Another Corporate Scam: Is My Coke Rewards Really Worth Your Time and Effort?

Over 3 million people have signed up this year for Coca-Cola's My Coke Rewards programs. I have even gotten in on the hype. But one must ask themselves, is it really worth all your time and effort? Not to mention the Type II diabetes many of us will get, if we actually drink all those cokes to get the "big" prizes.

First, let's look at how the promo works. Simply, one goes to mycokerewards.com and signs up. (Mypoints.com is offering 100 mypoints to sign up at MCR, great deal if you collect those.) After one signs up, they simply enter their codes from under the caps, in the flaps, or in the shrink-wrap of over 13 Coca-Cola products. After you enter your codes, you can search MCR's long list of prizes, and redeem your points for items.

Sounds simple enough! However, as with anything in life, things are never simple and rarely easy. MCR has limits on how many codes you can enter per day (maximum of 10) for you are only able to enter a minimum of 30 points to a maximum of 100 points. MCR is smart though, if they made entering the points unlimited, then people would be redeeming at lightening speed, and depleting MCR's already short supply of prizes.

Now let's continue with this and address their prizes. Their prizes range from a Game Piece - Coca-Cola Style for 3 points, to a free case of Coke for 100 points, to an authentic Coca-Cola Westinghouse Cooler worth 18,000 points. Some of the prizes they have are ridiculous, and some are quite nice, while others border on ridiculous! Just the same everyday people are stockpiling their codes and hoping to attain their ultimate prizes. But are some of these prizes un-attainable? Let do the math. If one signed up on January 1, 2007, and the promo ends December 31, 2007, it gives the user 1 year to save up points. Ok ,so if he drinks 16.5 bottles of coke a day, for 365 days, then enters codes from each drink, then even if he enters the codes every single day, (assuming someone can actually drink THAT much Coke and not die!) then on December 31, he will have accumulated 18067 points. He now can redeem that for the big prize.

But wait!! There is always a catch to everything, it seems as of today, MCR has sold out of the Biggest Prize and no longer has it to offer. That doesn't seem right. In fact, if you peruse the online blogs, you will see thousands of complaints against MCR. It seems that MCR is constantly out of prizes and continually raising the point values on many of the other prizes. Ultimately they are determined to make it harder and harder for one to achieve their point goal to redeem their "fantastic" prizes. MCR seems to be making it impossible for the common folk to achieve any of their prizes that have real value.

I have also experienced this first hand. I was saving up my points to get sky miles from Delta. It looked like a pretty decent deal too. You can redeem 100 MCR points for 500 Sky miles. I was doing this promo for about a month and managed to redeem enough point for 8,000 sky miles. I am glad I did it quickly though, because now it seems that option has disappeared. Now one can redeem 1000 points for 5,000 sky miles. Sadly I have given up on MCR. I am not interested in getting a game piece, or a music download, or even a Coca-Cola Cooler. No, I wanted my sky miles. That was the whole entire reason I joined MCR! Curiously, I emailed MCR about the issues with redemption of the prize I wanted. I asked them why they pulled it and will they be returning it. Their caring response was to send me the same email for 5 days straight. Thank you for contacting MyCokeRewards.com. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us regarding this issue.

[Our Technical Support team is aware of the problem and we are working in cooperation with the appropriate management to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. We thank you for your patience.

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us again.

MCR has sent auto-sent this same message to me for five days in a row. I don't blame them though, with 100's of thousands of people complaining, I am sure they don't have time to respond to every single one of the complaints. Though, they might consider changing their program, by making prizes more attainable, as well as putting back in prizes that people wanted. After all, it is a marketing scheme. "Buy coke - get prizes!" However, I don't think they fully thought it through when they planned this great marketing scheme.

I have this message for Coca-Cola. "Better luck next time Coca-Cola. One could drink themselves to death, if they had to consume 16.5 cokes a day! You probably should prepare yourselves for the thousands of people that are going to sue you because they developed Type II diabetes, and became morbidly obese after trying to drink enough coke to achieve your prizes. "