Scrupuli

blunt essays with sharp points

Weather For Sale

by Scrvpvlvs
Jun 19, 2000 5:26 PM–An event planning tip from SCRVPVLVS: Did you know that you can schedule good weather for your next event up to six months in advance? Planning an outdoor wedding? Want fresh powder for that ski trip? (No, not that kind of powder.) How about a good soaker the day after you put in your new lawn?

It used to be that the best you could do was the three day forecast. Now, though, the miracle of the Internet brings you the weather half a year from now. Yahoo! Weather offers the five day outlook and the thirty day outlook for free. But if your event is further out, then this amazing offer is only a click away. For only $15 (or $9 for members) you can get the six month outlook, telling you whether each day’s temperature will be normal, hot or cold, and whether the day will be sunny, stormy or snowy. And to ensure complete satisfaction, if it rains on your parade, your money will be cheerfully refunded!

Have you ever heard the weatherman predict storms so far in advance? Sound too good to be true? Maybe it is. Maybe it’s the cleverest Internet based scam yet developed to liberate money from the gullible.

Suppose only 100 people per day of the millions who use Yahoo! buy six-month outlooks. The happy suckers whose events don’t happen to be rained out will not know the difference. In fact they’ll probably believe the good weather was courtesy of Yahoo! But some customers will get bad weather. Even if one in four events gets bad weather, and all of those disappointed suckers who deserve a refund complain and get one mailed to them, even adding a $1 burden for postage and handling of refunds, Yahoo! Weather would still earn $11 per customer per day, that is, $1100 per day. With that kind of dough they could easily hire an administrative assistant to make bogus daily predictions and process refunds, and still be able to line their pockets with daily profits of nearly $1000.

Yahoo!

SCRVPVLVS is planning to go into the weather business.

Share: submit to reddit

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

about.me

Follow

feed

E-mail: enter address

Project Euler competitor metaed

vs.

Project Euler competitor db8

profile for MetaEd on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites

Recent Articles

How To Blow Up the World

Being John Malkovich: A Review

Millennimania

Archives

November 1999
June 2000
July 2000
September 2001
October 2001
February 2002
March 2002
June 2003
February 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
February 2005
March 2005
November 2005
July 2007
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
April 2009
September 2009
December 2009
February 2010
March 2010
May 2010
June 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
April 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
September 2011
December 2011
February 2012
April 2012
May 2012
June 2012
July 2012
August 2012
September 2012
November 2012
January 2013
February 2013
April 2013
February 2014
May 2014
October 2014
June 2017
February 2019