Up-Selling

[Gareth Branwyn]

I've always heard it in the sense that Paul defines it on WordSpy.
Neither _Barron's Dictionary of Marketing Terms_ or _Dictionary of
Business Terms_ has it.

When I was doing a piece for the dearly departed "Industry Standard" on
online business practices in the porno biz, upselling was defined by
several analysts and porn purveyors as (basically) sucking a customer in
via a cheaper (or free) product and then selling them a more expensive
product once you've gotten their attention. This is an extremely common
practice in porno-land, as is the practice defined in the NYPost piece
(automatically charging a person's credit card for a full subscription
after a trail has expired w/o the card owner's expressed consent).
Maybe, since the two practices occur so frequently together, the latter
is now being defined by the former, or at least, that may be where the
Post's confusion lies.

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>    The excellent WordSpy has "upsell," but it's defined there as a retailer trying to sell a more expensive item ("movin' on up").
>    This involves a "free offer," where customers have to call up to cancel credit card charges.
>    From today's NEW YORK POST, 6 January 2002, pg. 7, col. 3:
>
> _Ticket to deception: Ducat-buyers_
> _duped by "free" magazine offer_
> (...)  According to (Attorney General Eliot--ed.) Spitzer, Ticketmaster operators would offer an eight-week, free trial subscription to either Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly.
>    Thousands who accepted the offer were later shocked to find that when the trial period ended, their credit cards had been automatically (Col. 4--ed.) charged for an additional 27-week subscription, Spitzer said.
>    Ticketmaster had passed on the credit-card account information to Time Inc., which is a division of AOL Time Warner.
>    "Most people thought they'd get the free issues and that would be it," said a Spitzer spokeswoman.
>    But under the practice, known as up-selling, a consumer who accepted the trial subscription from Ticketmaster had to specifically call Time Inc. before the trial period ended to let them know they didn't want a paid subscription.
>
> (TICKETMASTER, OFF TOPIC:  I wanted to see an Off-Off-Broadway show; the only number given in the ad was Ticketmaster.  "What city?" I was asked.  Uh, New York.  Ticketmaster charged $7 a ticket, or about 25% of the ticket price.  I bought tickets at the theater--ed.)