I was surprised and a bit impressed when an email showed in my inbox earlier this week from Shelby Brimhall from Safeway’s “Customer Service Team”. Apparently someone over there is reading this blog, or at least read it when it showed up in a Google search for articles about Safeway’s new “Just 4 U” promotion.
I am contacting you on behalf of the Safeway Customer Service Team.
I was made aware of your recent experience with the Just For U promotion, as posted on your blog. I wanted to apologize for the difficulties that you encountered, when the personalized deals were not being recognized by our system. This program is intended to efficiently provide exclusive discounts for our customers. It is not our intent to inconvenience any customers, and we would like to ensure that any issues are fully resolved.
I wanted to provide the opportunity for you to have an agent personally follow up with your account, as to ensure that you do not encounter the same situation in the future. Although I obtained your e-mail address from your personal blog, after searching our system, it appears that you may have different contact information listed on your club card account.
I was feeling good about this offer of assistance. Then I read this entry from A Maui Blog. It seems a Safeway marketing agent approached that blog and offered both a $50 gift certificate in order to try out the system, and another $50 gift certificate to give away to a reader, and there were mentions of other blogs getting the same offer.
So they’re all getting $100 and I get a nice “we appreciate your business….”
Have a mediocre day!
And yesterday we made another stop at Safeway, armed with a few personalized coupons. One coupon for Artisan Bread, $1 off. Okay.
Beware the fine print:
Safeway SELECT Artisan Dinner Breads. Selected Sizes and Varieties with Card & Coupon.
Problem: No further information on what sizes and varieties would get the discount. Even a bit of confusion since “Safeway SELECT” is their store brand and “Selected Sizes” is, well, a warning that good things might not really be coming your way.
Of course, the one we bought didn’t get the discount.
Then there was the ground beef. It was in our list of personalized coupons, but hadn’t been transferred to our shopping list which, I think, means that the coupon discount wouldn’t have been applied. It’s not entirely clear, but who wants to be the pain-in-the-you-know-what at the checkout line rejecting items that don’t ring up with the expected discounts?
Memo to Safeway: Clarify whether those personalized discounts are linked to your Safeway card automatically or whether that only happens if you first go online and add them to the shopping list.
I thought I could recover right there in the store by using my iPhone to log on to Safeway.com and going through the short process of adding the item to our shopping list.
Nope. Safeway automatically detected a mobile device and shunted my iPhone off to a very limited “find the nearest Safeway store” directory. Their system didn’t let me reach the full Safeway.com. And, since I had just added a mobile version to iLind.net, I know Safeway could make this happen.
Oh, well.
I’ve got one other suggestion for Safeway. The store has a policy of giving 10% off if you buy six bottles of wine at one time. Mix and match. But what this does is discourage us from shopping at Safeway if we want to just pick up a bottle or two.
So now that they are capable of tracking our purchases, how about letting that discount kick in whenever you have bought a total of six bottles in the month, whether all at once or one at a time. Since they’re tracking, they could easily credit the 10% as soon as you reach the six-bottle threshold. I know it would capture more of our business, which now goes to Foodland or Tamura’s. Anyway, it’s just a suggestion.
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How frustrating! One of the things I’ll miss about my current ‘burb is a local chain of supermarkets with great fresh (and often local) food, a nice ambience, and AMAZING customer service (Fortune magazine ranked it #5 on its nationwide 100 best companies to work for list).
My husband still occasionally goes to Safeway, and if I’m being dragged along, I always point out that at one Farm-Aid, Neil Young explicitly named Safeway as a place not to shop.
I’m keeping my supermarket fingers crossed for my move Boise. . . I hope you get some satisfaction soon.
Since you seem to “cherry pick” (shop at multiple stores to get the best deals) Safeway probably doesn’t consider you an elite customer. We now get a message at the till which alerts us to first class customers, those who spend the most money
My blog isn’t getting discount offers!
What is one to do, now that Times is off the radar for bad labor practices? Foodland?
Aloha! My friend @raatz tweeted me today telling me that my post was mentioned here. I am glad he did so I can clarify a bit of your concern (not all but a little š
I read here that it’s the customer sevice department of Safeway who contacted you. I believe that’s where the difference lies. The person who contacted me were from the marketing firm (which I believe they subcontracted), a separate identity from Safeway. I am guessing that if you contact the agency firm, they will also give you a chance to try it out via the $50 certificate and one CG to give away to your readers.
I understand some of the difficulties you mentioned. The other day I went to Safeway but didn’t log-in first to see what promo item I can include in my card so I know I missed out on some. I think it’s sort of like cutting coupons except that now it’s digital. We have to do a little bit of our part to get the discounts. I know there’s still a lot of loop holes but with blog post like yours I think it’ll help Safeway deal with those loop holes to improve theri service. They need to consider your feedback, and I am guessing they will.
On a different note, it’s nice to find your blog and I will add this to A Maui Blog “Hawaii Blogroll”. I always get excited when I find new blogs from Hawaii.
I do not shop exclusively at Safeway, we go to Costco, Whole Foods, Foodland and Farmers Market. My latest discovery is Kula Fields farmers market on wheels. However, I do have some items that I regularly buy from Safeway and whatever discounts I’d get from there will help (especially in this economy)
OK, too long already. Thanks for giving me a chance to comment š
Liza
Awww… would you like more cheese with that whine? You must be a sad and jealous person. Don’t whine too much. Be happy with what you have in life.
Hmmm. I’m not sure this contributes anything to the conversation, but I’ve got pretty thick skin, so have at it.
Hey, hey, hey, whine. This blog is a consumer critique, not whining. Criticism of what is offered to paying consumers doesn’t make someone a “sad and jealous person” or deserve condescending advice to “be happy with what you have in life.” I found it useful to read this blog and people’s opinions on Safeway’s computerized coupon program because it does seem to have glitches in it. The Internet is great for sharing useful information and alerting others to scams, shoddy merchandise and bad service. As well as GOOD deals. The losers on these threads are those who mount lame personal attacks on others, contributing nothing of any value.
“This program is intended to efficiently provide exclusive discounts for our customers…. ” well. lemmee tell you, “Safe Way customer service”; It does not. It does NOthing efficiently except to serve as a migraine inducer, and I suppose that’s the hidden agenda, as migraine tablets are not couponed and thus, you make more, then. Further, you all are performing a dis service to your customers big time. “It is not our intent to inconvenience any customers”
sorry,
“no disrespect intended”… does not work here in Hawai’i. No matter your intent, you have already “inconvenience (m)any customers”
Signage all over the place in the parking lots and in Safeway; “Register for Just 2 Screw U and get free eggs!” NOT at all true. The screw… is true. But you do not get free eggs. “No such thing as a free lunch”, an old adage, applies here.
Memo to Safeway: Fire your engineers! fire your webmaster! NO one… appreciates a convoluted, overly designed confusing corporate web site (is there any other kind?) and especially NO one appreciates having to waste soooo much time and having to go thru so much pilikia in order to save a few dimes. I mean all told, I am out 88. dollars in my time, energy, gas, car wear and tear, and effort in order to secure the mythical “free eggs” and any other coupons that may or may not exist, hidden, mislabelled under names we would not, most of us, know. I searched for the eggs. It was not under eggs. or free eggs. It was under… wait for it; LUCERNE” why?! I have NO idea. I do not know Lucerne from gasoline. But thanks to your efforts, ‘Safe’ .. ‘way’… I can now discerne that I lose when I now notice the name “Lucerne”. You all have effectively poisoned the well.
Bottom line; Do I want to spend an hour every few days to earn a dollar off an item, while generating a headache from trying to navigate a time consuming, problematic ugly web site with no clear way at all to navigate thru it because NOthing is labelled and the search function does not work?
‘Aole! da buggah so pilau! fuggeddabouddit!
Thanks anyway. Oh, a friend is happier for all this, though; Foodland loves the effect of this program with its “issues”; All January to December ones!
Tried to access the web offers but it tells you loading for ten minutes and then we reloaded and left it for twenty more while it repeated the effort. So far as I can tell, all the web page does is alert you to the newspaper ads you can scan in ten seconds.
Primitive. Safeway, hire a 15 year old to explain the web.
We used to shop at Safeway in Salt Lake Shopping Center, but stopped because of the crime in that area. Too many people firing guns at other people…
We now shop exclusively at Costco, Sack n Save, Kmart and Walmart.
I hope Costco does NOT go digital as Safeway has done. It is much simpler for me to clip coupons out of their books than fiddle with electronics.
Geez Liza… you get all the good deals! š
Ian… if it makes you feel any better, I too am not worthy of the offer they are making to other bloggers.
I use Safeway only as a convenience store. Most groceries I get at Costco. Bought a small chest freezer to make that practical for a single person. My everyday wines are the excellent bulk whites and reds Costco sells in magnum (double-sized) bottles. When I want a better bottle, Costco still is where I go. “Just 4 U”? I won’t even sign up. It’s a disaster.
Dear Ian and Safeway (if you are still reading), I did get my eggs, and that’s probably all that I’ll get from this strange promotion.
I’ve had my Safeway card for years. If you look into my records, you’ll see that we buy very little at Safeway. Orange juice and a couple of other juices, these days breakfast cereal when it’s less than $4 a box. No eggs, none of that re-pasteurized milk, almost no cans, and yes, your frozen scallops. Really, that’s about it.
Some of the things I might buy you have priced so much higher than the competition that it pays to drive elsewhere even though you are across the street from where I live. Believe me, I noticed that you were selling my favorite Belgian beer at about $13 when Foodland was selling it for $10. I noticed Sriracha at I think $5.99 or thereabouts when another store had it for $4.30. And don’t get me started on chocolate.
My point is that you know all about what I buy. And you know that I use my card in order to get whatever discounts you offer on the items I buy.
So who needs this new program? I thought, as an esteemed Safeway card holder, I was getting the best treatment all along, as you originally promised.
I did get the free eggs and donated them at the Farmers Market. Thank you for that.
Now, it’s a waste of my time to play in your website looking for coupons. You’ve put an ad in the newspaper I can scan through in seconds. Why should anyone spend a hunk of their hourly wage rate trying to save a buck online? It’s like the 20 cent off specials. Woo-hoo. It can cost more time to find something on the website than the savings are worth.
My suggestion is just merge this into the card program you already offer. Maybe email me a list of items I can get a discount on this week (if I request the emails). Then, when I go to the store, I expect that the items I choose to buy will be correctly priced at the register. If that doesn’t work, you have a problem that can be solved, at least.
This promo won’t get much better even if the problems are fixed. It’s an unneccessary chore to use it.
Sorry to post a note here for you, but actually, you might get the message this way. Please keep reading Ian’s blog and learn about Hawaii.
I see as many as four laptop computers in your nearby store. Did you buy these? How about donating them to a school if you did.
Oh, over on my blog I don’t accept bribes, so no need to call with your offer. Any blogger who accepts it should disclose it anyway.
Speaking of donated eggs, what have you done for IHS recently? For the food bank? Let us know. Foodland has this campaign every year which some charities depend on for their funding. So just tell me, what has Safeway done for us lately? I ask this because maybe you are reading this.
Again, apologies to Ian.
I stopped shopping at Safeway a few years ago, when they remodeled. I started comparison pricing on a few basic items: ground turkey, ground coffee (Lions) and wine we like. They failed.
Then I had a customer service *event* at the deli where they left a sign for a special offer for sandwiches on the counter and they wouldn’t honor it.
When the employee who left the sign up said he liked it because he could read some other information on the back, I was not given the offer, the sign stayed up, and no one to whom I spoke to in person, via their website or via email ever apologized.
Done. I shop there if I have to.
This is the sort of crap that happens in Hawaii all the time. It’s just part of the “culture,” which is a nice way of saying that pretending to “have aloha” by dropping the right empty phrases and feining interest in the customer is a lot easier than actually providing customer service. It’s laziness. And yes, I’m both bitter and completely sick of it.
I have been saying for years that Safeway is a very tricky place to shop. I worry about the older folks in our community shopping there because if I can hardly figure out their tricky sales – one scent of clorox on sale while the others are not – than imagine all the older people that they are rippin off !
Very tricky that Safeway. Today, one day only (4 July), Bing cherries were advertised at $2.49/lb. They were out by early afternoon (big surprise?). I asked for a raincheck. The raincheck says $2.88/lb. I asked about the $2.49 price and two clerks disavowed any knowledge. Tomorrow I will take the ad in.
Safeway Just 4 U is NOT a customer service, it is pure and simple marketing and tracking of customers, and not honest, at that.
The community gets what the community wants and allows.
I wasted an hour using the flawed web interface and then on the phone with two customer service peeps trying to get them to reset my password before finding (via a different phone number) the one who got it done.
I’m still trying to figure out what’s in it for Safeway. They were already printing out paper coupons on the back of their receipts, supposedly based on my shopping habits. What new advantage does this give them, in exchange for confusing and irritating shoppers?
Actually, before I managed to get the password problem fixed I bought a weekly special (apple bananas at $1.59/lb) without logging it on my card. So I’m also unclear whether or not you need to click the specials to get the “club discount” that’s posted.
Safeway probably found your post via an online reputation management service. The more popular the blog, the more likely they want to respond to manage their reputation.
Now that there’s just one paper, there’s no excuse for the Star-Advertiser to not do investigative reporting of the local supermarket chains — they can’t yank their ads and go to a competitor.