'Free Coke' Email Offer Is Not the Real Thing
Dateline: 03/08/00By David Emery
The Coca-Cola Company today joined the ranks of other giant corporations stung by the Internet rumor bug and asked consumers to ignore an email chain letter offering free cases of Coke to every recipient.
"This chain letter is untrue," spokesman Scott Brannan told Reuters news service.
The announcement followed a consumer advisory posted two weeks ago on the company's Website. "The Coca-Cola Company is not offering free cases of its products to people in the email," the advisory said, "and is not attempting to build a database by asking consumers to forward the message to their friends."
The chain letter, circulating since late January, reads as follows:
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Subject: FREE COCA COLA FOR A MONTH
Coca-Cola is offering four free cases of diet coke or regular coke to every person you send this to. When you have finished sending this e-mail to as many people as you wish, a screen will come up. It will then ask where you want your free coke products sent. This is a sales promotion to get our name out to young people around the world. We believe this project can be a success, but only with your help. So please start e-mailing and help us build our database. Thank you for your support! Always Coca-Cola, Mike Hill
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The offer resembles a dozen other chain letter "giveways" now circulating by email. All are hoaxes and all depend on the same flawed premise that companies can somehow track and store the names of every sender and recipient. They cannot.
In addition, email chain letters can easily circulate to hundreds of thousands of people within just a few weeks. In this case that means Coca-Cola would be giving away — at the rate of four cases per recipient during the past six weeks — more than a million cases of product at a cost of millions of dollars. And the email's circulation may double or triple before it runs its course (if it ever does). It just doesn't make good business sense.
How to avoid being duped by bogus chain letters? The answer's simple: Think before you click.
Phony Freebies Hall of Fame:
