Hard To Swallow

                               
While there are many topics of pressing concern to write about these days, I can't resist a lesser story that in my view underscores corporate greed, writ large.

Some may have heard about the recent roll-up-the-rim fiasco at what Canadians like to believe is their national coffee emporium, Tim Horton's. Now owned by multinational Restaurant Brands International, which benefits quite handsomely from Canadians' loyalty, the institution is publicly reminding all of us that the only loyalty it has is to the bottom line. And that bottom line is hardly impacted by its recent 'technological 'glitch', which has left some pursuing legal action against the company.

A Southwestern Ontario man says he’s retained a lawyer after a Tim Hortons prize app told him he’d won $10,000, only for the coffee giant to call it a technical glitch and deny the win.

Jeremy McDougall, 37, of Tillsonburg is among an unknown number of customers who thought they’d won the five-figure prize in the annual Roll Up To Win campaign after being notified by the Tim Hortons digital app their cup was a winner.

“We were pretty over-the-moon thinking we won $10,000” McDougall said, noting his wife lost her job right before Christmas. The win, he said, made them think “the tide is turning for us. I thought it was some good fortune but, nope.”

Roll Up To Win is a popular annual contest run by Tim Hortons. Formerly it was manual – customers literally loosened the rim of their paper cup to see if they’d won a prize – but has now migrated to the company’s digital app.

 The restaurant chain is facing something of a public-relations nightmare after the contest’s first day, Monday. Officials with the company have said a “small subset” of players was incorrectly notified that they’d won the company’s jackpot draw, a $10,000 daily prize meant to be awarded to one person a day.

The company added it has offered a $50 gift card as compensation to players who received the erroneous award notice and is in the process of contacting the false winners “to express our regret for the disappointment caused by this error.”

McDougal is not the only one unwilling to accept the insulting offer of a $50 gift card.

There are other unhappy people who are indicating they also received the $10,000-winning message. Wrote one man on Facebook: “I’ve never won something big in my life. And now, to only be let down by the news, is devastating.”

Added another man: “I want the $10,000 that your app told me I won.”

Given that I brew my coffee at home and rarely resort to buying a cup, this story is important to me only because it reminds all of us that the chummy, patriotic feeling the company has been trying to cultivate and exploit over the years is simply PR. Scratch beneath the surface, and it is a cold, calculating and ugly picture that emerges, showing the true contempt in which Tim Horton's holds its customers. Otherwise, it would swallow its 'mistake' in order to make disappointed customers whole.

Meanwhile, Canadians still swallow their swill. Perhaps it is too much to expect, but one hopes some will remember this outrage when contemplating their next 'Timmy's run'.