That was fast. It hasn’t even been a full 24 hours since we told you about a water bottle giveaway from T-Mobile Tuesdays, but for some customers, the gift has already found its way to the recycling bin.
What seemed like a perfectly timed promotion, between the lingering heat of summer and back-to-school season, turned out to be more of a perfect storm in an ironic twist of fate for at least one T-Mobile user.
The heat is on
Reddit user cbs326 was fast to scoop up the new water bottle yesterday at lunch, then understandably left it in their car while finishing up their day (via Phone Arena). A couple of hours later, the bottle had shrunken and deformed into the sad shape you can see below.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like T-Mobile’s latest gift can stand up to the heat of summer. As another user pointed out, this means it’s also unlikely to survive a trip through your dishwasher — so if you’re among those who snagged the gift while it was still available, you might want to treat it as a hand-wash-only item.
As Phone Arena points out, this isn’t the first time a T-Mobile Tuesdays freebie ended up being so cheaply made that it was almost unusable. Last December, a T-Mobile-branded flashlight started putting out smoke for one user, though this person had left it plugged into a wall outlet indefinitely to use it as a nightlight.
What the T-Mobile water bottle looks like in its un-melted state.
It’s obviously not a major loss since the water bottle was free in the first place, but the promotion did require a trip to your local T-Mobile store. So if you take anything away from this story, it might be that “free” isn’t always worth the gas money.
