Group of 6 'outsmarts' S'pore bar's promo to get their S$947 bill waived

On March 30, Stickies Bar released a series of promotions.

One of them being this enticing shot at a free meal during April.

The idea is quite a solid one, like a 10 millionth customer prize some American supermarkets have.

It's a game of chance, mixed with some customer loyalty.

They set up some ground rules, defined what Beer O'clock meant (beer ordered from 2pm onwards), and were ready to go.

April 4

On just the fourth day of the promotion, someone broke that system. In fact, they broke it so bad that Stickies considered it interesting enough to turn into an advertisement hook (this article).

According to Stickies, a group of six came into their Aljunied outlet at around 8pm to celebrate one of their friend's birthday.

They were aware of the promotion but unaware of just how many glasses had been ordered yet.

They, however, figured out that the winner had not yet been announced.

Chance.

The table of six ordered five glasses of beer for a start.

They braced for the fireworks and confetti, anticipating that the five was enough to hit the bar.

It wasn't.

But they noticed something else, no one around them was ordering "beer o'clock" drinks.

Chance.

The group went on a binge, ordering six bottles of liquor, a tray of shots, and some food items.

The bill was tipping S$900 at this point.

The group then ended off strong with a whole bunch of beer o'clock orders to end the night, hitting the 50th order that night.

Here is the bill.

Stickies told us that their manager was stupefied but honoured the terms nonetheless.

They waived the group's entire bill.

In the spirit of birthday charity, the group decided to share their drinks with the staff and other patrons. They also gave a bottle of alcohol to the staff.

Broken but not broke

The game had been so broken that Stickies management had to go back to the drawing board to rethink the promotion mechanics and tighten up the process.

Stickies CEO Norman Then talked about the company's oversight in preventing that gaping loophole but said it would be wrong to retract the promotion.

“We certainly did not anticipate that customers would outsmart the promotion the way that they did, [and] there was pressure from the finance team to put a cut-off timing for the promotion or even stop the promotion entirely to prevent too many incidences like that from happening.

But we decided to chalk it up to marketing costs and decided to push the beer o’clock promotion earlier and to more customers to minimise the damage. Ultimately we did promise this to the customers and it would be wrong for us to retract the promotion due to our oversight.”

Then also had some tips for those who want to try their luck at hitting number 50.

"Come earlier, order more food and drinks to both stand a higher chance of winning and to get the most out of the bill waived."

Pushing the beer o'clock promo would also make sure more people would spend earlier, so maybe the loophole won't be so easily exploited.

So despite the glaring loophole, the promotion goes on, and all winners had their bills waived.

The bills ranged from S$20 to S$200.

Cheers.

The promotion is until the end of April.

Image from Stickies Bar

This article was sponsored by Stickies Bar