A true story.

Mr X recently found out his health insurance company UXXC started offering vendor discount for health related services and one of the vendor happened to be Mr X’s gym. Mr X was quite delighted and printed out the following details from the health insurance company website and brought it with him to the gym.

You will receive either a minimum 10% discount off of the initiation and/or monthly dues, or the best available public rate based on the type of membership you selected. 
Must mention American Specialty Health affiliation at the facility to receive this discount.

Mr X: I recently found out about this discount program

Gym guy: Oh let me see. Yea, we can offer you the initiation fee discount but not the monthly fee.

Mr X: OK, so how does that work?

Gym guy: Well, our full initiation fee is $300 but we offer discounts for the initiation fee all the time. Unless you paid $300 when you joined the gym, we cannot offer you anything because you have had already got a discount anyways.

Mr X: So there is no monthly fee discount………

Gym guy: Well, as you can see from the print out, it gives us a choice to offer a discount off of the initiation and/or monthly dues.

Mr X: ………… OK I see.

Obviously, it was a good intention of the health insurance company to promote good health living by offering such vendor discount program. Unfortunately, there was no quality control in place (the promotion text was phrased in a way that vendors can take advantage of it and offer practically nothing).

I wonder if Mr X would start telling everyone he knows about this failed promotion........

So much for a good intention of the health insurance company ……