Reader Nancy sent over an interesting article from today’s Chicago Tribune: Jewel-Osco’s ‘experiment’ in phasing out Preferred Customer Card seems well timed. From the story:
Sunday evening, in a checkout lane at my Northwest Side Jewel-Osco, I slid my ring of keys down the belt toward the cashier in advance of my groceries. On the ring is a small version of my Preferred Customer Card, a personalized passport to often significant savings over the price supposedly charged to non-cardholders… So I was more startled than pleased when the cashier slid my ring of keys right back to me. “We don’t need that anymore,” she said. “We’re discontinuing the program.”
This seemed noteworthy to me, so I emailed the spokeswoman for New Albertsons Inc., Jewel’s parent company out in Boise, Idaho, for confirmation and an explanation. No, she replied, “the Preferred Customer Card is still an active program.”
Was my cashier misinformed? Confused by the pending discontinuation of a related gasoline-discount program? If so, she wasn’t the only one. On June 6, those responsible for the Jewel-Osco Facebook page had responded to a customer query about the apparent discontinuation of the card program with an answer that began, “We are still accepting Preferred Cards until June 25.”
The following day, on a different thread: “Just the Fuel Rewards will be ending. You’ll still be able to save with your Preferred Card.”
I too have been trying to get an answer from Jewel for you guys on what exactly is going on with the Preferred/Rewards cards. My local stores have been saying for over a month now that the card is going away when the fuel rewards program is phased out on June 25th. But another question I’ve been hearing lately is “What will happen to Jewel’s ecoupons if there is no card?”
A valid question, indeed. Jewel currently has two sets of ecoupons that can be loaded to the Preferred/Rewards card – manufacturer ecoupons at Jewel-Osco.com, and SavingStar ecoupons. If the card is truly being phased out, will we lose access to these ecoupon offers too?
I’m still trying to find out an answer to this question for you. Even my local store staff asked me this week what’s going to happen to Jewel’s ecoupons with the card phaseouts. One of my store’s employees laughed and said “They won’t tell us anything, so we’re asking you!” I told her I wished I had the answer… but I’m trying to find out!
UPDATE 2:15pm: I reached out to SavingStar to see if they had any information to share about continuing their relationship with Jewel. SavingStar responded that “Jewel will continue to participate in SavingStar,” and that they could not share any additional information at this time.
Ashleyb says
I don’t think they will phase it out completely because it is a way to track customer purchasing and they are still signing people up in store for the cards. Also that is how they issue the employee discount, and I don’t think they are discontinuing that (or at least I hope not since it is based on precoupon prices) but I guess we will all just have to wait and see.
milwkeesbest says
Was told last night that I no longer needed the preferred card to obtain the savings/sales prices.