There’s a loyalty card for discount blow jobs? That IS different! Where do I sign up?
I thought it was a Boyo Jim loyalty card, and that everyone was standing in line to get one.
Actually, I think this is worth a rant. It’s a brilliant idea from a couple of “suits” in the Marketing Dept, but it’s the poor cashier who has to tell harried customer that they’re getting charged full price because they don’t have the card.
It totally took me by surprise last week. I didn’t have time to sign up for the card at the counter (and hold up the long line), and I didn’t want to pay an extra five bucks, so I just said “Sorry-- tell Corporate it’s a dumb policy.” and walked out.
Yeah, it’s true. I just got back from my Walgreens. Prices were up and almost half the items in the store were “discounted” with a loyalty card. The cashier refused to give me one with my telephone number. I wasn’t going to pay almost double for my goods, so I left empty handed. I won’t be back. The grocery store is cheaper anyway, just a little less convenient.
This is what most of my original rant was about. It’s not like Walgreen’s said “Ok, we have a new loyalty card, and everyone who gets one will get a 3% discount.”
No, they said “We’re raising the costs to everyone who doesn’t get a card.”
I’d give them points for being brutally honest. Most stores do that without telling you how it works.
It reminds me of a sign I spotted in my local grocery store recently. This one has a loyalty card, and you get a discount on gas at a local gas station with it. It works out to about $2 off a $70 fillup, if you’ve really been saving up the points, but hey.
Anyway, the sign proudly announced that starting next week, we’d get ten cents off a gallon for every hundred dollars we spend! Hooray! That sounds awesome! Ah, but some store grunt who cared more about honesty than his job had added a handwritten note that pointed out that BEFORE this wonderful change, we had been getting ten cents off a gallon for every fifty dollars we spent. So they reduced the reward by half, and then announced it like it was some wonderful benefit to us, presumably because they were required by law to announce the change in some way.
It baffles me to see otherwise intelligent people buying into this sort of nonsense.
That wouldn’t happen to be Stop and Shop / Giant chain, would it? They were never giving me $0.10 for every $50 - it started at $0.10 for $100. Last time I filled up it saved me ~$4.50 on a ~$60.00 fill-up.
I understand being upset by them halving the bonus; I would be upset also. I can also understand choosing to go somewhere else if the other place is competitive. Speaking specifically to my area, the supermarket offering the gas off has competitive pricing, and has the best supermarket produce, butcher and seafood sections of its competitors. It’s the only market with a gas savings program. And it’s competitors also all have loyalty cards. So why wouldn’t I take advantage of the program?
My first job was in a supermarket that only gave sale prices to customers with loyalty cards (we called them club cards). Except we didn’t have anything such thing as a “courtesy card”, but club card numbers could be looked up by ph# (among other things). Except not at the register. :smack: Either we had to call the front-end monitor over so they could go in the office & look it up in the computer or send the customer to the service desk. Or they cold borrow one from somebody else in line, but they had to do the asking themselves. If you were caught using your own personal club card you were written up. It was so fucking stupid & petty.
True.
Oh, has it been six years since having made this card-related rant?
I’ll note that the company in question no longer exists. I like to think that I caused it.
Yeah. Plus, Dollar General now DELIVERS the same type of household products we used to get at Walgreens to our house with FREE SHIPPING and 5% off. I went to their website and set up a scheduled delivery for every two months. So simple. In many cases, I’m finding their stuff is cheaper than the Walgreen version.
I hate shopping at Walgreens mostly because of their stupid in-store coupon policies. I hate how you’re expected to go into the store, take their little coupon book, and page through it to find what’s already marked in the aisle as being on sale, and all the rest. Screw that. If an item has a special yellow sticker on it, indicating it’s on sale, that should be it. I’m already using a loyalty card I didn’t want in the first place. Don’t EVEN expect me to page through a stupid coupon book and rip out a coupon and take it up to the counter and then HOPE the clerk is capable to applying the coupon without management intervention.
Plus I can’t tell you how many times their sale prices have failed to register even AFTER all this hassle and the manager has then told me he’s sorry but there’s some issue with the system. Or the times that I’ve gone in on their Senior days and handled them the Senior day flyer at checkout and yet the price still comes up wrong (10% off instead of 20% off on ALL applicable items). And then had to drive back to the store so the manager could correct it.
I’m with all of you who hate that utter B.S. and don’t want the stupid loyalty cards, the stupid coupon books, and the stupid waste of our time. I’m also with all of you who have had bad experiences at Walgreens. I like their pharmacy folks, but at checkout…OMG what a hassle.
My loyalty goes to Amazon, Dollar General, and IN general any place that facilitates me getting what I want fast and with minimal hassle so that i can relax and get back to doing what I would rather be doing in the first place.
How is this different from any other loyalty card? I’ve got one for my grocery store that works exactly the same way: no card, no in-store specials.
Can I ask where you live? Because here that’s WAY more descriptive of Walgreens than Dollar General. So I have to type my phone number in the little thing after I swipe my card, takes 10 seconds. BFD. The clerks at WG are about 1000x times more friendly and knowledgeable than anyone I’ve ever talked to in a DG.
Oh jeez, didn’t realize it was a zombie. Damn it.
I’ve transferred my prescription purchases to the pharmacy located in the grocery store I do most of my shopping at. Walgreens has 24-hour service, but their other policies have ticked me off.
Of course the grocery store has a loyalty card too, but prescription purchases in their pharmacy count towards discounts at a gas station chain. So the grocery card is a better deal.
No Dollar General in SF.
I’m not fond of the card, but I’ve adapted. {shrug}
I’m a little surprised to hear this most retailers I use will just have the cashier swipe their card for you. I’d consider writing Walgreens this might not be company policy but the stupid decision of a rogue store manager.
I’m a little annoyed with Rite Aid right now. I signed up for their Wellness card a few years ago and was using it with no problems then they switched to the Plenti card and every time I buy something I get reminded by the cashier that I have not gone online and finished my application. I’m like, YOU are the ones who switched shoppers cards on me, you already have my information, just transfer it over. Or let me keep us g the Wellness card.
Why should I do more work because of YOUR decision? So far they’ve allowed me to get the sale but I’m waiting for them to stop, then we will have a REAL problem.
It’s a zombie, but I’ll share my story anyway. One day I was picking my daughter up from HS, and she had called and requested I pick up some small item for her at Walgreens. The bill came to about five bucks, with the loyalty card discount, so I punched in Jenny’s number, and was told I had accumulated enough rewards points to pay for the item outright.
All they needed was my ZIP code.
I paid the five bucks, and sold them I’d let my rewards points keep building up some more…
Surprising, perhaps, but also handy. Say you have a lousy cold, and you’ve gone into Walgreens to pick up some cold medicine. You can also get booze, so you don’t care that you have a lousy cold. Yay!
I mean, it’s not like they’re selling cigarettes.
Not here in PA. Lousy state stores.