it. He designed a bulletproof vest to hide the pieces in, one that conveniently fit on him. So he became the one who transported the pieces, switching out the valuable pieces for useless ones in the bathroom on the plane. Once he had the pieces, he gave them to associates, giving them a set amount of money to cash the check. He amassed 24 million in Mcdonalds related prizes, and no one won the Monopoly for 10 years.

Eventually, they caught him. Mcdonalds had no idea about the scam, but they tried to make up by giving out 5 million dollar prizes in one year.