David Phillips (born 1964), also called The Pudding Guy,[1] is an American civil engineer best known for receiving many frequent flyer miles by taking advantage of a promotion by Healthy Choice Foods in 1999.
Phillips, who teaches at the University of California, Davis, calculated while grocery shopping that a mail-in promotion for frequent flyer points exceeded the cost of the entree on which it is offered. In May 1999, Phillips received 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles, enough for thirty-one round trips from his home in California to Europe.
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Process
Phillips calculated that the return on a mail-in food promotion outweighed the price of the Healthy Choice frozen entrees. He later discovered the same promotion also included individual pudding packages at 25 cents a piece. He subsequently visited ten grocery stores in the Sacramento area, buying every case of pudding available, in the end, totaling 12,150 individual servings of pudding,[2] for $3,140[3] In order to divert attention, he claimed he was stocking up for Y2K.[4] The details of the promotion included a bonus if the packages were mailed during the month of May 1999; Phillips, unable to remove all the UPC codes himself in such a short time, recruited members of the Salvation Army to help peel the UPC codes off the puddings in exchange for the donation of the pudding.
Outcome
At first Healthy Choice Foods did not react on time and then after being contacted claimed they sent a form letter, saying they had no record of the order. However, after proving that Phillips did indeed mail the certificates Healthy Choice Foods awarded Phillips 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles.[5] Since he gave most of the pudding to charity, Phillips also received a $815 tax write-off.[4]
It is also speculated that neither Healthy Choice Foods nor the airlines were seriously disadvantaged by the outcome.[2] Since 2000, Phillips continues taking advantage of frequent flyer promotions, and is earning points five times faster than he is spending them.[6]
Phillips' pudding story incurred international attention from news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The Times. The story was re-created in the 2002 Paul Thomas Anderson feature film Punch-Drunk Love.
References
- ^ Holder, Kathleen (2000-02-04). "Engineer finds sweet travel deal in cups of pudding". Dateline UC Davis. http://www-dateline.ucdavis.edu/020400/DL_pudding.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
- ^ a b Mikkelson, Barbara (2007-01-03). "Pudding on the Ritz". Snopes. http://www.snopes.com/business/deals/pudding.asp. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
- ^ Phillips, David. "The Proof is in the Pudding". FlyerTalk. http://www.flyertalk.com/pudding.htm. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
- ^ a b "What would you do with over 12,000 cups of pudding?". Useless Information. http://web.archive.org/web/20071128063026/http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/pudding/. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
- ^ Sloane, Martin. "The Proof is in the Pudding!". Classic Columns. Archived from the original on 2005-03-08. http://web.archive.org/web/20050308093930/http://www.siteforsavings.com/content_mas/colclasic.htm. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
- ^ "The Pudding Guy Q & A". Johnny Jet. http://www.johnnyjet.com/folder/reporters/puddingguyqa.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
External links
- David Phillips on the Davis Wiki
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