I have a number of loyalty reward cards. Three are for groceries. One for a warehouse wholesale store, book stores, department stores etc. I always remember to get the points but seldom use them.
Did you know that some of these cards delete the points if they are not redeemed after a certain period of time?
Or that you can earn the points by just giving your phone number. This is great because you don't fill up your wallet with a bunch of cards. But the downside is that when you go to redeem those points to pay for merchandise you may run into some issues.
That is what happened to us this afternoon. All year we shop at a grocery store here in Edmonton. We faithfully use our phone number to collect our points. We save them to buy the extra food we need for entertaining at Christmas. We've done this for quite a few years. Always worked great.....but not today.
Imagine a huge line up at the grocery store. My cart is loaded with items for our annual Christmas Eve Open House for family and friends. I know I have over $190.00 in points so my cart full of groceries shouldn't cost me money.
First the cashier cannot find us using our phone number. She gets her manager over and we explain that we know we have enough points to pay for our groceries so she re-enters the phone number and finally after a few tries there's all our information. Great.
The manager walks away and the cashier informs us that there are no points there to cash in. Huge line up behind us now. But that's a large grocery bill so I ask that she again get the manager over. The manager goes through the whole thing again and then as she walks away says, "Oh, you can't redeem any points unless you have your card."
Whoa there lady....why were we not informed of that to begin with. She informs us that the cashier is just a trainee so she wouldn't know. I said that since she, being a manager, knew this why didn't she tell us? We could have been paid and out of there without all these people having to wait on us. The manager just laughs....and walks away.
The cashier asks if we want to put our groceries to the side, go home, and come back with our card. Now, it's been snowing like crazy here. Record breaking number of accidents. The rain is now starting making it worse. We declined going home and coming back. We paid for the groceries and got out of there much to the relief of those poor souls behind us.
After getting home I call my Mom to vent. Now she shops at the same grocery chain. And Mom called "BS" on this whole thing. Many times she gets asked if she wants to use her points to pay for her groceries and she never has her card with her. They can redeem her points without a card.
Now I start being a worry bird. So many people in the line heard me repeat my phone number over and over, all the time insisting that I had more than enough points to pay for the cart of groceries. What happens if they go to a different store and just repeat my phone number, use my points and I loose them all. Not likely to happen, but.....
A few years ago all my points disappeared from a department store program. Along with a number of other people's. An employee was finally caught and fired, but that didn't get our points back. Similar thing happened at another grocery chain about 15 years ago. That employee was caught because she was bragging on how many neat items her family and friends collected from points. Someone got suspicious and checked it out. Those are just the times I know about personally. Not hearsay. So it does happen.
Now for the fun part. You knew there would be some fun...right!
After putting my groceries away and talking to my Mom, I got onto the computer. I logged into the rewards points site and checked out what I could use the points for. My favourite! Gift Cards! They are in the mail and although they will come way after Christmas, I know what my family will be getting for their birthdays this year! It won't cost me anything.
I love this. Especially since I would have purchased the groceries and earned the points anyways. And as a way to get back at the grocery store, these gift cards will be used elsewhere. If they had been more customer orientated the points would have been used in their own store.
(Okay....so at least one of the gift cards will be for me....but I earned it!)
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