It’ll be funny if the whole “bad link” is just an excuse to get a bailout.
We actually got a bucket of the grilled stuff … very disappointing. Dry, almost mealy, odd spicing.
Remember the old spit roasted Rotissery Gold from the early 90s? now that was some good chicken. I used to stop and pick up the ‘dinner’ on the way to get mrAru before the local SCA fighter practice so we could hang out and have dinner together. I would love it if they brought it back. I woder if I could feedback that on their website…
I pledge to monitor Spice TV for any freebie offers.
Chicken in exchange for installing something that’s got to be some kind of malware. Doesn’t sound free to me.
I just saw this on another site - people are freaking out over the coupons:
My sister was wrong. Obamprah didn’t do this to spy on our computers… S/he did it to START A WAR!!! KFC grilled chicken is the catalyst for the Apocalypse and worst of all it tastes like cardboard!
They were only honoring the coupons downloaded with that program, not the pdf ones, at the KFC I stopped at after work tonight. Mine worked fine but there were some pissed off people there!
The chicken was crap in any case.
I wonder why they don’t just do rotisserie chicken. It’s still a lot healthier than fried and it tastes a whole lot better, and it’s got to be fairly simple since even grocery stores and Wal-Mart (without restaurant style kitchens) do it.
Because then they’d be Boston Market?
My coworker printed these at work. The coupon portion was unreadable but the ad portion was clear, was this because of the software that was supposedly needed or did our printer just have a bad day? Occasionally it starts printing only about half a line and I have to perform a head cleaning but that usually works and I had done one shortly before she printed them. I would expect that if it were the printer the rest of the stuff that printed would have been messed up.
I guess the good thing is that means she didn’t download something to the computer that I will have to figure out how to remove and I am no where near a computer specialist, I just know more than everyone else that works there which makes me the resident expert by default.
Some people are saying KFC is not honoring the coupons.
Maybe if they’d gone with a less well-known talk show host?
Boston Market does Rotisserie chicken, and it is actually higher in fat and calories than KFC.
The way KFC is handling this promotion is badly, so I hope corporate headquarters is watching for the firestorm. Personally it’s just chicken so I don’t care and won’t be in a riot or fight for the stuff.
I think “The Oprah KFC Promotion” will go down alongside “Nazi Invasion of Poland/bombing of Pearl Harbor”, “the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand/sinking of the Lusitania”, and “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” in history books as one of those events everyone knows threw us into cataclysmic war (though future students will be unable to tell you how or why). It’s the Apocalypse, and it was caused by tasteless grilled chicken. I can’t wait! (Dibs on North and South Carolina when the post nuclear mutants are executed and we’re reverting to feudal kingdoms.)
If I were KFC Corporate I would (after firing and or beheading the person responsible for the link snafu) call an official Do-Over with one of the following three options:
- Effective immediately all coupons, whatever the bar code or serial #, are null and void, BUT there’s a new promotion and the (link that works perfectly well) is xxxxx.com.
OR,
- Still “effective immediately all coupons are void”, but through May ___, 2009, all customers will receive one (1) two (2) piece grilled chicken dinner with any drink purchase, dine in only, limit one per person and 4 per family.
OR
- Treat the coupons like expiring military scrip. Come trade your coupons in on May ___ through May ___ (limit 1 per person) for the new coupons which are good between now and June 30 (end of fiscal year for most companies), which spreads out the grilled chicken giveaway for a month and gives some relief to the KFC employees. True, a person could conceivably go trade one at every KFC in town, but most probably aren’t going to do that because they’d spend as much in gas and time as the meal is worth and by most accounts the meal’s not exactly tasty.
How is Boston Market chicken (tastewise)? I’ve never been to a Boston Market; they aren’t that big down here other than in the really big [1 million+] cities.
If KFC wants to go dietetic, they should have well seasoned boneless chicken breasts, which are easily cooked on a George Foreman type grill and don’t have to be tasteless at all. I marinate chicken breasts in diet Italian and then cover it with “secret herbs and spices” [mainly garlic and pepper] and GF them and they’re really tasty. They could even do a Foreman tie-in with some industrial sized GF grills and Foreman himself in a Kentucky colonel suit. (I saw a pic of Sean Combs at the Ky. Derby in a hip updated variant that would look good on Foreman- similar to thisbut with the hat and string tie.)
If it was green or orange you would be…then the scooper trucks would come and the rest would be history…
KFC used to have skinless fried chicken, which I found very tasty. This was 20-odd years ago, in Connecticut, and I haven’t seen it since. Personally I like Publix Fried Chicken better.
Off-topic, but it is about chicken and bad business decisions:
There’s a restaurant here in Montgomery called Eastbrook Cafe. It’s had several names over the years- originally it was Pinson’s and many people still call it that even though it hasn’t been Pinsons in over 25 years. Their fried chicken was still called Pinson’s Chicken though, and half of Montgomery knows “Pinson’s Chicken” when you say it, it’s one of those institutions that most cities have.
So the place has been in business since before I was born (I’m 42) and it’s a- I want say ‘dive’, but decidedly blue collar mom-‘n’-pop place. They were famous for one thing- their fried chicken. Best in the city (imho and in the opinions of many others), the fried chicken your mother wouldn’t get mad with for saying it was even better than her’s; also like home fried in that it tasted good left over (most fast food chicken doesn’t).
So anyway, they’ve been in business almost 50 years with this great fried chicken recipe. (They have other foods as well, that’s just their signature.) A few months ago the owners, who are old and tired (the place is still a success, it’s just tiring for them), sold it to a new couple. (The chicken recipe was not original to the retiring/selling owners- it was a carry over from the previous succession of owners).
The new owners completely gutted and redecorated the restaurant. It’s nicer now- not fancy, but instead of the old vinyl tablecloths and cheap prints on the wall it’s now nicer- cotton tablecloths, candles, etc… Not that anybody ever seemed to mind it when it was a lot less fancy since… well, if you want upscale you still wouldn’t go there.
BUT THE NEW OWNERS CHANGED THE BLOODY CHICKEN RECIPE!!!
The new fried chicken is… okay. Not bad. Not great. It doesn’t have the spices or the crispiness of the other. Most importantly, IT’S NOT PINSON’S CHICKEN!
This would be, on a local level, like buying McDonalds but instead of the Big Mac you sell chili dogs.
Things like this drive me nuts. On the local level I can’t understand for the life of me how people with the sense to buy a 50 year old restaurant with established clientele and world famous (in Alabama) chicken recipe and replace it with an ‘ok, but don’t care if I ever eat it again’ recipe and spend a small fortune remodeling a restaurant that nobody cared about seeing remodeled (they ate there for the food- and it’s in a bad location for an upscale crowd). I’ve never been in business but I know that the place within 3 months is either going to be serving the old recipe again (if it wasn’t included in the purchase price it should have been- called a ‘dealbreaker’ folks) or bust; when I know this why don’t they?
With KFC it’s a similar thing. I could have told you that a “nationwide promotion involving the word free and requiring computers is a very very very bad idea”. It would have made 500 times more sense to have the coupons in O Magazine (or People or Newsweek or National Enquirer or TV Guide). Or just have a “say Oprah, get free chicken, two days only, 4 pm to 7 pm” special. This had “disaster waiting to happen” written all over it in the womb.
[non musical theater lovers can stop reading here]
I’m imagining the trio song Blame from TITANIC: the Musical being sung in KFC corporate now between KFC’s owner, the website developers, and Oprah.
KFC: “Couldn’t you design it right? Whoever heard of limited coupons on a pdf…”
Web developer: “Sir I’m just in the business of web design”, you made the free offer yourself…
KFC: There stands the icon who sailed us straight into disaster!"
Oprah: Oh now it’s the diva’s fault? Pray, who wanted mega exposure and asked her…"
They did back in the early 90s, called it Rotissery Gold … I really miss rotissery gold…rotisserie gold
I do believe this is the stupidest thing they could have done.
KFC cancels free chicken deal after Oprah promo
We’re not honoring what we said we’d do because it was too popular a promotion. Okay…
This must be the biggest news discovery of the century so far: Oprah has millions and millions of viewers and most of them have email to tell people who aren’t Oprah viewers about things on her program. Who knew? (Certainly not KFC execs.)
ETA: I never would have thought this little throwaway MPSIMS thread would ultimately prove so interesting as a news story. I’ll admit it: so long as nobody is physically injured and I’m not in any way inconvenienced by it, I love total disasters!