Every Motorist's Dream Proves Too Good to Be True

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Every Motorist's Dream Proves Too Good to Be True June 8, 2001 10:31 am EST

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A Canadian gasoline retailer apologized to price-weary motorists on Thursday after it found a printing mistake that would have meant giving away $99 million in free gas in a contest -- almost its total earnings for the year.

Ultramar Canada Ltd. said it distributed 314,000 scratch-and-win booklets in the eastern province of New Brunswick as part of its "Reveal a Deal" promotion that began on Wednesday. Of those, just three were supposed to have to have contained grand prizes of C$1,500 worth of free gas.

But on the first day of the contest, the company began to discover its generosity knew few bounds in a time of sky-high fuel prices.

"Yesterday around four o'clock we already had 50 (winners), so we wondered what was happening," Ultramar Canada spokesman Louis Forget said. "We made some checks and found out that the printer realized he had printed 100,000 coupons that were bearing C$1,500 instant prizes.

"That would probably match our total earnings for the year," Forget said.

The company said it was protected from pumping the deluge of free fuel by stipulations in the contest rules, and would hold a draw at the end of the promotion to pick three winners.

-- Anonymous, June 09, 2001

Answers

He would have to FIND the mistake!!!! we went to Dad's today, and there was gas 1.59 a gal at a BP.

-- Anonymous, June 09, 2001

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