Commodore 64 upgrade campaign

[carlsson]

Perhaps this should go under the Humor section, if we had one. In December 1984 (I suppose), Handic (the Swedish Commodore distributor) apparently ran a campaign to make people buy the VIC-64S; that is a C64 with Swedish character set:

Byt upp Dig!
Datorer är inte så krångliga som Du tror. Nu får Du chansen att upptäcka det; byt Din gamla räknare, skrivmaskin eller Ditt gamla Monopol, mot en rabatt på ca. 500:- när Du köper en VIC-64S och program för ca. 500:-.
Detta erbjudande kan ej kombineras med annat rabatterbjudande.
Byt upp Dig hos (återförsäljarens namn)

Or translated into English; you'd get a discount of 500 SEK if you trade in your old calculator, typewriter or Monopoly board game if you buy a C64 and software worth 500 SEK. Basically, it sounds like you get software worth 500 SEK for free if you throw in an old typewriter when you buy a computer. According to the fine print, this offer was meant to be valid in three cases:

1. The customer buys a C64 with Calc Result Easy and gets the discount when trading in a calculator or counting machine.
2. The customer buys a C64 with Magic Desk and gets the discount when trading in a typewriter.
3. The customer buys a C64 with games worth 500 SEK and gets the discount when trading in Monopoly or other board game.

As a variant of this offer, there exists something called Rikskuponger, which usually are food (lunch) coupons bought by a company to give to their employees. There is some tax deduction for doing this. Around the time for the first campaign, Handic sneaked in a special coupon to the 250,000 users of Rikskuponger; if the customer bought a C64 and sent in the coupon and warranty papers to Handic, he got games worth 500 SEK. It was not possible to combine with trading in a Monopoly game to get another 500 SEK worth of games though.

A fun bit of trivia. I wonder if Commodore dealers in other markets tried similar gags once the computer business was big enough to pull it off.

[MacbthPSW]

This story has probably shown up here before, but Commodore Canada offered a somewhat substantial rebate on the purchase of one of their computers (I *think* it was the Amiga 500) if you traded in any other computer - maybe $100 off.

At least one dealer brought in piles of very cheap (used?) computers to give to customers to use in the trade in. I believe they were Timex/Sinclair 1000s (more-or-less the same as the ZX81).

[eslapion]

This story has probably shown up here before, but Commodore Canada offered a somewhat substantial rebate on the purchase of one of their computers (I *think* it was the Amiga 500) if you traded in any other computer - maybe $100 off.

When I purchased my Amiga 3000 back in 1992, I got a very significant discount just by tearing the cover page of my VIC-20 user guide and giving it to the dealer. The deal was that you got the rebate if you could prove that you had bought any commodore computer in the past. The cover page of the manual served as a proof of purchase.

The dealer would tear the page so the same "proof" could not be used twice.

[carlsson]

Too bad you didn't have the original receipt of the VIC-20. Or maybe it would be more worth to save than an intact manual. I still have the receipt of the first VIC-20 my big brother bought. That machine was sold and God knows when it ended as landfill, but the receipt remains!