David Phillips (pudding)
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David Phillips, also called The Pudding Guy,[1] is an American civil engineer best known for receiving a huge number of frequent flyer miles by taking advantage of a promotion by Healthy Choice Foods in 1999.
Phillips, who teaches at the University of California, Davis, calculated while grocery shopping that a mail-in promotion for frequent flyer points exceeded the cost of the entree on which it is offered. In May 1999, Phillips received 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles, enough for 31 round trips from his home in California, to Europe.
[edit] Process
Phillips calculated that the return on a mail-in food promotion outweighed the price of the Healthy Choice frozen entrees. He later discovered the same promotion also included individual pudding packages at 25 cents a piece. He subsequently visited 10 grocery stores in the Sacramento area, buying every case of pudding available, in the end, totaling 12,150 individual servings of pudding, for $3,140 In order to divert attention, he claimed he was stocking up for Y2K. The details of the promotion included a bonus if the packages were mailed during the month of May 1999; Phillips, unable to remove all the UPC codes himself in such a short time, recruited members of the Salvation Army to help peel the UPC codes off the puddings in exchange for the donation of the pudding.
[edit] Outcome
With no complaint from Healthy Choice Foods, Phillips received 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles, enough for 31 round trips from his home in California, to Europe. Since he gave most of the pudding to charity, Phillips will also receive a $815 tax write-off.
It is also speculated that neither Healthy Choice Foods nor the airlines were seriously disadvantaged by the outcome. Since 2000, Phillips continues taking advantage of frequent flyer promotions, and is earning points 5 times faster than he is spending them.
Phillips' pudding story incurred international attention from news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The Times (London). The story was re-created in the 2002 Paul Thomas Anderson feature film Punch-Drunk Love.
