Safeway Just for U
Impersonal personal deals.
Oh, supermarket affinity card, you just don’t get me.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t do the bulk of my shopping at Safeway, but over the course of the past decade that I’ve had my club card, I would think that they’ve gleaned a good bit of information about my buying habits. So when they started the big push for the Just for U program — personalized deals for the items you buy most! — I thought that it would be at least marginally useful, and a good way for them to draw me into their stores with deals too good to pass up.
Eh… not so much.
Take, for example, this week’s Just for U deals. Let’s see, I can save 40% on bottled salad dressing, $0.10 on a giant Hershey bar, and get Hot Pockets for $1.87. Of course, I haven’t bought bottled salad dressing in eons, don’t know why anyone would want that much Hershey’s chocolate, and haven’t eaten a hot pocket since Webvan stopped delivering them to the offices of my Silicon Valley dotcom in 2000.
Now, to be fair, it does have the good sense to know that I would buy Lactaid milk, organic lettuce and green onions, but overall, fewer than half of the offers are for products that I might ever use, and only a handful are for items that I use semi-regularly. Maybe that’s because most of the items that I buy tend to be from the perimeter of the store, and not the easily discountable canned and packaged items. Even so… if they can give me a discount on frozen entrees, why can’t they figure out that I don’t buy frozen meals? Wouldn’t it make more sense to discount the fresh roasted chicken that I might buy in a pinch than a frozen meal that I’ve never bought? Wouldn’t they realize that a discount on the seltzer that I always buy would bring me into the store where I might pick up other items?
Overall, it seems to me that the Just for U program has loads of potential, but just doesn’t deliver.
Have you used the Just for U program, or does your supermarket have something similar? Have you had better luck with it than I have?
Tags: affinity card, just for U, personalized deals, Safeway, supermarket
Cooking
Fitness
Health
It’s been pretty good for me. Right now I’m getting 10% off bagged salad, $3 off $10 for produce (been getting those for a while now) last week I got zucchini for 99 cents a pound, I always get bananas for 0.49 a pound. Tofu for 93 cents a package… this week I saw there’s lemons for 0.33 each. Since I tend to do the bulk of my shopping at safeway, it has tracked a lot of my habits – I’ve been using Just for U before it officially launched.
They also have a free item once a week. I think if you’re a heavy safeway shopper, it will be much more useful. If you are very occasional, it won’t pick up your habits as well.
I also do most of my shopping at safeway – and like you, it’s mostly at the perimeter. (Though I freely admit that I completely understand why someone would want a huge Hershey bar. Just sayin’.) A *lot* of the deals are crap, but there is enough I find useful that I downloaded the app and find myself standing in the store staring at my phone and adding deals to the card as I shop. That app is what put it over the top for me – I don’t have to remember to go to the website in advance. (But shoot… I have to buy $15 in produce to get $3 off. What the heck?? And a free item once a week? Really?)