Morality of tilting Pepsi bottles?

Great Debates
81

OK - putting this in a slightly provocative way :

You’re saying that you want Pepsico to be your ethical arbiter ?

Why is what Pepsico wants the deciding factor? I believe it could be argued that once the bottles hit the shelves the game belongs to the customers, and they can tweak the rules as they see fit.

If I get a cap with a code, and don’t visit the itunes site, is this unethical ? I think it’s safe to assume that Apple intended me to visit their site.

How about if I tilt the bottles and specifically buy the ones that don’t have a code ? I’m clearly breaking the rules, but am I harming anyone ? Is it unethical ?

82

No problem. I’m offline until Sunday at the earliest, so take your time. I’ll try to boil it down:

Normal betting is to pick 3 numbers out of 8 to finish in the top 2. Examples of common bets are 3-5-7 (wins if first and second are 5-3, 3-7, 7-5, etc…) and 2-4-6.

Due to the structure of the scoring system, you will very rarely see 1-2 win first and second, for example. This I discovered through mathematical analysis (tilting the bottle) that not everyone would be capable or motivated to discover for themselves.

Similarly, I identified various combinations that would be likely to come in first and second. I had a dozen or so guides (I used to go every Tuesday) laying around that had printed results from the night before, and I noticed that “good numbers” did indeed seem to hit an awful lot.

So I downloaded all the results for a year from their official website, and then did brute force data analysis, flagging every single possible bet that had a net win for the year. (Tilting the bottle big time.) I had predicted many of them, but a couple were a surprise. (1-2, as it turns out, always paid much higher than other combinations, so it was technically a winner, though it didn’t hit very often.)

So I went and bet these numbers, and did well. My wins diluted the payouts of the other gamblers who made the same bets “straight up”, without “tilting the bottle”. (Instead of the typical $1,000 payouts, they were paying around $300. I don’t know how much of that was my action or my bad luck.) Also, several ticket agents commented that I was betting good numbers, further reinforcing that I was, indeed, “in the know”.

Why is it unethical to maximize your odds in a game of chance, even at the expense of others playing? It’s certainly not my job to maximize their odds of winning at my expense, is it?

In effect, it would be akin to looking up every winner your lottery has paid out since its inception, and finding a half dozen combinations that hit at least once a year. If you found that out, would it be unethical to play those numbers? You would be diluting the jackpot of the “legitimate” players.

As a separate question, let’s assume Pepsi intentionally avoided opaque covers in order to entice people who otherwise (for a 1 in 3 chance) would never dream of drinking their swill, but for a guaranteed song, they’d choke it down. The idea being that after enough of them, you’d get hooked. Would it still be unethical?

83

Its not about Pepsi. Its about denying other consumers the 1 in 3 odds of winning they are paying for.

See above.

That’s a pretty weak argument. What would you think if I used that argument in my example of buying scratch off tickets with x-ray specs?

Can you get any sillier?

84

I explained this already. Sometimes it is unethical to maximize your odds and sometimes it isn’t. If I am using x-ray specs to buy winning scratch off tickets or tilting Pepsi bottles and buying only winners, its unethical. If I’m maximizing my odds in poker by learning to read tells off of other players faces, it isn’t. Its an intended part of the game; its clearly not cheating. If I’m betting on football and I’m plugging in all sorts of stats on which team plays better on rainy days, etc., I’m clearly not cheating again. Using all knowledge available to you is the name of the game in sports betting. Same thing with your jai-alai method. However, if you had inside info that a quarterback was going to intentionally throw the game, betting would be unethical. Similarly, what Martha Stewart did was unethical and she wound up in jail.

Back to x-ray specs: If I were to design such a device using materials I obtained at RadioShack, would it be unethical for me to use them to buy winning scratch off tickets?

85

Then why didn’t they tint the bottles? Obscure the codes? If Pepsi really cared about tilters, they’d have done the bare minimum to make the bottles tilt-proof.

The more likely explanation: Pepsi knows people are looking, and they don’t care. If this contest was really blind, then the bottles might be bought by people who don’t have computers, or Internet access, or deaf people. That’s wasted caps. Pepsi wants people to redeem the caps because they’ll be looking at a lot of ads on the site. And maybe, while they’re looking at those ads, one out of ten people will buy a song outright. And maybe one out of fifty will decide to buy an iPod based on those ads. So it is an advantage to them that as many caps are redeemed as possible. Giving you the advantage of seeing the caps first ensures that more buyers are going to be the demographic of people that want to download music from the Internet. Profit!

86

Now I understand what you are saying here, and I agree that it would be unethical to use on scratchers. But I disagree with comparing tilting bottles for winning caps and buying scratchers you know are winners. Only because winning songs off Itunes is an ancillary benefit to buying the soda. Even if they lose, they get what they paid for and what they originally wanted, that is a carbonated beverage. With scratchers, the only thing you gain is a chance to win money. People who are buying Pepsi just for the soda get a chance at winning a song.

87

But if you buying soda JUST for the reason of winning a song. Sending in for game pieces is actually more cost effective. Like I said in my previous post, if you are buying soda’s because you’re thisty, winning a song is just a side benefit. If you are buying soda’s just to win songs (without tilting), you are going lose money in the long run.

88

You are making the assumption that all consumers are buying Pepsi strictly for the cola and the chance of winning something is not influencing their buying decisions at all. I highly doubt the Pepsi corp. would bother with this if that were true.

So? Who says consumers always do what is cost effective? Maybe they haven’t realized this. Maybe they like Coke a little more but with the 3 to 1 odds of winning something they decide to stock up on Pepsi. They are paying for cola, they are paying for the bottle, and they are paying for 3 to 1 odds of winning something. They deserve everything they pay for.

What if you couldn’t see the winners by tilting the bottles but you could see the winners with my x-ray specs? Would it now be okay to use them because in your view winning something is only a side benefit and the consumer still gets the cola?

89

AH! My sperm!

90

My x-ray specs don’t use ionizing radiation. They’re just called x-ray specs. :smiley:

91

No, you’re right that wouldn’t be ok. I would consider that cheating because of your unfair advantage.

I’m saying that all games of chance have a level playing field. Tilting the bottles or using x-ray specs would unlevel that playing field.

But, my argument is that in order to level that playing field back to where it was, there is a no purchase necessary disclaimer. Because in all chance games like this, someone will undoubtedly find an advantage. I think people realized this and that is where the no purchase necessary comes into play. So in turn, there is actually no way to unlevel the playing field because paying money in order to play the game is not required.

As with scratchers, paying money IS required to play the game.

92

Actually, the reason no purchase is necessary is because if it was, the government would consider it gambling and Pepsi wouldn’t be allowed to run this operation.

Well, money is actually required. Pepsi won’t give you as many free chances to win as you want. You have to pay for each request for a free ticket with stationery and a stamp. They don’t allow you to request as many as you want. Besides, since everyone is allowed to send for tickets and this doesn’t exclude anyone, the playing field is still level.

93

Sorry. I was using the F-Ray to look inside things.

94

Bolded. That was my point.

And yes you can send in for as many as you want. They don’t limit how many entries you get on their official rules website. Basically you spend 45-50 cents on an envelope to get a 1 in 3 chance at winning a dollar. Pepsi’s go for $1.00 to $1.50 so it pretty much works out.

95

macabresoul, I don’t get where you’re coming from. You said that you do now see how its unfair to tilt bottles or use x-ray specs but its not unfair because you can get tickets through the mail?

The playing field is level if everyone has a limit to how many tickets they can request per envelope (which there is) and if no one used x-ray specs or tilted bottles.

You are making the playing field unlevel by cheating. You have the ability through tilting bottles or using x-ray specs of guaranteeing yourself both a Pepsi and a winning bottle cap. People who aren’t cheating don’t have that guarantee. When they buy a bottle of Pepsi they have lower odds of winning. It doesn’t matter that they can spend additional money on stamps and envelopes to have a chance of winning.

96

What’s stopping the other customers from tilting the bottles ?

We’re talking about Pepsi. Why don’t you rebut the weak argument ?

Now that is a weak argument.

It’s not a game of chance, in fact it’s not a game at all, merely part of Pepsi’s promotional strategy. I still haven’t seen you explain why Pepsi’s intentions determine the ethics of this situation.

97

The paralysis of their overpowering sense of ethics, apparantly.

98

I buy 2-3 Diet Mountain Dews daily. My gas station must have a surplus of winning bottles because I am getting codes more often than 1 in 3. Since it is against the rules for me to give away my bottlecaps, I don’t have a problem with others tilting the bottles. Since I will buy my Diet Mtn Dew whether I win or lose, I would rather have someone else get the winning caps since I won’t use them. I guess I should start tilting the bottles to make sure I’m not buying the winning caps.

99

I’m probably getting into dead horse beating territory here and drifting away from the OP’s premise but… surely once you’ve bought the drink, the cap is your property and you can give it away if you want to.

So I assume Pepsi’s contention is that although the cap is your property, the code itself remains their intellectual property, and they get to set the rules regarding its dissemination. However, since they can’t stipulate purchase as a condition for the right to use the code (lottery), how can they determine who has the right to use the code ? The only difference between you and the guy you give the cap to is that you made a purchase.

100

Because of this fact, I don’t think your gambling comparisons are relevant. It is simply not a game of chance.

In addition, where did you get it in your head that games of chance require a level playing field? There is no such animal in the poker world. Even in Blackjack, it isn’t a level playing field. So your arguments that upsetting the level playing field ring hollow to me, and that’s in games of chance, which the Pepsi promotion is not.

Then again, one could argue that poker and blackjack (to a lesser extent) are games of skill, not chance. Fine. I consider the Pepsi promotion a game of skill, wherein the better skilled players are able to tilt the bottle, as opposed to poker players where the better skilled players can read their opponents’ tells. Is it still unethical?