Pampers Gifts to Grow Program: Rewards or Ripoff?

With Pampers offering new lower prices on their diapers, the amount of users will surely increase. Both new and seasoned users will be happy to learn that Pampers is now offering a new program to reward their loyal users, named Gifts to Grow.  The Gifts to Grow program allows consumers the opportunity to collect points from their products and bank them on-line.  Once the consumer banks enough points, they can redeem them for various prizes from books and movies to a scooter or tricycle.

What many Pampers customers may not realize, if they did not read the fine print, is that shipping and handling charges may be applied.  This may not seem bad until one finds out how high the shipping and handling charges are.  A simple board book carries a shipping charge of $3.35. The same book retails for $4.99 at Barnes & Noble.   While there are more valuable prizes as your points increase, the shipping and handling charges increase along with them.  A basic Bob the Builder DVD will cost the Gifts to Grow user $5.41 to receive.  The movie can be purchased for $10.55 at Video Universe.  

The biggest reason I am rating the Gifts to Grow rewards program a ripoff is because the website will not tell you how much shipping and handling charges are on the items until you have enough points to redeem them.  Many users are banking their points for the bigger ticket items to find that after all their time and effort, they are rewarded with an item that cost them as much as it would during a good sale. 

I have saved all codes for a year and spent the time entering every code on-line.  My reward for my time and energy is a Dora and Boots at Play Park Lego set which I can have shipped to my home for $8.13.  If I had not spent a year of my time on this program, I could buy the same set from Lego's website for $19.99 using an on-line code for free shipping.  So my total reward for a year of saving is $11.86.  Reward or Ripoff: you decide.