Feels like I should rename the blog J4U per day since I’ve written so much about the Safeway rewards program. Anyway, 2 weeks ago, I wrote that Safeway had added additional $ off rewards. Turns out only the WA region saw those additional rewards. Well, it seems on June 1, they removed the additional rewards and gone back to the typical $10, $15, $20, etc. So it was either a mistake, which I doubt since it lasted 2 weeks and someone programmed in the additional rewards, or Safeway is doing some A-B testing to see how much more money it’s costing them.
Realistically, normal consumers probably don’t earn more than 10 rewards a month, so someone having at least 24 rewards to redeem BOTH $20 off rewards is pretty rare (I assume probably less than 1% of all rewards members.) So, why even have the test. Maybe they were seeing how many people who had >24 rewards would forego the 2nd $20 off coupon and instead redeem it for gas instead. So maybe it was a gas vs groceries test. And why only do it in the WA region and not nationwide? Too much blowback from angry customers if it was removed nationwide? Or maybe they were trying to drain more WA customers’ accounts? Maybe it has something to do with the Kroger merger? Like it just makes no sense so I’ll just go back to my earlier hypothesis that it’s just a single Safeway IT guy who is fucking with all of us.