Hold on to your URLs even when you don’t think you need them any more; that’s the cautionary lesson Heinz recently learned when a QR code on its bottles recently redirected a German customer to a porn site instead of its own.
Heinz ran a promo in Germany from 2012 to 2014 allowing you to order a customized Ketchup bottle by scanning a QR code on the label. As Daniel Korell found out, however, that domain was seized up by a porn site called FunDorado.
Just to make sure it wasn’t some sort of mistake, Korell tried the code with several devices, and got the same result every time.
And as Grub Street points out, it’s not clear what’s worse: the domain being seized by a porn site, or it taking months before anyone actually scanned the QR code to discover there was a problem.
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So Korell took to Heinz’ Facebook page to voice his complaints, pointing out Heinz can likely afford to hold onto a domain until well after a promotion ends – or at least until the bottles expire.
It worked out well for him in the end though – Heinz apologized and said it would send him a customizable bottle anyway, whereas FunDorado cheekily chimed in to offer Korell a free yearlong subscription to its site.
➤ Heinz Tomato Ketchup (German) [Facebook via Grub Street]
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