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UPDATE 11/24/08: Coke has extended the rewards program again — see the bottom of this article for the full update information.

The Coca-Cola company has extended the duration of its rewards program from the old end date of April 16, 2007 to a new ending date of January 31, 2008. This is good news for those of us who are collecting reward points from bottle caps and boxes; we will have several more months to save up points and redeem them for prizes.

Participants in Coke’s loyalty program can collect points by locating promotional codes under bottle caps and on the insides of “fridge pack” boxes of cans. After registering at the site, we can enter these codes and get credited for the points. The exact number of points varies; for most plastic bottle sizes of Coke products like 2-liter, 3-liter, etc. we get 3 points per code, but the fridge packs of 12 cans are usually worth 10 points. After the ending date was extended, there were apparently some higher points categories added such as 25 points for 32-count packs of cans and 24 points for 8-count packs of 20 ounce bottles, although I have not yet seen these. According to the site, they are also switching from 15-digit codes to 12-digit codes on most of the currently released products.

The accumulated points can be redeemed for a variety of prizes, everything from movie rentals to T-shirts to vacation packages. I have managed to save up 155 points so far; most of the low-end rewards are not very appealing to me because I simply do not use most of these products, but I might be able to redeem for one of the T-shirts when I get up to about 400 points. You can browse through all of the available prizes by clicking on the “Rewards & Contests” drop-down menu at the site.

There is also a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sweepstakes option where we can use some of our points for contest entries to win “buried treasure” and possibly get bigger prizes. The cost is 3 points per entry and seems like somewhat of a gamble to me, but the option is there for those who want to use it. I might be able to use this option later if we get near the ending date of the program and I have leftover points that cannot be redeemed for any worthwhile prize; this would be a good way to avoid completely wasting them.

For a full explanation of the details of the Coca-Cola rewards program, be sure to click on the small gray “faqs” and “rules” links near the bottom of the home page. The drop-down menus that appear will allow you to access all of the information that you would need to know about the program, including the legal fine print.

UPDATE 11/24/08: Coca-cola has extended its rewards program for another year. The new end date is 12/31/09. Here is the official email notification that I received from Coke earlier today:

You can enter codes for points from your favorite Coca-Cola beverages for another year. My Coke Rewards® has been extended until 12/31/2009. This means that you can continue to earn points through 11/30/2009 and redeem points through 12/31/2009*.

Don’t wait until next year for rewarding experiences; you’ll find plenty of great rewards and stacks of exciting sweeps right now at mycokerewards.com. It’s time to benefit from something you already do – buy, drink and enjoy.

The revised rules with points extension will become effective and be posted to the site on January 1, 2009. Until then, check out the FAQs for more information.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping that Coke does one of their “double points days” soon. They ran a special promotion like this a few months ago and I even had some codes saved up for it, but their server apparently could not handle the traffic very well. I had tried to access the site later in the day and was unable to do so, which meant that I could not get my codes entered in time before the promotion expired.

To their credit, Coke did send out an email the next day that apologized for the problems with site accessibility and promised to hold another double rewards day to make up for it. Now that the overall length of time for collecting reward points has been extended, perhaps we will see Coke deliver on this promise within the next few months.