Last week, Aldi ran a sweepstakes called Aldi Blind Box promising to give away mystery boxes of groceries each day for four days at exactly the stroke of noon. It sounded like such a good deal that we promoted it as a “Bargain of the Week” in Consumer World.

At the appointed hour last Monday, MrConsumer along with perhaps thousands of others watched the Aldi clock tick down to zero so we could try to get a box of goodies. After clicking the “claim a box” button, your online cart showed that a box was added to it. Then you had to click a “check out” button and prove you were a human by solving THREE CAPTCHAS, and then later another set of CAPTCHAS. At that point you are told you are in line to check out and for me it said the estimated wait time was 45 minutes.

After patiently waiting three-quarters of an hour, a message popped up saying they were all sold out!

Say what?

Soon after Monday’s giveaway we received a complaint from a regular reader who experienced the exact same thing. She commented, “I wasted 42 minutes believing that Aldi was going to honor my place in line.” Some other people said they got as far as entering their shipping information but then received a “sold out” message.

Immediately, we wrote to Aldi’s PR people complaining about the misleading nature of the promotion because it gave entrants the impression that a free box was in their cart and that they were just waiting in line to check out. We asked many pointed questions including how they were going to make good for the thousands of customers they disappointed. They only answered that question as noted below.

In addition, it appears that Aldi may have violated state and federal sweepstakes laws that require disclosing “official rules” of giveaways like this. A review of the Internet Archive reveals that they did not make this disclosure prior to the Monday drawing, but did so in time for the ones after that.

A glutton for punishment, MrConsumer returned on day two of the promotion where the process remained the same except the wait time was reduced to just four minutes seemingly. However, when the four minutes elapsed, the wait time reset to 30 minutes, followed by the inevitable “sold out” message! The video below shows the process in actual time.

By day three of the promotion, the company finally decided to explain to participants how the promotion worked in detail. Duh.

*MOUSE PRINT:

This promotion has resulted in a deluge of complaints and comments being posted online — over 10,000 on Aldi’s Instagram alone — and rightfully so. [Account needed to read Instagram.]

Part of the problem was that despite having 2,684 stores in the United States, Aldi only made available 84 – 92 boxes a day (without disclosing that to participants initially), and chose an entry system that inconvenienced and misled their customers. They should pay a price for that, both monetarily and legally.

After the fourth and final day of the planned giveaway, Aldi announced a make good of sorts — an unscheduled fifth day of mystery box giveaways, wherein the company would offer 5,000 free boxes but still using the same cockamamie system.

In making the announcement, Aldi said they were doing it “because when the fans get loud, ALDI responds with an encore.” Get loud? They really meant “complain.”

How did the 5,000 box giveaway turn out? No different. Despite entering the site before noon, clicking the “claim a box” button as soon as it appeared adding the mystery box to my cart, the countdown clock to check out said 4 minutes. After hitting zero, it reset to 22 minutes. And after hitting zero again it reset to 17 minutes. And after hitting zero again it reset to 12 minutes. And when it hit zero for a fourth time (a total of 55 minutes waiting in queue), here’s what MrConsumer (and others) saw:

As one poster said on Instagram after Friday’s make-good farce:

Today’s was the biggest joke of them all… Never again… I have wasted 2-1/2 hours on this.