David Phillips (born 1964), also called The Pudding Guy, is an American civil engineer best known for accumulating many 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 the value of a mail-in promotion for frequent flyer points exceeded the cost of the pudding on which it was offered. In May 1999, Phillips received 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles.
Process
Phillips calculated that the return on a mail-in food promotion outweighed the price of the Healthy Choice frozen entrees (which were selling for $2), but while shopping he also found Healthy Choice soup cans for only $0.90.
He later discovered the same promotion also included individual pudding packages at 25 cents apiece, while shopping at a nearby Grocery Outlet. He subsequently visited ten Grocery Outlet stores in the Sacramento area, buying every case of pudding available, totaling 12,150 individual servings of pudding, for $3,140. He also had the Grocery Outlet manager order additional cases. 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 (the mileage earned would double from 500 miles to 1,000 miles for every 10 UPCs submitted). Phillips, unable to remove all the UPCs himself in such a short time, recruited members of a local Salvation Army branch to help peel the UPCs off the pudding containers; in exchange, Phillips would donate the puddings.
Acrylic Donation Box Video
Outcome
Phillips submitted proof of mailing the certificates and Healthy Choice Foods awarded him 1,253,000 frequent flyer miles. He would apply some of the miles to his United, Delta, and Northwest frequent flyer accounts, and the majority (over 1 million miles) to his AAdvantage account, in the process earning him lifetime Gold status.
Because most of the pudding was donated to charity, Phillips also received an $815 tax deduction.
It is also speculated that neither ConAgra, the owners of the Healthy Choice brand, nor the airlines were seriously disadvantaged by the outcome, due to the small price paid by ConAgra to the airlines and the resultant publicity gained.
Since 2000, Phillips continues taking advantage of frequent flyer promotions, and is earning points five times faster than he is spending them, now having reached lifetime Platinum status on his AAdvantage account.
Phillips' pudding story received international attention from news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The Times. The story was re-created, as a sub-plot, in the 2002 Paul Thomas Anderson feature film Punch-Drunk Love.
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