Second Barefoot Wine Lightening Strike

Many of you may recall a post I sent several years ago regarding my son Luke wining a surfboard from a contest in K-Mart put on by the Barefoot Wine Company. Well it's happened again! Here's the story from 2008:

Aloha All!

Luke gets off the bus after school in the KMart parking lot, so we often go inside to shop after I pick him up. 

They recently had a display just inside the door showing a bunch of wine bottles and a surfboard in the center. It turns out they were having a contest for Barefoot Wine. Fill out a little piece of paper drop it in the box and in a couple of weeks they would pick a winner who would then receive a quite nice surfboard.

Luke began running inside to fill one out each day after school and dropping it in the box. This was getting a bit tiring for him each day leading him to ask if he could fill out more than one at a time. I asked if there was anything saying one entry per person written anywhere and there was not. Well then, I told him, fill out as many as you want, you'll have a better chance to win that way.

Being an industrious young man he grabbed a dozen or so of the entry slips, took them home and filled them out. He then glued them to a letter sized sheet of paper, scanned them, printed up what amounted to several hundred entries and stuffed the ballot box the next day.

A week later I get a call from a somewhat disgruntled gentlemen telling me a Luke Powers had won the surfboard. After discovering that I was not Luke and that Luke was in fact an 11 year old he relayed to me how my son had stuffed the entry box with a couple of hundred entries and that the contest was aimed at increasing the awareness and subsequent sale of their wines. I asked him if what Luke had done was against the rules and he grudgingly admitted that it was not, but his tone of voice indicated that he did not approve of how the board had been won.

Lessons were learned all around. The wine salesman learned to write a better entry form. Luke learned to fairly take advantage of a situation to win. And I learned to keep an eye on my son, he's a clever one.

      

Merry Christmas from Brian & Luke

 August 2011

Last month we were heading through the K Mart cheap wine section for Dad's supplies when we see the new Barefoot Wine contest. A way cool two seat beach chair with built in cooler and umbrella are the prize, no new surfboard but it would be a nice addition none the less. Luke immediately grabs one of the entry forms sitting on top of the box you slide them into once you have filled them out and looks it over. He smiles at me and says: "Nothing about one entry per person...they haven't learned have they?" 


So of course he grabs twenty of them. We go home and he fills them out, glues them to a letter size sheet of paper, scans them, prints them and the next day he discreetly slips something like three hundred of them into the box while I block the view from the round brown girls behind the check out stands. 

Three weeks later I get a call from the Barefoot Wine representative, somewhat sullenly telling me I had won the contest and I should head for K Mart to pick up my prize! I'm not certain but it sounded like the same guy who called me about winning the surfboard several years earlier. Maybe this will lead them to take the minute it would take to add the 'one entry per person' to their contest entry slips. If not...well, Luke and I will be looking forward to what we next win from Barefoot Wines!

Aloha and join me at the next HPA football game sitting in my new chair with a cooler full of beer in the middle and an umbrella overhead to keep off the rain!