Oh, we'll just see about that, Coca-Cola. We'll see... · 1:43pm Oct 7th, 2020
Possibly The Final Postscript to the old My Coke Rewards program (at least until we find out if there's a holiday instant win game this year, and just how bad it is): all of those caps and box cutouts which some people still have lying around? The ones with the 14-character alphanumeric codes, being retained because sometimes Coke would still say things like 'First 20,000 people to input four each get a $2 gift card code' and hey, at least it's two dollars?
They are now, with one exception, officially useless.
It's been a long time since the last Flock to Unlock mini-reward. Long enough that someone wrote the company with a basic query, and did so enough times as to force an answer. The question was 'Are we ever going to get a sweepstakes, contest, or prize which requires the codes again?' And the answer was no. As part of the global effort to divide everyone into those with smartphones and those without, pretty much all future Coke website activities will require Sip & Scan: use your phone to take a picture of the icon on a bottle in order to enter. If you don't have such a phone, too bad. Or you can upload a picture with a browser spoofer. I installed that extension some time back, after they first started pulling the S&S scam to begin with. But it's slow and irritating. Lining up a camera frame with the tablet is somehow worse.
And I neither have, nor can afford, a smartphone.
(Okay, realistically, I could get the phone -- in time. It's the contract which kills. I have one of the last working flippers, and I was told those are now special order only.)
So for just about everything which isn't worth the hassle, I'm out. I still have two standard plastic shopping bags full of caps with no apparent use (but one), and that's the way Coke wants it. Their final move to get all of those codes out of the economy was to declare they had no value whatsoever. Your stockpiles are useless. To the recycling bin with you!
It's just that... there's one exception remaining.
They're still accepting codes as charity donations. Every cap is worth $0.05 to one of the organizations on their list. A 12-pack box section? That's $0.15.
I have two bags.
I'm going to see if St. Jude's can get $50 out of this.
If anyone here has anything left: you can donate through this page. The other charities available include the USO, Special Olympics, and the National Park Foundation.
Darnit. I've got a stack of cardboard snip-outs from 24 and 12 packs.
Hey, what's not to like about huge companies demanding everyone carry a
tracking and spying snitchsmartphone everywhere?Damn them.
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I've got a few myself. I'm not going to try and donate all of them (plus the caps) in one shot, because there is still that 0.00000001% chance of a decent holiday Instant Win -- plus it's hours of typing. Doing nothing except reading codes and transferring the results. And I'm out of practice for reading 1973 Coke Dot Matrix Printer.
I just want someone to get the benefit of them, and St. Jude's is my charity of choice: I also have them set up as my Amazon Smile target.
Some careful work with a magnifying glass let me donate $5.10 in assorted code values. (Hey, there goes the only 12-pack of Coke Life I ever saw...) I'll try to repeat the process throughout the rest of the year until the bags are empty, and I've set up a Notepad file to track the final total.
The bad news is that some of the oldest caps are coming up as invalid. The good is that there's enough of a stockpile to keep $50 as a reachable target. We'll see how it goes.
Ya I pretty much gave up on all of those reward type things. They need them so hard then just abandon them all the time.
Tracfone has a $16 a month plan (+tax) for 1,000 minutes for 30 days, no contract. Of course, Phoenix is the fifth or sixth largest city in the USA (just ahead (or not) of Philadelphia) so we get better deals on some stuff. There's still only 1 company in the Metro area that does Wifi, though.
I loved my flip phone, it looked like the communicators in Star Trek (a valued feature) + when it was closed you couldn't accidentally activate it.
Walmart, you can get a basic smartphone running straighttalk at around 45 a month for unlimited data but you can also shoot for the by-the-minute prepaid cards if I remember right
Darn. Was hoping they'd actually bring back some rewards.
Mint Mobile is also pretty affordable. Oh, and if you wanted to buy a reasonably priced, unlocked smartphone (I recommend the pixel A series), then I'd kick in money for that.
I've literally never had a contract phone. Not even my current S7 on Verizon, Verizon has an unlimited monthly/10gb data plan for around $45, or an unlimited monthly plan for $70.
S7 under $150. I'd say 85% of The Untrotted Path was written on this device (35-40,000 words on Google Drive). Really, I'll just buy you one (or donate to purchase) if you want.
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I need to clear this up, fast. I am not asking anyone to buy me a phone at this time. While I have some worries about my current phone — the speaker is becoming unreliable — it still makes phone calls. I don’t know if I really want a smartphone. They don’t have enough screen space, just checking a contacts list seems to burn half the data allotment, and as far as status symbols go? Fanfic writer. Fan-fic wri-ter. What I really need is for some genius to say “What if we let a tablet take phone calls?” A genius who’s willing to stop ripping people off for two products when they could so easily be made into one.
As far as said data plans go, it’s been several years since I last seriously looked at the market. I have what I think is a natural reluctance to run anything through Walmart, and I’d be looking for a warranty. But the real bottom line is that all I really need a phone to do is make calls and receive the occasional Reminder Of Her Appointment text. And that ain’t a Galaxy on up by any means.
If the speaker dies, I’ll have to start shopping. But when it comes to phones, I don’t need much. And it’s not dead yet.
(So now that I’ve typed all this, tomorrow.)
I appreciate the thought: I truly do. Thank you all. But it’s too soon.
(Also, writing this from the ER. The UTI may be back. Or it could be dehydration.)
(It’s going to be a long afternoon.)
(Especially since she’s already swung back to ‘check myself out.’)
(Twice.)
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As far as data goes, most smart phones these days have a menu option to disable data use if you don't want stuff to use it in the background. Before I got my current phone, my phone was an iPhone 4 that didn't even have a data plan because I wanted it to be wifi only and not spend the money on something I wouldn't use much.
"But you can't do that! It's a smart phone! It has to have a data plan!" the AT&T rep told me.
"Watch me."
I owned the phone free and clear, no contract, fully unlocked. I shut down the phone account and got one of those cheap pay as you go phones that was something like 10 cents a minute / 25 cents a text (and I think maybe unlimited talk nights/weekends? It's been a while since I had it) and pulled the sim card out of it. Put that sim card into the iPhone and voila: pay as you go smart phone with no data plan at all. Which was all I needed in those days.
Nowadays, its unlimited data for me. I use the hotspot to run my laptop too often to not have it. >_> But I remember those days well. There's always a way for the willing!
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Ooh, halfway there. There are often models of tablets identical to their brethren but with the ability to connect to the cell network. They're usually another $100 on top of the original price in my experience, though.
On the other hand, if you have a consistent wifi connection, you could use Google Voice to have a number on basically anything that connects to the internet these days. I use Ting and Google Voice in concert to spend ~$10 monthly for the amount of data that I use (which serves as texting and calling through the right apps). Mostly, it's wifi-use or emergencies.
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That's an amusing workaround. And those phones are perfectly functional without a plan; you're just not paying for and receiving one service…
Honestly, I'd not have entered a store in the first place (I never have). For my first smartphone, I made the mistake of paying retail prices. The replacement (and a massive upgrade, though used), I got for half off (slightly cheaper than the first one) by carefully checking Ebay listings. When that one died earlier this year, I got a replacement through Swappa (for slightly cheaper, yet again, and safer/easier than my Ebay experience).
FWIW (I know, not looking right now), I'd think a smartphone of the limited capability that you (Estee) want could be found for $200 or, with more certainty, a rather nice one for $300 (which might be necessary for something with a decent screen size). I should note that I have never gone looking for an Apple device, only Android. I got a free used one once and as a result I never want to own a mobile Apple device again. I also do not recommend Samsung devices; at least, not these days.
It may not be for everyone, but carbonating my own sugar water has been a massive money saver for me. A 5lb tank of CO2 costs $20 and lasts me the better part of a year, drinking at least 1L/day. Then I can control how much sugar I put in, and in turns out after you get used to it carbonated sugar water with 10g/L doesn't actually taste any worse than 100g/L. Then you can donate $500 to St Jude with the money you saved instead of wasting your time with bottle caps.
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Probably a good time to mention that most of the caps came from the sidewalk.
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One of the nice things about the community, such as it is (and ymmv), is that you don't have to ask. Someone was going to offer you cash for a phone, a used phone, a brand new phone, or advice related to a new phone at some point, simply because you mentioned you were having issues. Yes, horse magic at work. Possibly even small horse magic of the book horse kind.
That's the kind of support you get without asking. And when someone who really, really needs help asks, more often than not help comes in even greater quantity and greater force -signal boosting all over the place.
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Ah, well, whoever is drinking them, I wish they would stop. That stuff is terrible. I have a friend who's totally sucked in to that reward program thing, and drinks it all.
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You can get those. I understand that's the basic idea behind phablets. (Getting ones that are affordable is another question entirely).
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I know you weren't asking. I was offering. I was raised to render what assistance I can, when I can, for the sake of doing so. The Galaxy lines that I've owned are pretty substantially sized in my experience, and the Galaxy tabs can use a data/cell network connection. The battery life on my current phone is pretty good, and before I just switched permanently to unlimited I was hitting my data cap but it took some doing in order to do so. They're a lot better options and less expensive nowadays than they used to be.
If I had fuck-you-money that assistance offered would be all but forcing you to accept funding for at least a caregiver. Unfortunately where I'm at in life I'm only able to offer much more limited financial assistance.
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A brand new phone from Net10 costs as little as $20 (the requirement that you purchase a plan only requires you to purchase a single month no contract plan for as low as $20) and comes with a one-year warranty.
https://shop.net10wireless.com/shop/en/net10store/phones/net10-samsung-galaxy-j2-s260dl
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A used unlocked iPad with cellphone capabilities can be picked up off of eBay for around $100. One example linked below though not necessarily the one that I would choose.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iPad-A1403-32GB-Wi-Fi-Cell-UNLOCKED-9-7-Space-Gray-2303/303715953580
You're a good person, Estee.
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...And, sure, why not: Following!
(...Er. Okay, only then did I realize the irony in following because of that particular comment. Sorry. :D
(And just in case, though I doubt it is: Let me know if you want me to unfollow. :))
(And yep, deliberate (prepaid) flip-phone-user here, for a variety of reasons including that one.)
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Don't worry, the irony amuses me :)
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Ah, heh, good. :D