Filled up my truck, Karen's Corolla, and Mom's Buick for $1.02.
(https://i.imgur.com/IuiLjZn.jpg)
35 gallons of gas at $0.029 a gallon.
Nice I got my Winn Dixie points up 150 bucks they decided to stop that an start another type of "rewards' Rat bastards.
I'm happy gas is only $1.85 a gallon here.
Recession coming, but only when we reach $4.00 per gallon again. That is what poked the hole the bubble last time.
Quote from: aitm on January 03, 2019, 09:35:37 PM
Nice I got my Winn Dixie points up 150 bucks they decided to stop that an start another type of "rewards' Rat bastards.
I had something similar with one of my movie theater rewards. It seems everything I accumulated was going to cancel out at the end of the year. They did advise me that I could carry over my points by going to something.com, where I was confronted mostly by ads and instructions that were not clear enough to follow. Yeah, they managed to capitalize on my low tolerance for bullshit, and I just let them have the points back.
My LL Bean VISA card sends me $10 coupons after I use the credit card enough. They accumulate, but you have to keep track because they expire. Why do they expire? The pitch I originally got was 3% back on LL Bean stuff, 1% on other stuff, and 2% back on gas and restaurants (or something like that). So yes, you get it back... sort of, but also maybe not.
These tactics permeate business. All they amount to is some discount or incentive that is brightly displayed on products, knowing that when you find out what you have to do to actually receive the benefit, you hopefully won't bother. Sometimes, I actually don't buy a product when I see this come-on displayed on the package. Why don't they just lower the price? Then we can conclude the transaction at the checkout counter without making special trips to the post office and cutting labels off sister products to get the discount. 10% off? Yeah, 10% my ass!
Quote from: SGOS on January 04, 2019, 08:58:41 AM
These tactics permeate business. All they amount to is some discount or incentive that is brightly displayed on products, knowing that when you find out what you have to do to actually receive the benefit, you hopefully won't bother. Sometimes, I actually don't buy a product when I see this come-on displayed on the package. Why don't they just lower the price? Then we can conclude the transaction at the checkout counter without making special trips to the post office and cutting labels off sister products to get the discount. 10% off? Yeah, 10% my ass!
Kroger's bonus points are fairly straight forward. You get a point for every dollar you spend, but they often run 2 or 4x bonuses on gift cards. That's where we get most of our points. Need a hot water heater? Figure out how much it is going to cost then stop by Kroger and pick up $800 worth of gift cards for Lowes or Home Depot. With a four times bonus that's 3200 points. Enough for one essentially free fill up and another at 2/3 off. That's potentially a $108.00 savings on gas so now my $800 water heater only cost $692.
redeeming them is easy because as far as I know all they are good for is gas. $0.10 of a gallon per 100 points max of 35 gallons per fill up. Good at Kroger's and some Shell stations. They are only good in the month you earn them or the following month though so it's a use em or lose em kind of thing.
My husband and I use a Marriott rewards credit card to pay for everything and set the account to have the balance automatically deducted from our checking account each month, that way when we travel we have free hotel stays. When I'm shopping, I use the Marriott card via Samsung Pay on my phone to get Samsung points and Marriott points with the same purchase. When I buy groceries at Harris Teeter I get Samsung Points, Marriott points and gasoline points. It all adds up.
Obviously, some credits are better than others, and the Kroger ones and Marriot make sense to me. I'm cancelling my LL Bean MasterCard, and my VISA from Best Buy, and I've signed up for a MasterCard from my bank, which simply credits my checking account with money, but I'm cancelling those other cards not just because of all the monkey business with their crediting. Both my Best Buy and LL Bean cards are issued by Citibank, and when I pay my bills on line, Citibank refuses to send the bill to my bank the way every other biller does. So I have to make a special trip to their sites, find my passwords and user name to get in so I can see what I owe. Then I transfer the amounts to my online Pay Bill and pay them through my bank. I love on line bill pay when once a month I can sit down and pay all my bills all in less than 5 minutes, and 5 minutes is better than 15, and one password is better than six, and doing it through one site is better than three.
Don't get me wrong. I fully recognize that some incentives are better than others.
Slightly off topic, and just the ravings of a cynic, I used to get factory rebates on tires, but I had to send in receipts and bills via snail mail, only to have the factory inform me that something was wrong. Sometimes I could correct it before the deadline arrived, sometimes not. If I could correct it, I would receive a card for the amount of the rebate a month or two later that I could use at the grocery store or wherever. When Michelin offers a rebate, I get it right at the dealer and it's deducted from my bill. I like that. It's a good deal and avoids all the nonsense.
And even more off tipic, where I used to buy tires, I was informed one time that there was no rebate. A week later someone filed for a rebate on that purchase and accidently sent the rebate request to me instead of the factory. When I inquired, no one in the store knew anything about it. I have no idea what happened, and no one else could explain it either. I suspect that the dealer was trying to get a rebate for himself. I don't know what was going on, but I only ended up with the sense that fraud might have been the issue, and I dropped the matter because no one had an explanation. I don't buy tires there anymore.
Wow! I get 10 cents per gallon off for every $100 I spend at Safeway in 2 months, at that means about $1 because I don't drive much. Good for you!