Almost every store has its own reward points program that is aimed to help you save money, or is it? Are you actually saving money or just collecting points? There is a difference.
If you are just collecting points, you may actually be spending more money than if you didn’t have a rewards card, because stores use these cards to get you in the door and spending in their stores, in the hopes you will spend your weekly budget in their store alone.
What Store Rewards Cards Are
You probably already know what a store rewards card is. These days, they are the apps you download on your phone, and basically every store has one or is partnered with one.
PC Optimum, Moi Rewards, and Be Well are store rewards apps.
Scene+, Air Miles and Aeroplan are partners with some grocers and other types of businesses.
How To Tell If It’s A Good Deal Or Not
There are a few ways to tell if you are getting a good deal or not.
Asking yourself a few questions to determine if the deal is good or not is a start.
When It’s Not A Good Deal
The easiest way to tell if it is a good deal is to ask yourself, ” If there wasn’t an offer for this product, would I still buy it?”
If the answer is no, you wouldn’t buy it, then the answer is simple, no, it’s not a good deal, because you are spending money you wouldn’t have spent in the first place.
Tricks To Make You Spend More
Stores will attempt to make you spend more and stay in their stores longer by offering special points offers on certain products. Often, these are products that companies pay to have featured.
There is also the spend x amount of dollars and get bonus points. These can be very lucrative amounts of points, but if you were only budgeting for $100 in groceries that week and you have to spend $200 to get the points, it is not a good deal.
Example of A Deal- Was It Good Or Was It Bad?
There is a Facebook Group we recently noticed where followers post their points hauls. One of the posts was from a man who got 100,000 bonus PC Optimum points, which is $100.
Sounds like a great deal, but it is what he had to spend and buy to get those points. He bought $130 worth of chocolate bars to get those 100,000 points. His philosophy is that he only spent $30 on all that chocolate.
The points are not worth cash. He actually spent $130 out of pocket to now sit on $100 in points that are limiting him to shop only in a Loblaws-branded store to spend those points.
And, he is not alone in thinking that he got an amazing deal. The comments were full of people wanting to do the same. Others had already tried to get the deal, but their local store didn’t have enough variety in chocolate bars for them to buy.
In our opinion, this was not a good deal. What do you think? Would you buy $130 in chocolate to get back $100 in points?
When Is It A Good Deal
There are times when the deals are really good. And that is when we take advantage of them.
If you are buying a product that is already on your grocery list and there are bonus points for it, then it is definitely a good deal.
Sometimes, some offers give you 30 days to buy a certain amount of vegetables or meat to get bonus points. These are usually pretty good because if you have to spend $30 on vegetables, that doesn’t take long these days, and a month to spend that much gives you a chance to accumulate the dollar amount over time.
What Store Rewards Points Have We Found To Give The Best Deals?
For us, the best deals we have gotten are from PC Optimum points. Looking at our account, we have cashed in on $140 in free groceries in the past 45 days. And that is only from points accumulated in the past 60 days.
We also accumulate a ton of points from these offers because we shop at No Frills and Real Canadian Superstore, where we can price match other retailers to save even more.
When you combine offers with price matching, it can really add up the savings.
Conclusion
If you really want to know what is a good deal and what isn’t, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:
- Were you going to buy this product if it didn’t have bonus rewards?
- Do you need this brand name or is the generic brand cheaper even after adding the bonus points?
- Are you only spending to get the bonus points?
- Will you go over budget just to get bonus points?
The answers to these questions should tell you if the offer is a good deal or not.
We are working on a podcast for this topic, which will be released soon. You can find more information on this topic when it launches.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for more ways to save at the grocery store, check out our Money Saving Tips and Tricks for Grocery Shopping.
Have you received a great deal on bonus points lately? Or if you have a tip to share, tell us about it in the comments below.