They Aren't Rewards...
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| Found online |
Last thing was on some Pampers wipes that we keep around ('cause we are messy people, okay?). So there's this little code on a little coupon you have to redeem for point. Okay. Wait, you have to join the rewards points tribe or circle or community or something. Sigh. Okay. I'll use Lori's email address (after all, she handed me the coupon). Password has to be between 8-14 characters and contain at least one letter and one number...argh, that's a 15 letter password. No you can't have my actual birth date, but I'll give you something close, sort of. Okay, ten minutes later and the click submit code...oops, missed a letter on the code...argh. I can't just insert a letter? I have to type it again...sigh... Okay, there we go. 30 points? Sound good. What can we get? Um. Nothing. We can donate the points to various causes (which is a cool thing, don't get me wrong) but the first "rewards" are like 400 points - for an 11x17 picture. Wow. Thanks.
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| Found online |
This on the heels of Lori getting an email from Sears.com telling us we had like $85 in rewards points to redeem. Cool, we think. Lets redeem them and get one of the expensive Lego sets for the girls for Christmas. Okay. I spend half an hour figuring out how to do that, getting all the right numbers (you need your membership number - yeah, I have that 12 digit number memorized - and a pin number - another 6 or 7 digit beauty - both found on the membership card - we have a membership card? Click here if you've lost your membership card... so I'm not the only one, huh?) figuring out how to do this. Okay, go to check out, apply rewards points - 28 bucks off. What? So Lori calls - of course this should be easy 'cause I've found her membership number and pin number. FORTY FIVE MINUTES ON HOLD for them to tell her "Sorry, this is a known error that we've been emailing out the wrong amounts for rewards points." Really? It's a "known error" and it took 45 minutes for you to pull up that information?
These things are supposed to add value to our experience. They don't. I can't believe that these kind of "rewards programs" are really meant to be redeemed by the casual user. When we had grocery stores in our vicinity with "fuel perks" (that is, you spend x amount on groceries and get a discount on gasoline) the process was simple. Use a card - you swipe it at check out when you buy groceries to get accrue the discount, you swipe it at the pump to use the discount. That's a reward system that works. I have a Sheetz card that I hand them when I get stuff. Every once in a while they ask me, "Do you want this drink to be free?" I have yet to say no. I get the occasional email from Sheetz telling me what the weekly specials are or something. When I bother to open them, I almost never care what they are (once I got something free - I think at Christmas time - because we happened to be travelling and stopped at a Sheetz and I remembered what the free thing was). It's a system that works. Because it's simple.
The complicated systems don't WANT you to redeem the points, rewards, whatever... I just read that there are 20 TRILLION frequent flier miles floating around. And, as the article points out - if 1% - that's 200 BILLION miles go unclaimed - that's somehow 10 BILLION DOLLARS for the company... Now, I don't get how that's profit for the company - must be Hollywood Accounting or something... The point is, they EXPECT that not everyone will redeem their miles (I think 1% is pretty low for unredeemed miles myself)... Because some of those systems are pretty broken...
If it's not simple, they aren't rewards...
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