 Responding to Steiner, Robert Stevens provides examples of what he categorises variously as offers, threats and throffers that fail to meet Steiner's definitions. He gives an example of an intervention he considers a throffer, as opposed to a threat, but in which both compliance and noncompliance are less preferable to the norm. The example is that of someone who makes the demand "either you accept my offer of a handful of beans for your cow, or I kill you". For the subject, keeping the cow is preferred to both compliance and noncompliance with the throffer. Using this and other examples, Stevens argued that Steiner's account of differentiating the three kinds of interventions is incorrect.
