So Now You Know
David Phillips, a civil engineer at UC-Davis, became a cult hero in the obsessive subculture of people who collect frequent-flier miles by converting $3,150 worth of pudding into 1.2 million miles. Oh, yeah-he also was able to claim $815 as a tax write-off.
In May, 1999 Phillips was pushing his shopping cart down the frozen-food aisle of his local supermarket when a promotion on a Healthy Choice frozen entrée caught his eye: He could earn 500 miles for every 10 Universal Product Codes (bar codes) from Healthy Choice products he sent to the company by Dec 31. Even better: Any Healthy Choice bar codes mailed by the end of the month would rack up double the mileage, or 1,000 miles for every 10 labels.
Frozen entrées were about $2 apiece, but a few aisles away Phillips found cans of Healthy Choice soups at 90 cents each. He filled his cart with them, and then headed to his local Grocery Outlet, a warehouse-style discount store. And there he hit the mother lode.
"They had individual servings of chocolate pudding for 25 cents apiece," he said. "And each serving had its own bar code on it.." Phillips cleaned the store out - bought every last cup of pudding in the warehouse. He then asked the manager for the addresses of all the other Grocery Outlet in the Central Valley and, with his mother-in-law riding shotgun in his van, spent a weekend scouring the shelves of every store from Davis to Fresno.
He filled his garage to the rafters with chocolate pudding and stacked additional cases in his living room. But Phillips wasn't finished yet - he had the manager of his local Grocery Outlet order him 60 more cases. All in all, he'd purchased 12,150 individual servings of pudding. Around this time,
The deadline for earning double miles was quickly approaching, and there was simply no way Phillips and his wife could tear off all those bar codes in time. So, he trucked the pudding to two local food banks and the Salvation Army, which agreed to tear off the bar codes in exchange for the food donation.
Phillips got his bar codes in the mail in time to beat the deadline, and then held his breath. Then packages — large packages — started arriving in the mail from Healthy Choice. In all, they contained 2,506 certificates, each good for 500 miles. That's 1,253,000 miles.
All-in-all, that's 31 trips to Europe, 42 tickets to Hawaii, or 21 tickets to Australia, or 50 tickets anywhere in the U.S. for a little over $3,000.
"It's better than that," Phillips related. "Since I gave the pudding to charity I can take a tax write-off of $815."
In May, 1999 Phillips was pushing his shopping cart down the frozen-food aisle of his local supermarket when a promotion on a Healthy Choice frozen entrée caught his eye: He could earn 500 miles for every 10 Universal Product Codes (bar codes) from Healthy Choice products he sent to the company by Dec 31. Even better: Any Healthy Choice bar codes mailed by the end of the month would rack up double the mileage, or 1,000 miles for every 10 labels.
Frozen entrées were about $2 apiece, but a few aisles away Phillips found cans of Healthy Choice soups at 90 cents each. He filled his cart with them, and then headed to his local Grocery Outlet, a warehouse-style discount store. And there he hit the mother lode.
"They had individual servings of chocolate pudding for 25 cents apiece," he said. "And each serving had its own bar code on it.." Phillips cleaned the store out - bought every last cup of pudding in the warehouse. He then asked the manager for the addresses of all the other Grocery Outlet in the Central Valley and, with his mother-in-law riding shotgun in his van, spent a weekend scouring the shelves of every store from Davis to Fresno.
He filled his garage to the rafters with chocolate pudding and stacked additional cases in his living room. But Phillips wasn't finished yet - he had the manager of his local Grocery Outlet order him 60 more cases. All in all, he'd purchased 12,150 individual servings of pudding. Around this time,
The deadline for earning double miles was quickly approaching, and there was simply no way Phillips and his wife could tear off all those bar codes in time. So, he trucked the pudding to two local food banks and the Salvation Army, which agreed to tear off the bar codes in exchange for the food donation.
Phillips got his bar codes in the mail in time to beat the deadline, and then held his breath. Then packages — large packages — started arriving in the mail from Healthy Choice. In all, they contained 2,506 certificates, each good for 500 miles. That's 1,253,000 miles.
All-in-all, that's 31 trips to Europe, 42 tickets to Hawaii, or 21 tickets to Australia, or 50 tickets anywhere in the U.S. for a little over $3,000.
"It's better than that," Phillips related. "Since I gave the pudding to charity I can take a tax write-off of $815."
