The Diet Coke Code

Back at the first of the year I held out on my CPA friend about a sweepstakes I was entering. Coke celebrated the Winter Olympics by putting codes on their product. Entering these codes on-line paired you with an Olympic event. If the USA medaled in that event, you won five two-liter bottles. Since no purchase was necessary, you could get codes on line. Most every day from mid January until the end of February, I got the maximum three codes for both Ceil and me.

Since college I have loved to drink Coke, and since Diet Coke came out it has been my drink of choice. Many days it would be the only liquid I would drink…morning, day, and night. Of my habits, drinking Diet Coke is among my worst. At restaurants I could down four glasses during a meal. Then in the first half of 2005 I drastically curtained my Diet Coke consumption, and along with not eating to excess, lost almost 35 pounds. I fell off the wagon after the New Year, and was back on my Coke habit. I have also collected souvenir Coke bottles and cans, just short of it being an obsession.

I always remember reading in the Georgia Tech newspaper how the student sportswriter was selected to attempt the halftime half-court shot during a men’s basketball game. He made the shot…and won a year’s supply of Coke. His prize was delivered to his apartment all at once, and he often wrote of the stacks of Cokes piled in his apartment. How cool, I thought.

Once the Olympics began, the USA began winning medals. Ceil and I began getting emails that we had won the five two-liters. They kept coming and coming, and by the end of the contest, we had accumulated well over three hundred bottles. Could this be too good to be true? The rules only stated that the certificates would be mailed after mid-April. Not wanting to count chickens before they were hatched, I didn’t get my hopes up. Perhaps Ceil and I would only get one award each.

In early May one envelope arrived in the mail, with a single coupon, good for five two-liters. Ceil knows that I often enter sweepstakes, but I never fill her in, because so few are won. Now I told her the number of envelopes that could come, though I still had my doubts. Was that it? But a few more came the next day. She began calling after the mail had arrived, with the daily tally of Coke coupons. They began to arrive in droves. Before they quit coming, it seemed like I got more coupons than I had expected, based on the number of emails we had received. Now that I think about it, some of the emails told of multiple wins on a particular day.

Now the question was, what to do with all these Cokes? Drink them, for sure, but all the coupons must be redeemed by the end of August. I have been bringing Cokes to all the parties and small group meetings we’ve attended, as well as keeping several brands in the fridge at work for the office and plant. We always drink lots of Cokes at the beach in July, so I told my father-in-law, the main grocery shopper, that the Cokes are on me this year.

Seems too good to be true, right? What possible downside is there? Diet Cokes in hand, I started pounding them down, more than ever. But for the first time in my life, for some reason I began getting a funny feeling in my head when I drank a lot of Coke. I also began getting headaches, another first time occurrence. Once this well of Diet Coke runs dry I can see me jumping off the wagon, drinking water instead.

The other big downside is the incredibly laborious task of redeeming the coupon. Even though I’ve almost exclusively redeemed all the coupons at the Krogers nearest home and work, often using the same cashier, it always stupefies the cashier when they try to process the coupon. Often they must ask for help, and it becomes a longer process. Once the bar code is scanned, the screen says to key in the amount of the five Cokes. Sometimes they want to key in the price for one, and I have to give a gentle reminder.

So far I have redeemed 19 coupons for 95 two-liters, in little over a month. I try to purchase only one other item, as I can always make another Kroger run later in the day. They go fast…right now I only have about seven stocked up at home.

One benefit of getting them at Kroger: the dollar value of the Cokes count toward the $100.00 in spending needed to get $0.10 off a gallon at the Kroger Fuel Center.

Another benefit is my next small obsession, similar to getting the three codes a day to enter in this Olympic contest. The two-liter Cokes all come with a red cap…with another code! These can be entered at www.mycokerewards.com to be redeemed for more merchandise. I have my eye on a nice pair of Addidas for me or Will. I have about 400 points so far…well on my way!