Coke Chaos

Chantell reports that Target was chaos today.

Apparently they were having some insane promotion whereby you can purchase 12-packs of Coca-Cola product (4 for $10, limit 20) and receive a $5 Target gift card for every 4 12-packs purchased.

Crazed shoppers immediately saw the loophole and each member of the family had cartfulls of coke... would purchase the max, load them in their pickups and come back and buy more w/ the gift cards they just received.

Cashiers (probably acting on their own accord) tried to stem the flood by telling people they weren't allowed to purchase coke w/ gift cards, but Chantell reports that there was a "language barrier" adding to the pandemonium.

She says that workers were bringing out coke by the pallets full and they were immediately stripped bare... like bottled water before a hurricane.

She bought 4, but that was only because I hadn't figured out the economies of scale these persistent shoppers were acheiving.

I figured out that if you bought the max ($50) worth of coke and continued this trick (4 trips) you'd net 36 12-packs at a cost of $1.39 / 12-pack = 0.12 / can = a penny / ounce.

I think we have a new gold-standard in what constitutes a good sale on coke.

For extra credit, I think there's probably a way where you could add additional cash to the gift cards on subsequent trips to eliminate/minimize gift cards lost due to incomplete/fractional 12-packs (i.e. in trip 2 you can only afford 10 packs w/ your $25 gift card but are buying 2 packs and not getting a gift card for it).

Care to take a stab at it mom?