When Safeway silently bans your account

I had bought some Adidas gift cards this weekend for the 10X and 4X promo at Safeway. I bought it on account A for $100. I noticed that the receipt didn’t print out how many rewards I had earned. A few hours later, I log into my account and still no points. I contacted customer service who then credited me the rewards. I then clipped a $20 reward. I went back to the store the next day and tried to use the account twice and neither time did it take $20 off my groceries. I know their IT sometimes forgets to reward your account appropriately, but usage of the coupon has almost always worked. I’m pretty sure this account is silent banned. It’s a very old account and no shenanigans have been done on it.

Another instance of the shadow ban – I had created a new account about 6 months ago, bought some groceries on it and a few weeks later, the account gets a $5 off $5 coupon. When I go to redeem it, the $5 doesn’t come off at the register. You may think it’s a fluke but I had opened other accounts at around the same time and did the same thing and those accounts work fine. There were no shenanigans on the ‘bad’ account. Just for some reason, the accounts can’t use coupons/rewards. And it’s not that one instance either. A few weeks later, the account got another $5 off $5, which I couldn’t redeem either. Naturally I have given up on those accounts.

Do I think someone manually silent banned these accounts? No. Do I think it triggered some algorithm that silently banned these accounts? Yes. Am I going to contact customer support? No.

4 comments on “When Safeway silently bans your account

  1. I’ve had one various accounts credit clipped rewards, then not one time, then work again more than once. Sounds like you tried the account more than once though. Haven’t seen this.

  2. I’ve been having more problems with just4u not working at the register. At first, I thought I entered the phone number in incorrectly. Then I started using the QR code, which works better but last week that failed too. 45 minutes later, after discussing with the manager, I was left will calling the J4U support team. They saw that I had clipped rewards and that it should have been applied. They manually credited my 2nd j4u account with a “cash back” credit.
    This problem account was one I had been clipping Alaska points with, and that got reversed. Maybe that reversal is marking the account in some way?

  3. “… but I had opened other accounts at around the same time and did the same thing and those accounts work fine…”.

    “Other accounts”. The storyline is so innocent with this buried within.

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