KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- At the request of Speedway SuperAmerica LLC, Freegasvouchers.com has taken the Speedway logoalong with all other oil company logosoff of the home page of its website. As reported in CSP Daily News earlier this week, Speedway spokesperson Linda Casey said the company was sending a cease-and-desist letter to Freegasvouchers.com because the gasoline retailer had not authorized the use of the logo and had not agreed to participate in the program. The presence of the Speedway logo implied endorsement of the program, Casey said, when, in fact, no such endorsement [image-nocss] existed.
Wally Anderson, director of marketing for U.S. Express Inc., the Knoxville, Tenn., company that operates the website, acknowledged receipt of the letter from Speedway, and that the logo had been removed. We had a graphics team out of St. Louis put the website together for us. And once we became aware of the problem, we took the Speedway logo off. In fact, we took all of the logos off, he said.
And he explained the company's business model: We sell premiums and incentives, and this is just a premium for our company that we sell to 20,000-plus sales organizations around the United States. That's how many [companies] are in our database. Basically, it's just a card that if you try a free product trial or service, we'll give you $10 in free gas. There are generally 100 companies in the program. And they'll pay the consumer a cash incentive just to try their product or service. And that's the way we advertise it.
Concerning claims by motorists that the cards do not work, he said, We do get that every once in a while. What happens is they have to register the card on the Internet. There's a myriad of different problems that could happen when they register. A lot of times, they register twice, and it de-activates their account. Or they do a zero as an O in their authorization number and it doesn't work. Or their computer doesn't work for some reason, and their convinced that there's something wrong with the system.
They're probably less than 1% or 2% of the problem; it does happen. And we try to answer them right away. If there's a problem, we'll address it. If we get a complaint, we resolve it immediately, he claimed.
Anderson added, We don't actively advertise the program as a la carte. We just advertise it to third-party organizations who give it out. It was mandatory that they give it out. They cannot sell it. We tried to tighten the reins up. If some of the consumers got it from a third-party company and they're not happy how they got it, they need to see whoever they got it from. We have a stellar Better Business Bureau rating.
A couple of other oil companies have also contacted Freegasvouchers.com about the promotion, he said. In the last couple of days, BP and Exxon sent questions over, so we just took all the logos off, because we don't want to have problems.
Speedway is a unit of Enon, Ohio-based Speedway SuperAmerica, a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Co. LLC, Findlay, Ohio, a division of Marathon Oil Corp., Houston.
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