free stuff

I was asked about how I received my Coca-Cola coupons, so here’s the back story. DH stopped at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago and picked up a 20-oz. Coke for me on his way out. When he got home, I noticed that it had leaked in the bag. He thought maybe he had bumped it and knocked the cap loose, but one swig told me the cap had not been secure for awhile, because it was completely flat. Blech!!!

I was a little disappointed, but I was going to just write it off, until I noticed that it had one of the new caps on it. (Have you noticed these? They’re really cute!) It then occurred to me that maybe it was a design flaw, so I took five minutes to look up a customer service email address and write a short email about my problem. I included all of the manufacturing information that I was able to find on the bottle

To my surprise, when I woke up the next morning, I already had a response. They asked for some additional information and told me to hang on to the bottle until I heard from them again. About three days later, I received a letter from them thanking me for reporting the issue with the two coupons shown here enclosed. I was really impressed with the quick response, and grateful for the coupons as I wasn’t really looking for anything in return for my feedback.

So the moral of the story is that sometimes it pays to provide a company with feedback. Now, I’m not advocating providing false feedback to try to garner freebies, but many companies do respond to customer feedback, both negative and positive. I’ve also had very good luck with simply writing to companies that have products I really like to let them know what I like about it and asking to be added to their mailing list for coupons. Try it sometime, and you might be pleasantly surprised, too!