Our Price Chopper one is super-handy–it works at ONE gas station in the area. :smack:
I sign up for the loyalty cards with a fake name, address, and phone number. I get the discounts, they don’t know who I am, everybody wins.
Especially anyone invested in whatever plastic they make these things out of.
I’m not a big coupon clipper, but Ralph’s mails out some good store coupons every so often. I’m not one to pass on a good deal on something I’m going to buy anyway. On one of those “fill the freezer with couponed food” days, I had over a dozen different coupons. After scanning the groceries, the cashier scanned the coupons. All but one cleared–for some reason I had picked up the wrong brand of ice cream. When the cashier handed back the coupon, I said so. He took the coupon back, put in a special manager code, and gave the same discount on the brand I bought. Totally unnecessary and definitely earned the store some loyalty from me.
My Kroger card gets me the discounts, but they also send me coupons for stuff I buy all the time. Every few months I’ll get about $10-20 worth of coupons for Kroger brand stuff (like bacon, or deli swiss cheese - even bagged spinach!)
On at least some cards, you have to respond to the frigging email they send you in order to activate the card. I have several email addresses, and I only check one of them every day. I check another a couple of times a week, and the others just don’t get checked, unless I’ve given them out recently.
I find that just about the only coupons worth clipping are for condiments and cleaning products, when we have a brand preference. We do have preferences for various steak sauces, and I use them in cooking sometimes as well (A1 is good in a meatloaf, and as a glaze on the meatloaf as well), so I’ll clip coupons for those products if I happen to find them. But most coupons are a waste of time. Sometimes I’ll try a product, if there’s an exceptionally good coupon or sale price on it, but that product has to be significantly better than the one I normally use in order for me to keep buying it.
Same. They make good souvenirs too. “Wtf is a Shaws?”
Does that surprise you? The Price Chopper company struck a deal with the Sunoco company (or perhaps they are owned by the same parent corporation.) You expect them to make a deal with every gas company everywhere? Besides, it’s one of the better discounts I’ve seen. Ten cents off a gallon per $50 you spend, good for up to the next twenty gallons, IIRC.
And I’ve never gotten any email SPAM, junk mail, flyers, or coupons from any of the stores I have cards for, with one exception. I do get a weekly email from Borders, but I want that, cause it has great coupons, often times it’s 30-40% off any book. And it goes to my “junk” email account that I always use when I sign up for things.
Honestly, you people make simple things like getting a card out of a wallet, or checking an email sound as hard as a doctoral thesis.
“Oh no! I have to check my email to confirm it! Then get the card out of my purse I can’t be bothered to do all that work!”
Fine, don’t go through the motions, just don’t bitch about having to pay higher prices.
That actually sounds like a really cool feature. No “quotes” needed.
If you travel, you can play “which out-of-state loyalty card works in which local store?” Often the local store employees will resist, but if you find a bored cashier or a self-checkout, you can have some fun. If you already know which card will work you can tease the employees with their lack of knowledge of their own corporation.“Albertsons? What’s that?”
“Trust me, it’ll work”
beep
“I don’t understand why.”
Last time I tried, in 2008:
Ralph’s and Kroger’s cards work with each other.
Albertson’s and Shaw’s work with each other.
Not one company, one station. I don’t have every station memorized, but the word on the street is there’s only one Sunoco.
Where is the local Sunoco, anyway? The wife and I have been searching for weeks to find a gas station that will accept that card.
I must be shopping at stores with clerks who hate asking as much as I hate them asking - I’ve never been badgered about getting a store card. Barnes and Noble will ask if I have one as they’re ringing me up, but it never goes beyond that.
For that matter, I’ve never had a bookstore clerk try to get me to buy a book I’m not interested in, and I’ve never had a convenience store clerk try to pressure me to buy snacks or lottery tickets.
I’ve never gotten the store card hate, either. I just checked - I’ve got five grocery store cards in my wallet. They’re not really taking up any extra space, and it’s no big deal to pull it out and hand to the clerk.
(I can throw out the Safeway card, because it won’t swipe anymore, so I just use my phone number.)
When I’m shopping at a Safeway (none here in NJ) I enter my friend’s ph# it works I get the discount and all is happy.
Is my newbie showing? I don’t understand most of this. What does a dvd player have to do with grocery shopping? Or Amazon? a brand new 7 inch what? What is ALDI’s? Or more specifically, WHO is ALDI and what does he have to to with couresy(sic) cards?
I don’t get it, either.
Aldi’s is a supermarket, FWIW. I have no idea if they use loyalty cards or if they sell DVD players.
Last week’s coupon circular. $.50 off a 1-pound bag of brown rice. I forget the brand name, but with the double-coupon policy at Meijer, it worked out to be cheaper than the regular price on the store-brand brown rice. I’m not brand-loyal, so I bought the name-brand stuff with the coupon.
I am certainly not suggesting that you use coupons if you don’t feel like it. But it is not entirely true that coupons are only for highly-processed convenience items. They do tend to be for those things, yes. But not all are.
…what? One station? What “word on the street?” That’s not true at all.
I’ve used my Price Chopper card at at least two different Sunoco stations, and it’s been fine. Here’s the official announcement for the Vermont locations.
Maybe there’s only one Sunoco near you, and I guess that could be what the “word on the street” is referring to.
I agree. I don’t get what’s so awful about it.
Regular Aldi shopper - no, they do not have loyalty cards and yes, they sometimes sell consumer electronics, including DVD’s. (I bought the keyboard I’m typing on at Aldi’s)
Honestly, I have never seen anything like that before. I’ve seen packages of pre-seasoned rice with coupons before, but never standard, unadorned brown rice. I’ll take another look at coupons if Meijer’s - my other regular store besides Aldi’s - starts doing this.
It was for Uncle Ben’s brown rice; I just checked. (Even though it’s Uncle Ben’s, it’s just regular brown rice, not parboiled or processed or whatever they do to it.) I also often find coupons for soy milk, whole wheat bread, and dried pasta, among other things. (Although the coupon price usually cannot beat the store-brand sale price on whole wheat bread. I am sort of a grocery price nerd and keep track of these things.)