Coke Rewards Blackmail

I have been collecting the caps from Coke product bottles because I enter the codes on the underside of the caps to my account.  I don't know when I started it, but it has to be about ten years.  And I don't remember why I started it, although I guess that I learned that I could get something I wanted if I accumulated enough of them.  Anyway, it doesn't seem that long ago that I began.  Coke Rewards feels like a gimmick, a marketing campaign, something that has the lifespan of a mayfly and burns out just as quickly.

But I've gotten over 1,000 points.  Now, I don't remember if I ever redeemed those points for the object that I started collecting bottlecaps for.  Nor do I recall using those codes for anything.  Well, I did toss in three points here and there for these sweepstakes, where I enter in order to get tickets or clothes or something.  Never won, so I stopped.

I have still collected these caps and side panels from 12-pack boxes.  Since my parents are gone, in fact, I have not put them in the various plastic cups I keep after I buy pop or beer from sporting events, like I usually do.  No, I have arranged them into two neat lines on the opposite end of the dining room table from where I am blogging at least the first part of this blog right now, a table that is festooned with a whole bunch of mail and shit, some of it my folks', some of it mine.

I meant to leave out those caps to remind me that, when I have downtime, I should revisit my account and put them in.  From time to time I remind myself to do that, but to be honest, I have had no downtime to put them in.  Not for a long time.

So late Sunday I was in bed, ready to go to bed when I scrolled one last time through my e-mail.  I saw that Coke had sent me a message saying that I needed to do something with my account or else all my hard-earned points I've accumulated over a decade would be gone.  This wasn't downtime; this became a priority.  So I hopped out of bed and got back on my computer (which I had shut down because the Internet wasn't working, and I'll talk about that some other time).

I logged in ... and saw that my points were 0.  WTF???  I thought I had three days, and that message was sent a day ago, so how the hell could I have lost all my points?!  So I did what I really didn't want to do: Chat with an agent.  Those things are always awkward.  I never get the sense that I'm having a real conversation; instead, I am talking to someone whose reading from a script.  And that someone, BTW, probably is South Asian, so I don't know if she or he understands my culture-based colloquialisms or, frankly, what I'm trying to say.  But I needed to raise holy hell because Coke stole points they said I had two days to keep.

There wasn't much conversation.  I wanted to type out my situation, but I had a Twitter-like character limit.  So I typed in something like, "My points.  Gone.  Why?"  Turns out I don't think I was speaking to an Indian or Indonesian call center worker, but an algorithm.  It picked up on "points gone" and spat out this pat, FAQ-like answer ... which actually was helpful.  The answer had a link I clicked on, and that brought up a question of why I had used my account in the last 90 days.  I chose the closest answer to what was the truth -- it was too time-consuming.

And then all my points magically appeared.  A one-time reprieve, Coke said.  But, they "suggested" I sign up for reminders, which I guess is a reminder beside the one I got Saturday saying that I had three days before the company was going to take all my points away.  In guilt and shame, I signed up.  That's alright; I gave them the one that all my spam goes to.

So Coke Rewards has shown mercy on me.  I don't like what I consider to be a provocative act, but I had intended to finally get rid of those lines of Coke caps, and maybe that was the push I needed.  But, you know, still. ...