I'm not associated with Valvoline, but wanted to pass on news of this good deal to other GM owners. Valvoline is making a marketing push to get people to try their SynPower full synthetic motor oil and will send you a rebate of up to $28 to pay for your first six quarts. I bought mine at the local Kragen auto parts. All of the common grades including 5W-20, 5W-30,
5W-40, 10W-30 and 10W-40 were in stock when I was in there.
If you want in on the deal, the rebate form is at:
Here is the latest double speak I got from Valvoline on this topic:
The Valvoline Company sent a special $28 rebate offer via e-mail to an "opt-in" SynPower enthusiast database. This particular offer was limited exclusively to those particular individuals, and to those individuals alone. Unfortunately, several "freebie" Internet sites found the Web link and posted this offer, which seemingly made it appear to be available to anyone. It is not. As a result, The Valvoline Company in the meantime has removed this offer/link as it was exclusively intended for the original recipients of the special e-mail.
We have an e-mail listing of every individual to whom the offer was sent. If you are one of the original recipients, please provide your name, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address, and we will check to see if you are on the original distribution list. Just "Reply With History" to this message. We will contact you after our review.
Again, this offer is valid only to the select SynPower member list. Thank you for understanding.
T B Caudill Manager, Customer Service The Valvoline Company
Of course there were no conditions of any kind printed on Valvoline's rebate form about it being limited in any way.
What kind of company runs a marketing promotion, has it become bigger and more popular than ever expected and then sticks it to the customers who took them up on their offer?
Posting the offer on their website was a stupid thing for them to do. I bet someone got shown the 'door' over that! The email to the 'SynPower enthusiast database' (LOL) maybe went to as many as 10,000 people. $28x10000=$280,000 That's a healthy sum for a speculative promotion of their product. Posting the offer in public, put the offer 'on the table' for maybe, what?, a million people? That would mean a $28,000,000 hit to their promotion team budget. Now they have race teams and corporate tents/parties/etc to give free stuff to. That is where they want their 'enthusiast' money spent, not on the general public people, where all the money actually comes from.....
A better PR (public relations) ploy would be for them to take the 'hit' and validate the offer for some limited time. That way folks wouldn't get mad if they didn't take advantage of it in the time allowed, and the company wouldn't loose customers over the 'stupid thing someone' did.
The company makes good products and I suppose their syn oil is as good as any other syn oil. I'd prefer them to lower the price! Start a syn oil price-war with the other companies that make the stuff. After all, it's just a bunch of chemicals anyway. $4+ a quart is 'pricey' in my small, poor, world....
I can understand the problem here. Valvoline Has a group of opt-in Syn-Tech users. These people have signed up for special promotions, and advertising. Valvoline probably sends them surveys, and gets other marketing and profromance data from them.
In return they get special offers, not for the generial public. They may even get invited to special events, get price breaks on tickets to races and such.
Valvolines error was not putting the link on a password protected area.
I have been in a few programs like this. I have also been in what is at times called a "Racer Net" price group. Where you get selected parts at below retail for racing useage, with out direct sponcership, or contengincy awards. Often from manufactors that do not sell direct to the public, such as B.F. Goodrich tires. Charles
That is all well and good, but if the offer was limited it should have said so on the offer itself. You had to go through hoops of entering your name and address for it to print out a bar code labeled rebate form which did include a number of limitations, but there was nothing anywhere about limiting the offer to certain people.
Valvoline should honor the offer they put out there.
Now I'm out $28 for an oil which I certainly would not have purchased otherwise. The idea, I thought, was for me to try and see if I liked it enough to switch from the Castrol and Mobil products I normally buy. Valvoline would have been way ahead if I switched all of my future synthetic oil purchases to them, but now there is no way.
What is the lifetime value of a new customer? Certainly more than the $28.
When I run out of Pennzoil Synthetic, which is petroleum based, I will most likely switch to Valvoline anyway!
I ran a 10 second race car on it in the seventies,(Not the synthetic) Joe Amato ran his championship dragster on it for 6 consecutive championship years, so it can't be bad?
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