CraigDidIt.com Musings from the fourth row and Craig’s own private Walden More »

MyCokeRewards vs. PepsiStuff

I’ve been thinking about a quick and probably oversimple financial analysis of the benefits of the MyCokeRewards.com and PepsiStuff.com rewards programs. I’m typically more of a drinker of Coca-Cola products–mainly Coke Zero and Powerade (after kayaking or cycling)–and have participated in that program for much longer, but the affiliation of PepsiStuff with Amazon.com and the ability to buy music there with the points has gotten me interested in that program as well.

The simpler analysis is probably PepsiStuff. One 20 oz. bottle gets you one point. Five points gets you a song download on Amazon. A song typically goes for 89 cents. So each point is worth about 18 cents. The caveat is that not every song is buyable in this manner.

With MyCokeRewards, I often redeem 220 points for a gold movie pass good at AMC Theatres. The maximum current price of an AMC movie ticket is $9.50. The makes each point worth about 4 cents. One 20 oz. bottle of soda gets you three points, making the value of the points per bottle about 12 cents. I often buy my Coke products in 12-packs, however, and the point value on the 12-pack then works out to 40 cents.

I also saw a sign on the convenience store door that said MyCokeRewards was like, “buy eight, get one free” on 20 oz. bottles. In that case, if the store charges $1.39 for your 20 oz. bottle, the value per point is close to 6 cents and the point value per bottle works out to about 18 cents, which gets us back into the PepsiStuff value ballpark per 20 oz. bottle purchased.

I might have to do a further exercise to see if the point differential would make it beneficial to buy six-packs of 24 oz. plastic bottles rather than 12-packs of 12 oz. cans. Then you’d have to get into the eco-friendliness of plastic bottles vs. aluminum cans, too. I always recycle both, btw.

I have also been saving the Pepsistuff codes and already redeemed enough to recieve two dvd’s. Now after saving enough to get another dvd, the selection has decreased to less than one page of dvd’s. And of that selection there isn’t much very intresting. The selection in the other catagories has really deteriorated too. I’m very disappointed with this promotion. Coke is starting to look a lot better.

Mycokerewards has several gift cards. At the onset of the program each point was worth exactly 17.5 cents. ($100 card for 570 points). There have been several devaluations. Each point is now worth exactly 4 cents. ($25 card for 625 points).

As an indivdual could have been saving for a large prize, initially a laptop was on offer, many thousands of points were often reduced in value. Essentially it is a bait a switch, a fraud. Unless you quickly redeem points for a small item you were likely robbed. The amount that some have been cheated out of exceeds a $1,000.

I find that the Coke rewards points add up to be worth about 4 cents a point (that’s about 12 cents a cap). Pepsistuff points add up to about 20 cents a point, however, I have got more of a variety of items from mycokerewards.com including a portable dvd player, a sandwich maker, and a dvd/vhs player and several articles of clothing. I have only purchased several cd’s from pepsistuff.com. But most of the cd’s that i’m interested in are the ones I already have.

p.s. Btw, I also recycle aluminum cans as well as plastic and glass bottles (in California, we can get Cokes from Mexico made with cane sugar in bottles; no Coke rewards points though)

I used my 30 Pepsi points (roughly $37.50 value) on a drawing for a 8GB Zune. Uexpectedly one showed up 5-6 weeks later. I googled it and found that I could buy one for $160. I think that I am coming out ahead. This drives my Coke drinking friends crazy. Now if only the large screen TV would show up.

I redeemed 75 pepsi points for a vintage 1940’s t shirt.
It took several months before it would ship. Finally, got the notice from Amazon that it was shipping. Several days later, I get a notice from Amazon stating that the credit card used for the shirt was declined. After calling Amazon and checking out details, the credit
card account was a corporate one for Pepsi. I told Amazon that the t shirt was no longer offered and that the Pepsi points had been deducted months ago. Amazon tried several things and I was persistent. Finally a supervisor was able to work it out. Big Thanks to Amazon or I never would have gotten it. It was a problem on the Pepsi end not Amazon. Strange but true.
I’ll stay with 5 pts downloads now.

I participate with both program. It drives me crazy mycokerewards will only permit 10 codes per day. Bottle caps tend to collect in a big pile until I have time to enter them. Pepsistuff doesn’t care if I enter 20 at a time.

I also redeem my caps in both promotions, pepsi ran out of prizes fast and take a long time to bring them back. I had enough points for the 2 way walkie talkies but by the time i was ready to redeem them they were gone, and havent been brought back, so i settled for a couple of t-shirts. Coke has a better promotion right now a little more variety. but some prizes cost more points now than before.

[...] MyCokeRewards vs. PepsiStuff – The post I sometimes wish I had never written. It’s number one with a bullet and far outpaces everything else on the site. Readers seem to like to comment on it, too, but I recently turned those off. The truth is, I pretty much stopped drinking the stuff over a month ago in an effort to resolve a health problem (tinnitus). It didn’t relieve the problem, but I don’t feel any worse for not having all that caffeine and aspartame running around my system so I now only very moderately consume diet cola. [...]