With the Republican drive to take away funding from anything that’s not a tax cut for the wealthy, schools latch on to anything that helps them supplement their supply budgets.
I’ve known about Boxtops for Education for a long time, but only recently I became aware that schools also take advantage of My Coke Rewards. Need another TV in your school but don't have the budget for it? Enter enough codes on My Coke Rewards, you might just have been able to get it that way.
You buy a bottle of Coke or any other product bottled by the Coca-Cola Company, and there almost certainly is an alphanumeric code (or a base 36 number, if you prefer) printed on the inside of the bottle cap. The cans don’t have the codes, but the boxes they come in do.
If you entered the code on My Coke Rewards, you would have gotten 3 points for a bottle (regardless of the bottle’s size) or 10 points for a 12-pack of cans. You could have chosen to use your points for little rewards, like a free Coke, or to enter sweepstakes.
Or you could have tried to accumulate them for bigger things, like movie tickets, Coke collectibles or flat screen TVs. Obviously you can only enter each code once (you get a gentle reminder if you have already entered a code).
As far as I know, they’re still printing the codes on the bottles and boxes, and will continue to do so in the future. But you can’t enter them on the My Coke Rewards website anymore.
You can now enter the codes on the Coca-Cola (U.S.) website in order to get rewards, but the new rewards program is getting very inflexible. You can no longer accumulate points and decide on a reward later.
Now you enter codes with the intention to use them for a specific reward within a specific period of time. For instance, I recently entered codes to get a free movie ticket and free Coke at AMC Theaters (which I used to go see Megan Leavey).
You have to enter the codes before a deadline specific to the reward that you want. For me this is not as much of a problem because I have a whole bunch of codes I should have entered long ago, when the program was more flexible.
Other people who don’t have as many codes might have a problem: they might enter all the codes they have at the moment but it’s not enough for the reward in question, then forget about it and neglect to enter more codes before the deadline. Then all the codes they entered for that reward are essentially wasted.
If you still have a point balance on My Coke Rewards, you have to midnight tonight to use up those points (I think it’s the Eastern time zone, I’m not sure). Perhaps it’s nobler to donate the points, but I’ve been using them up in sweepstakes to win things like pre-loaded debit cards.
And yeah, I know, the Coca-Cola Company is not a government agency (and it should never act like one, but that’s a whole other topic). They can run their rewards program any way they like.
And also, it’s a very minor issue compared to the company’s environmental footprint. Still, I think it’s important enough that you should be aware of it.
In short: you can no longer enter codes on MyCokeRewards.com, but you can still spend down your point balance if you act before midnight tonight. A new rewards program is already up and running, but it is very inflexible compared to My Coke Rewards.