Safeway grocery chain just added a new “feature” to its elaborate sales strategy. If you log in every week, you can pre-select coupons that will be linked to your record. Then when you shop and swipe your membership card, “the savings are automatic - no clipping” Except now you have to go online before shopping to get the promised prices.
The irony is that they used to shun all coupons and sales, just being like Walmart, the low price leader. Then they added weekly sales items, then weekly sales coupons, then tricky sales coupons only good on weekends or between certain hours, then sales that instead of $1 off would yield a coupon for $1 off next time, and only if you buy again within two weeks, and spend $20 or more …
And now they have a shopping cart wrapped in cellophane at the front of the store with 25 random items from all departments and a sign : buy 10 of any of these mix-and-match and get $5 off. So it’s a memory test. What’s next, an announcer and a wheel like Price Is Right?
Not sure I get the problem.
If you don’t want to go online to get coupons – don’t.
If you don’t want to buy the stuff in the cellophane-covered cart – don’t.
There ya go.
I don’t mind my Safeway loyalty card; it does save me money; and yes I’ve compared.
I am too lazy to bother with coupons, so I’ll take what ever little bit I can get.
I am, however, annoyed at the loss of the gas savings thing. Sure, I still get my three cents off per gallon because I’m a club member, but they’re no longer doing the ten cents per gallon per 100 bucks spent.
When they first started it, you only had to spend fifty bucks. Then they upped the amount to $100.00. Then, they started “stacking” the 10 cents off. In other words, if I had 50 cents per gallon because I had spent $500.00, I had to use the whole fifty cents at once. I couldn’t say use ten cents and let my husband get a fuel bonus too.:dubious:
At any rate, I guess it’s a moot point now, because they’ve completely discontinued the gas savings. Guess I’ll have start checking between Safeway and Costco and see who has the cheaper gas.
The problem is once you get a failing memory you don’t know if you will get the $5 or if you screwed up on one of the multiple items which is more likely. It’s lovely when you tried very hard to get it right and then you need to go get the coupon item while people wait and want to kill you. The more hoops you have to jump through the more likely you will screw up. You’ll reach that point at sometime in your life.
Bring a pen and piece of paper to write down what’s in the cart?
And I also don’t get the hate for loyalty cards. What’s the harm is getting one and swiping it?
“Oh noes! The grocery store knows what I’m buying!”
…and? Do you think the grocery store gestapo is going to drag you out into the street in the middle of the night and yell at you for only buying the “sale” items 5% of the time?
Meh, whatever. I concluded long ago that paper coupons were too much trouble to keep track of - I was probably earning well under minimum wage for the time I spent clipping them, organizing them, trying to throw out the ones that had expired and having to dig the ones that were still good out of the collection that weren’t, and inevitably forgetting my coupon organizer on about one out of every three trips to the grocery.
So coupons that you simply click online sound a hell of a lot easier. I might could actually do that, if I didn’t have a two year old kid annihilating my spare time.
I’m also gonna say affinity cards are no huhu, especially if you can just enter your phone number and don’t need to actually carry them, once you’ve signed up.
Special note for the paranoid: You don’t even need to use your phone number. When I moved here, I plugged my new phone number into the terminal and once everything was rung up, the cashier said “Thank you, Mr. Robinson!” even though my name is not Robinson. I have no idea if the real Mr. Robinson still shops at Safeway or not, but the key is that everything I buy is being tracked and associated to someone that’s not me. But the club card discounts still work, and that’s all that matters to me.
When they made the ad requirements complicated I used to screw it up all the time. The ad item would be some flavors but not everyone, and damn if I didn’t have the wrong one after trying to be sure I had the sale one. The point is when you have less than optimal mental abilities like many people do it’s hard to jump through the hoops for the specials. I sometimes have to ask a clerk to explain what the ad means.
I have quite enough things in my wallet as it is, thank you very much. I would vastly prefer it if stores would quit the damned gimmicks and just LOWER THE PRICES BY A FEW CENTS! I love to play games…sometimes. When I’m in the mood for it. When I shop, I don’t want to play games, I don’t want to collect stamps, I don’t want to dig out another card, and I certainly don’t want to spend any more time at the checkout counter than it takes to pay. I want to know the total, and I want to pay. I don’t want the cashier to work my name into the conversation. In fact, I don’t really want much in the way of conversation, for the most part, though I’ll respond politely to comments about the weather and such.
It seems, though, that most people would prefer to play games, and collect stamps, and all that other nonsense. Or at least, the stores seem to think so.
Most of them will let you use your driver’s license number in place of the actual card itself, so you wouldn’t have to have another thing in your wallet or purse.
Oh wait…then they have your driver’s license number! Which they’ll use to…umm…do what now?
And how many different grocery stores do you shop at? Maybe I’m weird, but 99% of the time, I go to one of two stores. Having two cards (actually, one card and one keychain thing) isn’t that hard.
Edit: I’ve even seen a website that lets you input ALL your membership cards numbers, and it then puts them on a single piece of paper for you (in barcode form) that you can pruint and keep with you, so you only ever need that one piece of paper: http://www.justoneclubcard.com/
You haven’t heard of identity theft? Driver’s license numbers are one of the key pieces of data that we’re not supposed to give out.
Different grocery stores? I go to five, depending on what I want. There’s the organic food store, which has wonderful food, and is priced to match. The other stores are just convenient to the other places that I go to regularly, and one place will carry different selections than other places. For instance, one store doesn’t carry ham hocks, but another store will. The first store carries a lot of goods aimed at the Hispanic market, though, and is a good place for many of the items I buy regularly. Plus it seems that every other retailer wants me to have and keep a loyalty card in my wallet. Book stores, coffee shops, restaurants, craft stores, you name it, they want me to pledge my loyalty to them.
I don’t want another piece of crap in my wallet or dangling from my keychain.
I don’t want to be deluged with coupons for crap I’ll never buy - I cook mostly from scratch and when was the last time you saw a coupon for raw spinach or plain brown rice?
I don’t want to be deluged with coupons for crap I’ll never buy on the few processed food items I buy - mostly condiments. Mostly, I just buy whatever mayonnaise is cheapest regardless of brand. On the very few items where we do care about brand name it is HIGHLY unlikely we’ll change.
I don’t want to be deluged with coupons or ads for new convenience foods that are even more processed and “conveniently packaged” in single-serve packs that drive up the cost, increase garbage, and require power tools to open.
I don’t want my e-mail filled up with even more crap than it is now, which makes it difficult to sort out the IMPORTANT stuff in my in box - used to be that you just didn’t put an e-mail in the info you gave, but now there are programs that require you to have an e-mail to use them. No thanks. Really. I didn’t not set up my e-mail to give people a convenient means to deliver advertising to my life.
And mostly I am getting tired of the repeated urgings to sign up for this crap. I go to a store, I want to buy my stuff and get out. It’s not just the grocery store - I am sick to death of going to a bookstore and the staff are trying to get me to buy books in genres I can’t stand, often potboiler “bestsellers” I would probably only open the cover on if I ran out of toilet paper in the middle of a blizzard and couldn’t get to a store. I am tired of going to a gas station and being pressured to buy overpriced shitty snacks and lotto tickets. Etc., Etc.
I remember having about three of those key chain tags which I didn’t use. The clerks would tell me that the keys could be dropped in a mailbox if found and they would get them and then mail them to me. I asked who gets the keys when I have three of them from different places on the key chain. I never got an answer.
I refused to get these cards when they insisted on a Social Security number to get them. Since they required the card for the sale prices, those stores never got my business. I took this up with one store and it was removed from their application.
I’ve never seen a store ask for a SSN. I wouldn’t give it either, FWIW.
But other than that, I’m just not feeling the rage here. Nobody’s pressuring you to buy or do anything. You don’t want e-mails? Give them a phony address. Nobody will know.
Last time I got a new card was at Dominick’s (Chicago area Safeway). The application asked for a name, phone number, and e-mail – nothing more – and they handed me a card right on the spot, so it’s not like they’re doing a background check or anything. If I’d put down any fake shit at all it wouldn’t have mattered.
Marketing is a wonderful thing. Evil, but wonderful
You don’t want to lower price by just a few cents. What you want is a 2-tiered or multi-tiered pricing system. See, some people are willing to spend more than others for the same item. However, for some weird reason, people object to this if it is blatant :).
So, you need to sneak a multi-tiered pricing system in so that people who are not willing to pay the higher price do not have to and you can get their business (though at less profit). However, you do not compromise your higher profit, willing-to-spend more customers. So, the system for getting the lower price cannot be too easy.
Places like Pizza Hut and KFC have had a 2-tiered pricing structure for ages. They do this by have ever-present coupons available. These coupons make a big deal in price…usually 20-30%…and they are ALWAYS available if you look. This way…2 prices…one for people who wouldn’t come to eat there unless they get the lower price and the others willing to pay the higher price.
The stores in the OP are doing the same, as well as practicing the adage that it is easier to get your current customers to spend more than get new ones…so they are encouraging you to come back more often, spend more etc through coupons.
I only have one loyalty card on my keychain, for Kroger. I got the application thing, they scanned the tag and told me to bring the form back. 6 months later, I haven’t brought the form back, and the barcode still works.
I have one for the pet store where I buy the critters’ kibble. It’s just to track what they should be ordering because it never, ever, ever results in any manner of discount for the frou frou kibble I buy for my precious beasties. I fail to see the point. Can’t they just run a report on inventory based on what is sold, at the end of each week?
In general, I refuse to mess around with these stupid cards. I guess I’m one of the morons who “prefers to pay the higher price” except I notice at stores like Barnes & Noble (you have to pay $25 a year for that membership discount), the savings rarely offsets the higher price. It’s just not worth it to me.
And I rarely find coupons for products I actually buy. Let’s say my grocery store has a coupon in the paper for some fancy name brand green beans. Get to the store and the actual price is, say, $1.00 higher than the store-brand generic green beans. Coupon is for $0.50 off. What was the friggin’ point of going to all the trouble to collect the coupon, remember to bring it in, and then actually redeem it? I still paid $0.50 more for the damn green beans with a coupon than I would have if I’d saved myself the time and hassle and just bought the generic brand that I always buy anyway.
My philosophy is: It’s not a savings or a really great deal if I don’t want it and wouldn’t buy it under other circumstances. Just because it happens to be on sale doesn’t mean I suddenly need it. This applies to 2 for 1 drink specials at happy hours as well. Maybe I don’t want that second margarita because I don’t want to drive home drunk. The benefit of the freebie starts to be outweighed by overconsumption of products I didn’t need in the first place.
