I actually heard a story the other day that relates to this.
Some coke promotion was giving away 1 million dollars by putting a winning messege at the bottom of a can. Some janitor found out that all the employees in the building just throw thier cans away, and he started looking in each one as he took the trash out each night. Lo and behold he found a winner, 1 million bucks. So the next day he goes back to work and brags to all his co-workers, “haha I won a million dollars off a can I found in the trash!” Then all his co-workers who drank coke that day were trying to claim the can saying it was actually there can he found!
Long story short, there is lawsuit now, trying to prove that the person who bought the can is actually the winner.
Several people have raised a good issue; in the baseball card scenario I mentioned it was the seller who had removed the “hidden” value. When he then sold the cards he knew he was defrauded people who were paying for the possibility of getting a foil card. But the Kwik-E-Mart is essentially a neutral agent (assuming Abu didn’t tilt the bottles himself) as they are selling Pepsi’s with no influence over which bottles have a prize and which bottle the customer chooses to buy. A tilting customer in turn is not defrauding subsequent customers, even though he is decreasing their odds of winning. He was just “gaming” the system and any other customer theoretically has the same opportunity.
It’s essentially the same as if there was a model of car in which 50% of the cars made had a brake defect. If one customer comes in and insists on test driving cars until he finds one with good brakes to buy, he has reduced the percentage of good cars on the lot. But that doesn’t mean he’s cheating other customers; they also have an opportunity to test drive the cars and find one with good brakes. It’s not the test driver’s fault if someone doesn’t test drive a car before buying it even though the test driver has increased the odds against him.
I think it’s only unethical if another person is be significantly damaged as a result of your actions. In this case, the worse thing you can claim is the loss of a buck (and you still get the Pepsi you were paying for!)
If their actual odds of winning have shot down, well, it’ll give them a taste of what the rest of their life in this ‘fair and equal’ world is going to be like anyways.
Ethical issues are rarely based on the cash value of the objects involved. If stealing is wrong, it doesn’t matter if you steal a penny or a million dollars.
I disagree. I couldn’t care less if someone took a penny from me, but I’d definitely notice if someone took $1,000,000 (assuming I had that much money to begin with.)
Looking under the soda cap is sneaky, but I don’t think it’s entirely unfair. As I see it, it’s fair because anybody can look under the cap without any special tricks (like a metal detector for instance), and so nobody is at a specific disadvantage.
Those codes are LONG! Plus, The tilting trick only allows you to see if there’s something there. Plus plus, the letters and numbers are imprinted so poorly, sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was typing it in correctly once I had it off the bottle.
If someone took the time and effort to scrawl down the code correctly, I would be nothing less than astounded by their ability.
Little Nemo wasn’t talking about how much one would care. He’s talking about ethics. Stealing is ethically wrong, whether we’re talking about a penny or $1,000,000.
One of the websites that’s linked to in the OP specifically shows you a trick to tilting the bottle and looking. I doubt everyone realizes that this can be done.
Pepsi meant for this to be a game of chance. Just knowing that, makes tilting the bottles so you can buy a winner every time unethical. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t make sure that lifting up bottles and peeking through at a certain angle exposes winners. This is not the same as knowing how to pick fresh melons at the market or how to find a car with good brakes in a car lot.
I’m not saying I’m an angel and above doing this sort of thing. I’m trying to look at this objectively and look at the ethics of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if its also illegal. Not that I think anyone would ever be prosecuted over it, just that its technically illegal.
It’s a low, petty sort of thing to do. When I was a kid, people who did things like this were referred to as “chiselers.” The promotion was set up as a (poorly designed) game of chance. Tilting the bottles makes it no longer a game of chance. Saying that everybody could be a chiseler doesn’t make it ethical.
When I go to the grocery, sometimes there are special peel off coupons on the food. If I see that some of the containers have the special coupons, and it’s something I want, I might cherry pick other containers with the special coupons.
By lifting Pepsi bottles, tilting them at a certain angle and peeking at the underneath of the bottle caps and purchasing only winners, you are robbing other customers who either don’t know about the trick or are ethical enough not to do the same thing of a 1 in 3 chance of buying a winner.
Wait. You’re saying that it’s unethical because some people wouldn’t do it because it’s unethical.
Is it unethical if I look through the milk cooler for the carton with the latest sell-by date?
No. I’m saying its unethical because it robs others of the 1 in 3 chance of buying a winner that Pepsi intended each consumer to have.
No. The dairy farm that packages the milk marks dates clearly visible on the carton for all consumers to see so they can make their own decision. If for some reason you think it may take you a week to to drink the milk, it isn’t unethical for you to purchase milk with a later sell-by date if.
I guess I don’t see the difference. I’m tryiing to see where information that benefits the consumer is unethical if put to use.
If I opened one of those clamshell plastic grape tomato cartons to make sure the hidden tomatoes aren’t rotten, is that unethical?
Yes. Yes, it does.
Just kidding. I check egg cartons, too, just to make sure none are broken. Depriving oneself of information in plain sight isn’t ethical, it’s just… dumb.
Why is this so hard for you to understand? The information on a milk carton was intended for the consumer to use before buying and the information printed under the cap of a Pepsi bottle was intended to be used only after buying. As long as we both agree on that, it should be obvious that lowering other consumers odds of winning a game of chance is unethical.
How is it different than the egg buying or the tomato buying?
If information is available right there, with no destruction of property (which would harm the seller) then how is it different than not buying the dozen eggs with the cracked one? How is it different than putting back the clamshell with the rotten grape tomato in the center? In both the egg case (which is a great example) and the tomato case, I’m interacting with the product to find information that I’m sure the seller and the producer don’t really want me to know. In both the egg case and the tomato case, I’m leaving a higher percentage of cracked eggs and rotten tomatoes for the next person. In both the egg case and the tomato case I am leaving the next person to their own devices when it comes to finding the good eggs and the good tomatoes.
If they are afraid to open the egg carton because they feel that getting a dozen uncracked eggs should just be the luck of the draw, that’s their problem. If they don’t realize that they can open the carton, that is also their problem. I’d sympathize if someone said, “Damn, I forgot to check the eggs and when I got home there was a cracked one.” I wouldn’t sympathize if someone said, “I saw someone checking eggs before she bought them and that just pisses me off because it makes it more likely I’ll get a cracked one!”
The information in all of these examples, Pepsi, eggs, tomatoes, and milk, are right there, waiting to be discovered. And if Pepsi did the same thing last time, I’d defy someone to prove they didn’t mean for this to happen this time.