Snapple Makes a Sucker Out of Me
Don't get me wrong. I like Snapple tea. I buy the Snapple Peach Ice Tea several times a year when it's on sale. I particularly like the fact that although at 39 grams it is relatively high in sugar, Snapple does not contain high-fructose corn syrups
Recently it was on sale at Publix, so I brought home three 6-packs of Snapple All Natural Peach Tea (it was a buy 2, get 1 free deal). I noticed a little graphic at the bottom of the label that said "THE FINALE" next to a star.
I found a star under one of my Snapple bottle caps, and got a little excited, so I read the label more carefully. The label said "Find a star and you could attend THE FINALE" and on the side it said if you found a star you could win a trip to the America's Got Talent Finale "or other great prizes."
If your cap has a star, you're a winner!
Turns out, the Snapple tea bottles have stars under some lids -- and I am betting under lots and lots of bottle caps -- with numerical codes.You have to go to Snapple.com to redeem your code. Once there, you have to register on the site, giving them the kind of info I DO NOT LIKE TO GIVE OUT: email, name, age, address, phone number...
And those other great prizes? Not so great: a Hulu one-month trial; a coupon for Snapple, a Snapple screen saver, and a Snapple calendar. The only one I would be REMOTELY interested in would be the coupon, and let's be honest -- it's not a "great" prize.
In for a penny, in for a pound
But my foot was already in the door. In for a penny, in for a pound, so I begrudgingly took several minutes to fill out the form just in case I won the trip. No such luck. I won my choice of the Snapple screen saver or the calendar.
I picked the Snapple calendar. At least I would GET something that way, right? Nope. It's a download calendar (my computer already has one that is much more user-friendly, thank you very much) and it promotes Snapple every day. Great for Snapple maybe, but not so great for me.
America's Got Suckers
Snapple, you make people like me feel like idiots for being suckered in by your promise of "great prizes," and the prizes are almost all Snapple promotions. We waste our time giving you info we don't really want to give you, and you offer us stuff we really don't want to get in return. Shame on you, Snapple, for fooling us, and shame on me for knowing better and still filling out the registration.
To add insult to injury, one of my bottles was only 1/3 full. The seal was fully in tact -- I checked -- and there was no sign of leakage on the cardboard container. The bottle was simply missing about 2/3 of its tea.
I ask you, Snapple, if everyone with a star is a winner, then why do I feel like such a loser?
Leave a comment below if you were also suckered by the Snapple Star promotion.
Comments
I googled "won a snapple screensaver" and found your blog.
I love Snapple tea just as much as the next person, but what a friggin' stupid scam.
Thanks for brightening my Thursday with your humor.
Maybe Snapple is doing badly financially and just can't afford good prizes. Perhaps they are about to go under. Such cheap "prizes" would indicate the company is not doing well. My condolences, Snapple, for not being able to afford decent prizes, because surely you wouldn't treat your customers so badly if you were operating at a decent profit.
Maybe, all "winners" should stop buying their products for a month. I will do that so I could feel a little better about beeing tricked into scam from formerly reputable company.
-- Miro Mandich
I get your frustration completely. However, to my knowledge, Snapple (nor any other company, for that matter) cannot make anyone give up their personal info. It's up to the individual to make that choice on their own.
I think we all "get" that we gave our info to Snapple of our own accord, however begrudgingly, in the hopes of winning one of the "great" prizes. My issue is 1. The use of the word "great" to describe the crappy prizes and 2. Taking the time to fill out the personal info Snapple required to claim the "great" prizes, only then to learn the prizes were, in fact, not great at all. It really felt almost like a bait and switch.
You were lucky to get the coupons. They aren't "great" prizes, but they are decent prizes. The rest of us won Snapple advertising gimmicks. Congrats on your coupons!
To note, I have won the free Snapple coupons already. The promotion is also broken, you can apparently enter the same codes more than once, one of these times I won another free coupon... So it seems winning prizes are randomly chosen every time a code is entered and it doesn't make used codes unable to be redeemed again. As such it seems that there is no specific code that wins a certain prize.
Due to the false claims and the how broken it is, I do believe there is justification for it to be reported to the Attorney General's Office.
There's only 5 prizes it seems, and only 4 have been within my reach. Also to note, you can only redeem 3 codes per day.
The downloadable prizes are junk and winning them means nothing as they can be given away to anyone once you downloaded them. Also to note, I won 15 of them, now what am I really supposed to do with 15 duplicate pieces of data?
Snapple definitely gets my nomination for "Worst Contest of 2012 Award."
You just saved me time and aggravation. So tired of being led to the wolves.
You are welcome, rae! I'm glad to save you a little time and aggravation. Since writing this post, I have also saved myself the aggravation and ignored those Snapple bottle caps, but I do still drink the tea!
Far northern CA ~Kathi
I decided to google it to see what was up with it and found your blog. I'm filing the cap in my round file. Snapple better be glad they don't have competition using sugar instead of HFCS or they'd be in serious trouble. Love your line, "Snapple, if everyone with a star is a winner, then why do I feel like such a loser?"
Even though I didn't bite, I still feel like a loser cause I wasted the time to investigate.
I'm sending a link to this post to their PR department.