While loyalty cards are certainly good allies for saving money at the grocery store, the benefits of other programs are not always obvious. Their level of complexity has increased and the value of certain points leaves you speechless.
In addition, each business has developed its own strategy, which is a bit dizzying. Remembering the particularities of each requires a memory worthy of the late host Paul Houde. We come to miss the time when there was only Canadian Tire money. So we take out the cards that fill our wallet less and less often. The polls confirm this, but we could have guessed it.
This is not for lack of new products meant to delight consumers.
A year after coming close to bankruptcy, Air Miles is particularly active and creative in rising from the ashes. The program offers multiple ways to accumulate miles. I sometimes receive two promotional emails… per day.
Buying Disney tickets? We’ll give you 500 miles. If your Mastercard is linked and you spend $30 at Dollarama, 10 miles will be deposited into your account. Do you use the airmilesshops.ca website to buy on Amazon? You will be entitled to one mile for every $20. All this requires a certain organization. Some might say that’s an understatement.
A little effort is also required to accumulate miles at any supermarket with the Air Miles Receipts feature. I have been testing it since the beginning of the year and I am amazed by its effectiveness. All you have to do is take a photo of your receipt and send it to Air Miles using the application. Operation time: 30 seconds. Every other time, I instantly get a few miles thanks to the powers of artificial intelligence. A processing time of a few hours is sometimes required.
You still have to be motivated and think about it when emptying your grocery bags. It was easier to get your credit card from IGA.
Air Miles obviously reserves its most attractive offers for holders of the BMO Air Miles Mastercard, BMO being the owner of the program. They get twice the miles at Costco, for example. The great popularity of Costco should encourage Quebecers to keep their Air Miles account, predicts Marie-Eve Leclerc, editor-in-chief of the site specializing in loyalty points Milesopedia.
For its part, Scène+ is trying to establish itself at IGA. The card gives the right to exclusive discounts on certain foods, which is not unanimous among consumers.
Worse, you could spend $225 on groceries without necessarily obtaining a single point, because the rewards are only offered on certain products identified in flyers and in stores. At the same time, the IGA application offers personalized offers that must either be downloaded upon receipt of the email, or consulted on the application to benefit from them, which is not clear in the absence of a activation or addition button like we see with competitors.
An expert in loyalty programs and partner at R3 Marketing, Hans Laroche sees clues that lead him to believe that something is wrong for IGA with Scène+.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Loyalty program expert and partner at R3 Marketing, Hans Laroche
They give stamps for knives, you can get a discount on gas or get Scène+ points. A retailer cannot have three things to explain to its customers! When you do that, it’s because your program isn’t working.
Hans Laroche, loyalty program expert and partner at R3 Marketing
As a customer, that said, I like the idea of being offered options.
But what’s even better: automatic points based on purchase volume. This is what Metro, Jean Coutu and Brunet offer, with the Moi card. It’s not perfect, unfortunately, because the accumulation is much more advantageous if you add coupons by applying each of the brands.
Super C also accepts the Moi card, but only gives points for the purchase of specific products… provided you download the coupons. The same principle applies at Maxi (PC Optimum program). We can’t get away with it, all the supermarkets are trying to get us to visit their app or website for points that are worth how much, exactly?
The existence of long online tutorials to untangle consumers alone demonstrates the increased complexity of the programs, which has become very demotivating.
I would be curious to know the proportion of consumers who go through the Air Miles mall to get miles when shopping at Walmart or H&M.
Did you know that a trip booked on Expedia gives Scene+ points provided you use the travel.sceneplus.ca site or Air Miles through the airmilesshops.ca site?
Have you taken the time to link your CIBC credit card to your Journie (Ultramar) account to save more?
Did you know that the Triangle card, from Canadian Tire, has been accepted in Petro-Canada since March?
I haven’t talked about using all of these points yet. Here again, you have to be strategic, read about the issue and think to make wise choices. It’s so complex that there are robust guides online. There is no wrong decision to make regarding your 50,000 PC points ($50 value), although it is better to wait for events at Pharmaprix during which the value of the points is inflated.
But when you have 175,000 Aeroplan points, it’s a different story. I compared the number of points required to get a $300 plane ticket to New York in June and a $300 hotel room for the same date. Result: the flight costs 25,911 points and the night, 46,000 points. This kind of significant difference should ideally be taken into account, but you still have to be adept at using a calculator to realize this.
At a time when companies say they want to make life easier for their time-starved customers, it’s about time loyalty was less complicated.