I drink Dr Pepper. For the last few months, they’ve had a Indiana Jones themed contest. Open your bottle, enter the code into a website, and you have a 1-6 chance of winning.
First of all, what happened to standing in the 7-11, twisting off the top, and seeing, right then, if you won? No. Now I have to keep the top until I have a chance to log on, and enter that silly code. I’m sure it makes business sense. It’s like coupons and rebates. Only a portion of the population is actually going to jump through all the hoops, so it’s a lot cheaper for a company to do it.
6 attempts (ok, should be soon), 10 secret codes (dang, not a good time to buy a lottery ticket), 14 attempts (“Sorry, you were so close. Please try again.”) Finally, secret code number 15. I’m now in the company of about 6.5% of people who haven’t won anything yet. But wait! The message is different.
YOU WIN. PRESS HERE TO SEE YOUR PRIZE.
<click>
Congratulations, you’ve won a Dr Pepper screensaver. Click here to download it.
Huh? A free screensaver is a prize? What happened to my trip to Tibet? Or my baseball cap? Or the free can of Dr Pepper? I WANT MY REAL PRIZE, DAMD IT!
Now, I’m sure there are some of you thinking "This is Dr Peppers way of keeping people playing. If you make it to secret code number 15, they give you the virtual kewpie doll. Nope. The final 4 digits of my 16 digit secret code are actually “UWIN”.
Who dreamed up this one? I’d have been happier to continue to recieve the message that I’d almost but not quite won. Now all I can think is, this company is so cheap that they are limiting how many copies of a stupid screen saver they are giving away. A screensaver that I’m sure they own, so it doesn’t cost them any more to hand out 6 or 6 million copies of it. Phooey. Matching 2 numbers in the lottery (which doesn’t pay out anything) is more exciting then this.
