I like Dr. Pepper, but not their website

[pyesetz]

The Chinese Democracy album from Guns 'N' Roses is like the Duke Nukem Forever game: it's been vaporware for so long that the release date is a joke synonymous with "when Hell freezes over/pigs fly".  In March, Dr. Pepper said they'd give out free soda-pop to everyone in America if Axl Rose finished the thing this year.  Well, it went on sale today, so Dr. Pepper has a website where you can sign up for your free drink.

I will not sign up.  The website has three strikes against it:
1) They say they're offering the free product to "every American" (that's me), but actually it's for US addresses only (not me).  I suppose this is reasonable by American standards of isolationism, but I would have to have the coupon sent to my brother-in-law's house.
2) and 3) By signing up you agree to their Privacy Policy and their Terms of Use, but both of the referenced documents give 404 errors.  I do not agree to terms that will be selected later!

Comments

[aethwolf.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why they have to mail you a coupon when they could simply just let you print one off the website.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Because that gives them your mailing address, and establishes a 'business relationship', so they can spam you.

[pyesetz]

They tried online coupons during the dot-com bubble.  It was too technically difficult to ensure that unscrupulous customers couldn't print large numbers of coupons.  It's much harder to get yourself a bunch of postal addresses than a bunch of browsers to visit a website, plus snail-mail ensures that you are actually in the target market of US residents.

Blockbuster used to print online coupons (maybe still?).  The store policy where we lived was that if the op-scanner couldn't scan it, it was not valid.