A Loyal Radio Listener Discovers He's Been Given A One-Way Ticket To Promotional Purgatory. By Dan Huff UNFORTUNATELY, RICH Hanson won the grand prize. He'd been a loyal listenter to COOL-FM, the local moldy oldies station, when, back in May, he found himself the big winner of the station's "Throw Momma From The Train" promotional contest. That meant he got a pair of "COOL Coyote" sunglasses, a $40 value, according to the radio station, and--the biggie--eight tickets to ride the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams, Arizona, to the South Rim of the big ditch. A DJ even called him on the air to tell him he'd won. So Hanson went down to the station to claim his prizes. They made him sign some official papers, including an IRS 1099 form stating the total value of his win was $1,352. The first hint that all was not as it seemed came when he went to claim the sunglasses at a local optical shop. "These are real cheap glasses," he says. "They're $4 glasses you could buy at Walgreen's." Time passed. Hanson took his family on vacation. Life was good. He suggested some retired friends join his family of four on the seemingly fabulous freebie. "I got them all excited about it, and we started making plans," he says. At the end of August, he finally got around to phoning the Grand Canyon Railway to see about using those tickets. "Well, that's when I began to discover some things," he says. First, the tickets don't actually say what they're for, other than being labeled "complimentary pass." Turns out the railway has three classes of service--coach, intermediate and one for rich folks. It also offers a package deal: For $119 a person you can take the train ride, plus you get a room in Williams the night before and a room at the South Rim after the ride. The room package makes sense. You have to be in Williams at 7:30 a.m. to board the train, not terribly convenient if you're driving up from Tucson. And since the train ride is only an hour or so, you might as well stay at the Canyon one night so you can at least look at the damn thing. Which is what Hanson decided he wanted to do with his eight tickets. But Hanson's call to the railway eventually led him to Kevin Call, a company official, who told him his tickets were worth $49.50 each. In a second conversation, just last week, Hanson says Call basically told him the tickets were really worth nothing--that they're just something the railway gives out to radio stations for promotional purposes--and that to take advantage of the eight $49.50 tickets, Hanson would actually have to spend an additional $152.80 per person for the rooms. Hmmmm. "Now it stands to reason if they have a $119 package deal that includes the rooms at both ends, and you subtract the $49.50 for the tickets, the package deal would be $119 minus $49.50, right?" Hanson asks. Ah, but simple arithmetic had nothing to do with this deal. "I got the biggest bunch of doubletalk both from Mr. Call and their reservations people about this, and what I'm told is no, it's going to cost you $152.80 per person." Seems the railway has a contractual arrangement with the hotels on either end of the ride that requires this bizarre outcome if Hanson were foolish enough to use the tickets he'd won. Not a good deal--but then, hey, what did Hanson expect for nothing? Well, he didn't expect what came next: "I called up my accountant, and he said because I signed that 1099 IRS form, which said the prize was worth $1,352, in my particular tax bracket that's going to cost me $396.80 in federal taxes." Multiply $49.50 times eight, and you wind up with $396. "So," Hanson says, "it's going to cost me 80 cents more in taxes than if I did nothing at all!" Hanson is a reasonable guy. He called COOL-FM and talked to Jessica Tullman, the station's promotion director. "I talked to her at least five times," he says, "and I got absolutely every excuse in the world why they couldn't give me any information at all about this--starting out with, 'Well the person who handled these things no longer works for us,' and, 'We have no paper trail to it.' " Terry Daniels, a radio station marketing official, admits he doesn't know how they arrived at the original $1,352 value of the prize, but said it must have been a "clerical error." A call to the railway went unreturned. If the value of the prize were actually $1,352, as Hanson at first had been led to believe, it would seem the $152.80-per person price quoted by the railway was what the station intended to award, since that number times eight is just over $1,222--roughly what the station purported to give away, minus a bit more than the cost of the cheapo sunglasses. But as it stood last week, it would have cost Hanson that $1,222, plus transportation to Williams, plus $396.80 in taxes to take advantage of COOL-FM's fab free prize. So he surrendered the tickets to the station, and he's hoping they'll tear up his 1099 form. (Daniels says that won't be a problem.) But Hanson's not holding his breath. And he's learned his lesson: "You know, it's really true," he says. "All that glitters is not gold." He's right, of course--like the music COOL-FM plays, it usually turns out to be the same old stale cheese.

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