Winning Big with Coke Points
How my family struck it rich with Coca-Cola sweepstakes (just kidding. But that would've been cool).
Being bored as a kid was no fun. After I ran out of books to read and toys to play with, I’d complain to my mom that there was nothing to do until she made the inevitable suggestion:
“You can help with the chores.”
Uggghhhhhh. I’d almost always writhe and complain at the suggestion instead of just sucking it up and helping out. Unless it was one particular chore: entering codes from the bottom of Coca-Cola lids into our My Coke Rewards account online.
My Coke Rewards is Coca-Cola’s now-defunct customer loyalty program. You’d have to buy certain Coke products that had super long, teeny tiny codes printed on the inside of each lid. You could redeem those codes online for Coke points, which could then be used to enter sweepstakes or redeem prizes.
In the 2000s, online sweepstakes and reward programs were HUGE. I had at least a handful of friends whose families entered Coke sweepstakes for fun. There were certainly other programs like this, but the Coke program was the only one my family was involved in consistently.
That’s because my dad was one of Coca-Cola’s most loyal customers. Coke and cigarettes were his vices. I can’t tell you how many times I remember him leaving the house to drive to Speedway down the street and get his daily dose.
We collected a ton of Coke lids in those days. At any given time, there was usually a large soup bowl full of lids on the counter that needed to be read and entered into the computer. My mom hated doing it, probably because it was a time-consuming, practically worthless task that also caused eye strain.
When I say these codes were tiny, I mean they were tiny. Each one was at least eight characters long; probably more. It didn’t help that Coke lids are dark red and the print they used for the codes was black. So not exactly the most reader-friendly combination.
As a kid, I could read most of these codes with my naked eye, but even I sometimes needed a flashlight or a magnifying glass. It took forever to enter the lids because you had to type each one in by hand, digit by digit.
This was back in the olden days before you could scan text or QR codes with a phone camera. In other words, this chore was tedious back in 2008.
And yet it was my favorite. Entering Coke lids was exciting because my parents didn’t really care what we did with the points, since most of the stuff you could redeem them for was just branded Coca-Cola merch (practically garbage). The sweepstakes were a little better, but your chances of winning a brand-new TV or a pair of headphones were basically zilch, given how many people entered the drawing.
I remember my parents did give us input sometimes on what we should spend the points on, but it was more of a collaborative effort than simply giving instructions. I’m sad to report that we never won anything cool from the sweepstakes, even though we entered dozens of them. And we had soooooo many points in our account, since nearly every day we got a new Coke lid to enter.
Sometimes I wonder how many points were left in our rewards account when the program shut down in 2017. Probably tens of thousands.
As far as I know, the only relic anyone in my family has from the Coke Rewards days is a little stuffed version of the company’s famous polar bear mascot. It sits on my windowsill now, looking almost as fresh as when I first got it in the mail.
I actually remember the day I bought it (or, in this case, redeemed a heap of points for it). This silly little bear cost thousands of points, and I remember asking my mom if it was okay to redeem so many on a stuffed toy.
After I placed the order, I got a notification that my new toy wouldn’t arrive for three weeks. Three whole weeks was an impossible amount of time for kid me. I remember getting frustrated, and kind of sad. This was also back in the day when it wasn’t common to get shipping updates or tracking numbers for stuff you ordered online, so I was basically in the dark about when I’d get my package.
Then, one day, a nondescript black plastic bag appeared in our mailbox. I’d forgotten about the bear at this point, thinking it’d never come. But guess what!!
Honestly, when I opened the package, I was surprised the bear was so tiny. It’s about as big as my palm and not very cuddly. It’s the kind of toy that’s meant to be placed on an office shelf as a decoration, and not really something to play with.
Part of me was bummed, but the other part of me was just excited I’d gotten a tangible item by redeeming Coke points. After spending all that time reading pathetically tiny print on the bottom of lids, collecting points, and entering impossible sweepstakes, I was finally a winner.
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