Can't get your free Dr. Pepper? Extended hours and recorded phones help

Due to the overwhelming response to  the offer for a free Dr Pepper for all Americans, Dr. Pepper's website, where people could sign up for the free drink, crashed.  The soft-drink maker said in March that it would give a free soda to everyone in America if the  "Chinese Democracy" dropped in 2008, but probably did not take into account everyone in the U.S. actually asking for it.  For hours, the website to get your free soda was down.  They are asking people to call their number instead and log your information over the phone.  While this has not crashed their phones yet, they are not receiving any opeator assisted calls anymore either.  They have extended the time to try to order your free coupon until 6 PM EST on Monday, November 24.

"People are passionate about Dr Pepper," said Tony Jacobs, vice president of marketing for Dr Pepper. "The response has been greater than anticipated and we want to do everything we can to ensure Dr Pepper fans get their free coupon. As a result, we've extended the offer, increased our server capacity and added a toll-free number, 1-888-DRPEPPER, for consumers to call to request their Dr Pepper." -  Guitarists Slash and Buckethead are not eligible for free soda  

While it is doubtful they could reasonably expect all 301,139,947 people elegible hit their website, they were obviously underestimating American's desire for free pop.  People dissatisfied with not getting through the website yesterday turned to snapple.com and searched for a similar Mr. Pibb/ Pibb Xtra promotion.  While the Coca-Cola produced drink has produced more searches, they do not have any promotions at this time. The people who went to  snapple.com instead of drpeppersnapplegroup.com  to get information received warnings that the site  been hacked and is blocked from Google.com as a harmul attack site.  A spokesman said that said the company was working to add more servers to handle the Web traffic - and the free phone call has almost no more holding times.

 

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