Today is Earth Day which is April 22. But the Fred Meyer retail chain has got me very disturbed about the direction that the retailer is going in.
It started with an e-mail from Fred Meyer saying the rewards rebates you get in the mail if you earn 500 points in their specified 3 month period will still come but in a different form of payment.
For example if you had 2000 points, currently you would get 3 separate rebate coupons that total $20 since 2000 pts. = $20 of rebates while 1000 pts. = $10 of rebates. So with the current system you would get like $10, $6, and $4 reward rebate coupons that that total the $20 that you would use on 3 separate trips to Fred Meyer.
Well Fred Meyer decided to change it starting with this current points earning period to just one (1) rewards rebate coupon. Fred Meyer claims this is better because before you had to spend $10 to use the $10 rebate coupon while under the new system you can spend less than the rebate and use the remainder on future trips.
So under the new system, it is basically the same idea as a GIFT CARD that EXPIRES unlike a regular Gift Card for Kroger's that has no expiration date. Fred Meyer is probably hoping for people to use only part of the new rebate "GIFT CARD" and forget they had some money remaining on this "GIFT CARD" until after it expires to save the retailer some money. The old system was 3 rebate coupons that had to be redeemed on 3 separate trips.
I like the current idea better than the new one, because under the new system I would spend the entire amount of the rebate in one visit and then you are already stuck waiting for another 3 months for another reward to arrive in the mail under the new Rewards system.
This new system in my opinion actually is more likely to hurt Fred Meyer rather than help it earn money. Because if you can spend your whole rebate in one trip, there is less to draw the customer into the store for future visits. And if they aren't coming back as frequently as they used to, then the customers don't earn the required 500 points to get the rebates in the future, and they will just shop elsewhere from that point on. At least under the current Rewards system, Fred Meyer had 3 opportunities for customers to come into Fred Meyer and use their Rebate Coupons. I just think this is a move in the completely wrong direction to issue an expirable Gift Card disguised as a Rewards Rebate. The savings from the customers who forget to use part of the remaining value of the new Rebate is not worth the amount of lost sales and customers who use their new Rebate in a single trip.
More BAD news for Fred Meyer:
Today we get a 3-day ad with many of the coupons saying that you get so much off ONLY if you use a reusable bag with the coupon. Well again this is another bad idea. Here's why: Several of the coupons that require the reusable bags were already featured on Sunday and are still good until the end of the week and DON'T REQUIRE the reusable bags to get the same amount of savings. So what is the point of requiring people to use coupons AND reusable bags to get a discount that they already can get with just a coupon? As a fairly long-time user of reusable bags I feel cheated that I am not getting the extra implied savings from using their reusable bags and in reality getting the same savings as someone else who doesn't use reusable bags.
Yet more BAD news for Fred Meyer:
Fred Meyer really needs to drop the voting portion of the judging for the Design-a-bag contest. Because from what I can tell, no one is voting in this contest except for their own designs or their friends or family which is completely unfair since some families are bigger than others.
OVERALL, a very bad week for Fred Meyer. Will I still shop there? Yes. Will I spend as much money there in the future? Possibly not.
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