I had heard of this happening a few weeks ago, but since I had no accounts that had rewards (RIP 2X VGC,) I couldn’t test it out myself until recently. See, in the past, let’s say you had like 50 reward points and you clipped the $7 off meat coupon, $3 produce coupon and the $20 off purchase coupon. Now when you went to the store and bought $7 of meat and $3 of produce and a $100 Best Buy gift card, the system would let you apply the $20 towards the $100 Best Buy gift card.
As of a few weeks ago, Safeway has fixed this and will no longer allow you to apply the $20 towards any gift cards. It seems like their IT team is fixing all of these ‘glitches’ lately. It hasn’t hit all affiliates yet, but the writing is on the wall. Another good deal coming to an end.
Safeway, I would actually look forward to a video conference with the VP of customer experience, marketing company executive, or another position. Griping to a store manager or someone on the phone does not and will not ever be productive. Safeway you’ve got problems.
Last night for the umpteenth time: A Just4U Unlimited applied coupon price worked only for the 1st item of 2 purchased. A clearance item did not price as marked. A weekly ad sale item on a chocolate product (with accompanied shelf label) scanned at regular price.
Stand-out reasons I do walk through their door is a substantially smaller client base compared to the King Soopers crowd across the street. There are good deals to be found, just be meticulously eagle eyed at the self-checkout. Most interestingly Safeway’s Inept reward programming department screws up in a manner that surprisingly benefits the customer (I won’t elaborate in a forum)
I think what was happening was that all the valid $ off were triggered, sometimes leading to the customer getting a cash refund (I’ve had this happen a few times – swipe your card early enough and this gets automatically added as a credit card refund). So they tried to fix this by only allowing one $ off per purchase.
This was my experience at Safeway also. But of course with Safeways idiot IT people now the rewards often don’t apply to legitimate grocery purchases. So with a $40 grocery purchase, only a $5 reward came off even though I also had $20 and $10 loaded. Good way to alienate normal customers from your program.
So is it 1 $ off reward per transaction you think?
I wish I knew. I should have mentioned that after the transaction I described above, I did another for $15 of groceries at a different store, and nothing came off. (The $10 reward should have.). We all knew that Safeway has terrible IT so if there if some logic behind all of this, it truly escapes me. I called their support number and they were useless; the rep agreed that the rewards should have come off and offered me a $7 reward as compensation! (I of course explained that the reward will be useless if it doesn’t actually work.)