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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It seems that the source of your gripe is that you were not selected to be a blogger, rather than the program itself. Maybe the other bloggers have a larger amount of traffic or their content fit inline with what Safeway was looking for, or they are mommy bloggers – who knows.
But I have used the program and I didn’t have a problem with it at all, even on my iphone. So maybe its more of a user error. Granted not all things Safeway does is perfect, but what store is. I think they are just trying to be as diverse as possible – offering paper coupons for those who want them and online programs like this for those who prefer to access it that way. If you its difficult to figure out, just go back to the paper coupons. Either way you’ll get a deal.
Ah, you take my attempt at humor far too seriously. I was playing with that freebie offer to make a point, and because it could be played for a tongue-firmly-in-cheek protest. I’m glad that you haven’t had problems with the Safeway program & programming. Many of us have. I’m hoping the kinks work themselves out.
Today at Beretania Safeway, I watched a male cashier do nothing but hassle a female customer who had a young child in a stroller. She had a coupon for for milk, a two-fer. The customer did not speak good English. The cashier looked at it and tried to deny that it was for the milk she had. I read the coupon. It was for the milk. The cashier took the coupon back and read it again, and finally agreed it was for the milk. He rang that and other items up.
Next he hassled her to move along as she was trying to load her groceries into the stroller bottom. I helped her do that, for which she thanked me profusely.
I guess Safeway employees don’t get paid to be helpful.
Safeway is the only store in town that asks me to donate to this that and the other. I don’t donate at Safeway. I figure I donate at Safeway and Safeway gets the credit for my donation.
Is there a way to check on that, Ian?
Carol, that is a good question! It bears looking into and I will try but may not have the resources to find out. If anyone can answer if Safeway gets a writeoff or other benefit for customer donations, I for one would appreciate the info. Until now, I’ve always been proud to donate there believing their intentions to be good.
I’ve never been a fan of club cards anyway bc they’re innately discriminatory (I get the discount, but you don’t) and that they track what you buy frankly ticks me off. My hubby used to work for a law firm. A guy comes to them who was suing S. for spilled somethingorother that he slipped in. Guess what comes up at trial? How much alcohol the guy had bought in the year. Yup. So don’t think for a minute they’re not keeping track.
I did go ahead and sign up for this stupid thing (like I have time to go online just to see what deals there are, every frickin’ week, before I go shopping) – but I am Wary with a cap. W.
Why not just have good prices to attract your customers?
I can totally relate to everybody’s problems with Safeway. Guess what happened when I tried to redeem my “free” eggs for signing up? I didn’t have a valid account, so no free eggs or discounts. Their computer in the store wasn’t working at the time so I logged on to my account when I got home and guess what – my account was in their system and all my information was in there and was correct. When I e-mailed customer service they tried to tell me it was because my phone number wasn’t on my account, yet it was in there. I wrote back and asked them how come I can see my phone number but they can’t. Their reply came back that it is in there and nothing is wrong with my account. They want to know what date I tried to use my card but was told it was not valid. I gave them the date and they come back with “we have no record of a purchase that day”. Yeah, I wonder why – my card was invalid so no discounts and no free eggs so I’m supposed to pay the higher not-a club-member prices. I told the poor cashier I didn’t want any of it and they could keep it and I didn’t buy anything. Well, I guess that not buying their stuff at undiscounted prices made customer service mad and they haven’t answered me back. Their new Just for U program is just a scam to make people pay more because you think your gonna get a discount and when you don’t most people won’t put it back or tell them you don’t want it – they’ll just pay the higher prices. Great way to make money and also a great way to lose customers.
Forgotten my password. no reply to my request for a reminder. !!!
I also tried to get free eggs, and free dunksters, along with other items; nothing free there, and the only things that came up as a savings were the ones listed in the ad for the week. Tried to access my email in the store on their computer, and it wouldn’t even log me in. Definitely need to work out some glitches, because Safeway managers and cashiers should not have to bear the brunt of the customers’ wrath, which obviously happens. Good luck, Safeway!!!
So, I had this problem too and asked my store’s manager about it turns out, it takes about 24 hours for the coupons you select to be loaded onto your card. You cannot add them while shopping, as I attempted to do. Unfortunate, but good info to know…..