Manticore, hardcore soft-drinker
Once upon a time you could purchase a bottle of your favorite soft drink, look under the cap, and realize that YOU’RE A WINNER. With the occasional disappointment of a PLEASE PLAY AGAIN you had fairly good odds of at least winning a new soda, or maybe even a discount towards a new soda.
Now it seems like many items (and not just soft drinks) give you a ’special code’ that you can enter onilne to unlock wondrous prizes and earn points!!!! You go to the website, give them your information, promise them your first born child, and then you can get a piddling number of points towards your points total. And then once you have enough points, you can have them MAIL you a coupon.
The bottle cap? Trash. The envelope? Trash. The money they spent on the stamp? Gone (at least to them). Wouldn’t it be far simplier to just let me win by opening the danged bottle? The cap has a dual purpose – cap and prize!
Only after drinking a gerbillion drinks could you use your points towards anything that wasn’t just another soft drink. I find the whole premise of giving me some number that makes me look something up online that is just a ploy for you to get my mailing address and to send me stupid junk mail idiotic. I just want my free drink! Or even nothing, really, the tempation to jump through these stupid hoops just isn’t worth the eventual free drink I may one day get if I ask for the coupon to be mailed and then actually use it.
Rantasaurus Says: Dear Manticore, here at Cola Corp, we hear and understand your frustrations. That is why we’ve enclosed the following customer service request form, to be detatched and mailed back to us. After this, we will mail you a customer service problem description form and you will be one step closer to have your voice heard! Thank you for drinking Cola Corp, goodbye.
People really go through that kind of effort? I always thought that the codes printed on the lids were concealing some kind of subliminal message.
Do people save them up and enter them into the website in batches or one by one? Do they hire the neighborhood kids and pay them a commission for every winning cap?