Why does Coca-Cola screw over schools in My Coke Rewards?

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We drink a lot of soda here at the office, since we have a volume deal with a local distributor, one of the many benefits of working at the Student Loan Network. As a result, I collect and redeem a LOT of bottle caps for the My Coke Rewards program. One of my favorite things, of course, is to donate Reward Points to helpful causes, but recently, I was looking at the regular rewards vs. the school rewards programs, and I’ve noticed a distinct sense of unfairness – to help schools, it felt like you had to redeem far more points per material good than in the regular program.

Not being satisfied with a vague feeling, I decided to do a little comparison shopping, and worked up the following spreadsheet.

Notes: PPD is points per dollar. As much as possible, I tried to stick to real world pricing engines like Amazon and Google Checkout, and tried to pick the item depicted in the My Coke Rewards interface in the comparison shopping engines.

Click here for the full version.

My suspicions were not only confirmed, but the magnitude of unfairness is 3.5x – a school item on average is 3.5x more costly in terms of reward points to real world value than the regular giveaway items.

So what gives, Coke? I would think if you’re trying to build goodwill, items in the school channel program would be CHEAPER on a points per dollar basis than regular items, rather than 3.5x more expensive. Is this simply a way of saying that people are suckers when it comes to supporting charity and can’t do math? Or is this saying that Coke would rather hand out trinkets to consumers directly than throw greater financial support to educational programs? (that’s what the numbers say)

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Comments

9 responses to “Why does Coca-Cola screw over schools in My Coke Rewards?”

January 2, 2009

Michele

Why do they like to screw over us
MYCoke Rewards members?they have removed the tv,microscope,camera and all the good rewards from the limited time rewards.they never said how many days are left.they even removed them from my favorites in case i'm senile and wont remember i favorited them.

Reply
January 2, 2009

Michele

Why do they like to screw over us
MYCoke Rewards members?they have removed the tv,microscope,camera and all the good rewards from the limited time rewards.they never said how many days are left.they even removed them from my favorites in case i'm senile and wont remember i favorited them.

Reply
August 18, 2009

tazzy18

You're such a kind man. All I could say it at least by drinking your Coke you could help a lot of students, though you might want to lessen it because you might get sick.

Reply
August 19, 2009

tazzy18

You're such a kind man. All I could say it at least by drinking your Coke you could help a lot of students, though you might want to lessen it because you might get sick.

Reply
October 23, 2009

Vivian Broadfoot

You compared for the school so how does Coke points compare to real dollars on the consumer point system . Does it stink more or less that the school system. Ironically I just got out school registered.

Reply
October 24, 2009

Vivian Broadfoot

You compared for the school so how does Coke points compare to real dollars on the consumer point system . Does it stink more or less that the school system. Ironically I just got out school registered.

Reply
May 16, 2010

Rusty Whitman

If Coke wants to keep on screwing us lets switch brands for awhile and see how much they enjoy not making a huge profit,, whats it cost to make a can 5 cents maybe, this company makes alot of money from us the consumer but gives almost nothing back, these guys are completly CHEAP and thats just putting it mildly, I never read or hear about any humanitarian efforts put forth by coke, someone should really look into these squirrels, also I never hear about anyone winning a thing from there my coke rewards site, whats the deal????

Reply
May 17, 2010

Rusty Whitman

If Coke wants to keep on screwing us lets switch brands for awhile and see how much they enjoy not making a huge profit,, whats it cost to make a can 5 cents maybe, this company makes alot of money from us the consumer but gives almost nothing back, these guys are completly CHEAP and thats just putting it mildly, I never read or hear about any humanitarian efforts put forth by coke, someone should really look into these squirrels, also I never hear about anyone winning a thing from there my coke rewards site, whats the deal????

Reply
May 17, 2010

Rusty Whitman

If Coke wants to keep on screwing us lets switch brands for awhile and see how much they enjoy not making a huge profit,, whats it cost to make a can 5 cents maybe, this company makes alot of money from us the consumer but gives almost nothing back, these guys are completly CHEAP and thats just putting it mildly, I never read or hear about any humanitarian efforts put forth by coke, someone should really look into these squirrels, also I never hear about anyone winning a thing from there my coke rewards site, whats the deal????

Reply