Atlantica - 01.06.2006, Side 18

AT L A N T I CA 17
SB: A $39 experiment in-
volving a roll of stamps and
writing 100 letters? Were you
really that bored?
TL: Well, I was just sitting in
my office one day looking at
a roll of unopened stamps. I
was thinking ‘Man, these just
keep going up and up. From
34 cents to 37 to 39 cents,
you can’t get much for $39
anymore, can you?’ I figured I
would walk around my house
looking for products, take the
address off the products, and
just outright ask for free stuff.
SB: What was your strategy?
TL: I knew if I complained
I’d have a refrigerator full of
products from companies
t r y i n g to w i n m e b a c k
again. That seems to be the
corporate America way. I
literally just wanted to ask for
free stuff. I’d say 85 to 90 of
the 100 letters were unique. I
tested the waters a little with
some of the letters. Some are
to the point, others are more
off-the-wall.
SB: That’s a lot of envelopes to
lick. Did your tongue get dry?
TL: Well, I splurged and bought
the self-adhesive kind.
SB: How did you decide which
companies to choose?
TL: My original plan was to walk
around the house and grab
100 different products with
100 different addresses. Turns
out finding the addresses was
pretty arduous. I got into my
bathroom and it seemed like
every soap and detergent was
made by Procter & Gamble
or Colgate -Palmolive. In
the kitchen it seemed like
everything was made by Kraft,
Nestlé, or Hershey. By the time
I reached 60 addresses, I had
to broaden my scope and
leave the house.
SB: Which address was the
hardest to track down?
TL: Barilla pasta was tough. I
had to go to CNN Money and
dig around for their financials.
I told Barilla I had heard it was
the best pasta around and
that it didn’t stick to itself. A
response came back – to my
surprise – but with no freebies.
Almost all the rejections look
identical, so you can tell they
just have a big stack of these
letters somewhere and send
them out real quick.
SB: All told, just how long did
it take you to type up these
100 letters?
TL: About ten hours over the
course of two days. I put all the
letters in the mail on Friday, 24
February 2006 at 9 am.
SB: And how soon after that
did you start hearing back?
TL: Eight days later. Carma
Labs sent me a free jar of
Carmex and a letter. Stash Tea
sent over nine tea samples,
a letter, and a tea catalogue.
Fellowes sent me four cans of
their Air Duster compressed
air in a can but no letter. The
canned air goes for $6 a can,
so that’s more than $24 worth
of goodies back. That same
day I got my first casualty. My
letter to Long John Silver’s
got returned to me, which is
a shame because the Long
John Silver’s letter was one of
my favorites. I told them that
I loved their breaded clams
and that if it were socially
acceptable, I’d wear a hat
and an eye patch into their
restaurants.
SB: Air dusters? How did you
win Fellowes’ heart?
TL: I told them I loved their air
dusters and that I used them
to dust my furniture and my
dog, Rufus Huxtable. The UPS
guy showed up with a box and
inside there were four cans of
air and nothing else. No letter,
just the cans of air.
SB: Is your dog’s name really
Rufus Huxtable?
TL: No, I used a bunch of
d i f f e r e n t n a m e s : R u f u s
Huxtable, Rudy Huxtable,
Dirty Nelly, Sir Shagwell, Lil’
Brudder, Uncle Jeepers, maybe
some more. Nylabone actually
sent me a gigantic minty dog
bone. It’s the same UPS guy
delivering the boxes every
day, and he looked at the
package addressed to Rudy
Huxtable and looked back at
me with a look that says I
should be institutionalized.
The bone is for a wolf-sized
dog. Mine weighs 10 pounds.
SB: So what’s all the loot
worth that you’ve gotten back
so far?
TL: I’ve heard from about two
thirds of the companies. Of
those, 35 have been positive,
totaling $272.93 worth of free
stuff. I’ve also gotten 106,700
emails between March 1
and May 5. A few people
have called me a loser and
told me I’m wasting my time,
but most of them have been
overwhelmingly positive.
SB: So, mission accomplished?
What will you do with all your
stuff?
TL: I’m not sure. The interesting
thing is that I haven’t used or
opened any of the freebies
I’ve gotten. Some people
think I should auction them
off for charity or something.
My initial goal was to keep
this low key, this was by no
means a publicity stunt. Now
it’s tough to actually keep this
thing down. All I know is that
Google maintains a page rank
that tells you how important
the page is in its eyes. Only
the biggest companies get up
to the highest rank, a ten. My
rank is a seven out of ten.
There are over 20,000 sites
that link to my site. In Google’s
eyes, at least, I have a ton of
people looking at me.
On a Roll
Chicagoan Tom Locke is a self-proclaimed regular guy, neither rich nor
poor. After staring at a roll of stamps on his desk one day worth USD
39, he thought he would start a little experiment: a $39 letter writing
campaign asking for free stuff (www.the39dollarexperiment.com).
Locke talked to Atlantica’s Sara Blask about minty dog bones, poor
penmanship, and how he more than sextupled his money.
Tom Locke
009 airmail Atlantica 406 .indd 17 23.6.2006 11:24:20