![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Terrible money-making idea of the day.
Jun. 7th, 2009 01:08 pmSo, we were driving along in the typically annoying traffic around here when a money-making idea struck me.
Contractors often drive like jerks. They do around here, at least, and I imagine this isn't the only place where they do. One of my friends explains it's because they're constantly late, and that's because the only way to make money is to overbook clients. At any rate, they often drive in obnoxious ways.
Anyway, it occurred to me that an interesting, if short-lived moneymaking scheme would work something like this:
Lease a whole bunch of panel vans. Hire a bunch of really obnoxious drivers to drive them around the city. Put a variety of fictitious company names on the vans, along with a number to call to complain about their driving.
The number is a premium-rate telephone number.
Each van driver gets paid on commission from the premium-rate telephone number, which is answered by a (single) staff member (also paid on commission) who takes complaints in exhaustive detail. Obviously, the van driver has an incentive to cause as much road rage as possible, and the person answering the call has an incentive to keep people on the line as long as possible.
Drivers might coordinate through a central office to go to the places where they would annoy the most people. There might be more competition for days like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day weekend.
The company would not be responsible for tickets drivers incurred, of course.
It wouldn't last long before one was shut down, but one might try doing something like this as a performance art piece, and film the results.
It occurs to me writing this that it might actually be a variation on Ryanair's business model, since they have notoriously bad customer service, and charge to phone them up: http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/faqs.php?sect=CONTACT&div=call_ctr
But then they do actually provide a service, so maybe it's not that similar.
Contractors often drive like jerks. They do around here, at least, and I imagine this isn't the only place where they do. One of my friends explains it's because they're constantly late, and that's because the only way to make money is to overbook clients. At any rate, they often drive in obnoxious ways.
Anyway, it occurred to me that an interesting, if short-lived moneymaking scheme would work something like this:
Lease a whole bunch of panel vans. Hire a bunch of really obnoxious drivers to drive them around the city. Put a variety of fictitious company names on the vans, along with a number to call to complain about their driving.
The number is a premium-rate telephone number.
Each van driver gets paid on commission from the premium-rate telephone number, which is answered by a (single) staff member (also paid on commission) who takes complaints in exhaustive detail. Obviously, the van driver has an incentive to cause as much road rage as possible, and the person answering the call has an incentive to keep people on the line as long as possible.
Drivers might coordinate through a central office to go to the places where they would annoy the most people. There might be more competition for days like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day weekend.
The company would not be responsible for tickets drivers incurred, of course.
It wouldn't last long before one was shut down, but one might try doing something like this as a performance art piece, and film the results.
It occurs to me writing this that it might actually be a variation on Ryanair's business model, since they have notoriously bad customer service, and charge to phone them up: http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/faqs.php?sect=CONTACT&div=call_ctr
But then they do actually provide a service, so maybe it's not that similar.
