The Most Expensive Mistakes in Business History

THE MOST EXPENSIVE MISTAKES IN BUSINESS HISTORY SESESAE ESESESE Barack Obama spelt 'Barak' on vote ballots Blockbuster nearly bought Netflix ICSTE BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO TISTEN BLOCKBUSTER United States of America Blockbuster Obama's name was misspelt on 130,000 In fact they turned down the offer to buy voter ballots which had already been Netflix multiple times. Not only that but the printed. This resulted in costing the CFO of Blockbuster reportedly 'laughed country over $75,000, as well as probably [them] out their office'. Well they're being quite embarrassing that they spelt probably regretting that decision now! their own President's name wrong! Decca Records not realising The Beatles' potential Typo on Chilean currency DECCA Chile Decca Records and The Beatles A Chilean engraver called Pedro Urzua Lizana In 1961, a very nervous, new band called The misspelled 'Chile' as 'Chiie' which was then Beatles auditioned for Decca Records on New engraved on 1.5 million Chilean coins. Several Year's Day. However, Decca believed that 'guitar employees lost their jobs as a result, and of groups [were] on the way out' and so didn't sign course the country suffered major The Beatles. The loss cost to Decca is unknown, embarrassment. but The Beatles became one of the best-selling bands in the history of music, and so would have made Decca a lot of money. Hoover free flights promotion Gerald Ratner's 'crap' comment The Hoover Company Gerald Ratner In 1992, The Hoover Company decided to launch Gerald Ratner owned a very successful chain of a marketing promotion as they had large amounts jewellers back in the 1980s, but he made a of surplus stock, and needed to sell them to clear reputation for himself when he was making a their warehouses. The promotion told consumers speech addressing the Institute of Directors in that they would receive free airline tickets if they which he called his products "total crap". The spent more than £100 on stock sold by the jewellery was always known to be 'tacky', but company. However, Hoover became inundated nonetheless it was extremely popular with the with huge numbers of customers wanting to public. However, they weren't very impressed purchase stock, not for the goods themselves, but after this comment, and this caused Ratner to for the considerably discounted airlines tickets. have to close around 330 shops in Britain and the This cost Hoover £48 million, and they were later US, and also to lose around £122.3m. bought by Italian manufacturer Candy. Chilean's copper trader's big mistake A missing 'p' An eBay seller Juan Pablo Davila It cost an eBay seller more than half a million on an In 1994, Juan Pablo Davila, who was working antique ale he was auctioning. The ale which was mean to be 'Allsopp's Arctic Ale' was actually listed for Chile's state-owned copper company, Codelco, mistakenly bought stock that he was as 'Allsop's Arctic Ale', which meant of course that actually meant to be selling. He did this by antique dealers couldn't find it when they searched putting several sell contracts into the 'buy' for it. He was happy with his sale when he sold it for column of his computer by accident. This then $304, until 8 weeks later when it was resold for resulted in costing the company/country $175 $503,300 under the right name this time. If only he'd remembered that missing 'P'! million. We can imagine that after this he probably wasn't the most liked man in Chile! Stock Google nearly bought for less than $1 million exchange error Google OAMOO Google MIZLHO Excite was the second biggest search engine back Mizuho Securities Co. in 1999. Larry Page made the offer to sell Google to Excite for $750,000 but with no reciprocal interest. Nowadays, Google is worth more than A Tokyo trader from Mizuho Securities Co. wanted $130 billion and is worth more than 173,333 times to trade one share at 610,000 yen on the stock more than what Excite would have paid for it. exchange back in 2005, but actually sold 610,000 shares for 1 yen each. Consequently, this cost his business approximately $340 million. NASA'S missing hyphen NYC's million dollar typo NASA NASA New York City There was a spacecraft called Mariner 1, which was One extra letter added to a word meant that it meant to fly around Venus. However, because of was not readable by the accounting software that one missing hyphen in the coding used to set was being used. This meant that there was speed and trajectory, the aircraft exploded just five double spending in the transportation fund for minutes after take-off. This mistake cost NASA $80 New York, and so what was meant to cost $1.4 million, and that was back in 1962! million actually cost $2.8 million, along with double the amount of transportation vehicles! A single letter causes 124-year-old business to collapse VW cheating emissions tests UNIT 5/6 TAYLOR & SONS LTD ENG NEERS & FOUNDERS E:022 34556 FAX; 01222 6681 83 ALSO A LLANME NI N POT A LBOTI EAD O E AVONMOJTEI OT25N Taylor & Sons Ltd Volkswagen Companies House found Taylor & Sons Ltd to be It has become known in the media recently bankrupt, when really it was the completely that Volkswagen have installed a deceptive unconnected company, Taylor & Son Ltd. Taylor & piece of software in their vehicles to alter the Sons Ltd lost all their credibility as their suppliers true figures of emission levels. Apparently, thought they'd gone into liquidation, and this 500,000 VW diesel vehicles in the US would snowball effect meant that nothing could be done to emit about 40 times more nitrogen oxide than rectify the reputation of the business. the legal limit by the Environmental Protection Agency. This could end up costing Volkswagen up to $18bn in the US alone. Yellow Pages Sources error www.bbc.co.uk SPAGES www.blogherald.com mentalfloss.com YELLOW www.investopedia.com www.inc.com six-degrees.com www.businessinsider.com The Yellow Pages Banner Travel Services decided to advertise their services in the Yellow Pages. However, the phone book had advertised its specialisation in 'erotic PACK SEND destinations' rather than 'exotic destinations'. This did РАСK attract some interest, but probably not the sort that Anything, Anywhere. Banner Travel Services was hoping for. This resulted in Banner suing the Yellow Pages for $10 million. www.packsend.co.uk