That meant $2.50 of pudding bought 1,000 airline miles. The airlines themselves valued those miles at $20.
He drove a van across California, cleaned out 10 different Grocery Outlets around Sacramento, and stacked 12,150 pudding cups from his garage to his living room. When cashiers got suspicious, he told them he was stocking up for Y2K.
There was no way he could peel that many barcodes alone before the deadline, so he called the Salvation Army and proposed a trade. He’d donate every cup if their volunteers peeled the labels first. They agreed.
He drove a van across California, cleaned out 10 different Grocery Outlets around Sacramento, and stacked 12,150 pudding cups from his garage to his living room. When cashiers got suspicious, he told them he was stocking up for Y2K.
There was no way he could peel that many barcodes alone before the deadline, so he called the Salvation Army and proposed a trade. He’d donate every cup if their volunteers peeled the labels first. They agreed.
The Salvation Army fed people with $3,000 worth of pudding. Phillips got the barcodes, and claimed an $815 federal tax deduction on the donation to the Salvation Army.
He mailed the barcodes in before the early deadline to double the points, and waited.
Then a giant package arrived. Paper certificates worth 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles. Lifetime AAdvantage Gold status at American Airlines. $150,000 worth of flights.
The Wall Street Journal put him on the front page in January 2000. The London Times followed a week later. Paul Thomas Anderson read the coverage and built a subplot in Punch Drunk Love based on this story in 2002.
Over the next five years he flew his entire family to 43 countries.
Net cost after the tax write-off: $2,325. That’s $54 per country.
No comments:
Post a Comment