A few weeks ago, you might remember receiving an email from Dominick’s Just For U. It said:
Lock In Your Favorite Deals!
Great news! All personalized deals that you’ve redeemed by Jan. 16 will be re-offered to you along with brand new deals on Feb. 3. That means you’ll keep getting savings on your favorite items, plus a whole NEW batch …of great personalized deals just for U!
Well, here it is, February 3rd… and guess what. That’s not what happened.
I had gone to the store prior to January 16th, specifically to use my $1.54 Mott’s apple juice discount, along with my $1.48 Fresh Express salads and a few other “regulars” I’d been purchasing, and…
Some of them are gone. And the prices WENT UP on the ones that stayed. My Mott’s is now $1.94 a bottle. Fresh Express is $1.98. Others have disappeared completely.
Rachel over at Mashup Mom broke this story this morning, writing an excellent post with many angry commenters responding about what they lost from Just For U. And of course, Dominick’s Facebook page is erupting too. To add insult to injury, Dominick’s is apparently deleting posts from people calling them out on this, as many posters over there are referencing that they’re being deleted repeatedly when they ask what happened to their “locked in” offers.
I contacted Dominick’s PR department to ask what happened and received the following information to post:
I just talked to the team at Dominick’s and have a few answers for you:
1. There is no connection between the Facebook post deletions and the posts about the Just For U prices. Posts are unfortunately being deleted because of updated spam filter settings for the page, and the proper team is currently working to fix this.
2. Please let your readers know that comments are not being ignored. In order to get the right answers, comments are being routed to the proper teams, and this unfortunately can sometimes take a bit of time.
3. Also, please tell your readers who are experiencing Just For U price discrepancies to call customer service at 877-723-3929 to get their issues resolved. Dominick’s is currently looking into any issues.
So, of course, I called. The man I spoke with on the phone stated that he did not know anything about either the “lock in your personalized deals” email that went out in January, nor do they have any way to change or adjust the prices on the personalized deals. I explained that I had just been told that I could post this phone number for consumers to be able to call and have their Just For U prices restored. He spoke with a supervisor, came back, and said “The way our system is set up, it’s just not available for me to change prices on the phone for you.” He noted that he would have to open a ticket to get the offers changed back, and then he was able to pull up a list of my old Just For U items. I had to go down the list with him on the phone and let him know specifically which offers I wanted restored at their old prices.
Be prepared for a long phonecall. He also wanted to know what OS my computer runs, what browser I use, and who my internet provider is, adding “I know these questions really don’t pertain to the problem, but we will contact you once they’re fixed.”
mashupmom says
… and yes, mine are among the comments they have deleted. Twice now. (That, they’re right on top of, oddly enough.) But yes, I also used personalized prices specifically to lock them in — and their response (to one lonely person on their FB page so far) is that their “offers aren’t displaying correctly.” Um. No, if the personalized prices went up and/or disappeared for everyone, this is well beyond a “displaying correctly” problem. This is a “you lied in your email” problem.
mashupmom says
They’ve now deleted my comment on their Facebook page three times, so I’m done with that game. Although why any of us is surprised at this point that they’re not actually interested in hearing feedback, I’m not really sure.
dolrskolr says
what Dom’s promised. But, if we read now (hindsight) when they say they’ll reoffer on 2/3, what they really mean is ‘you’ll get the same deals but if we raise the prices, we’ll raise JFU (did they even look at the acronym when they named this progam … although it appears to be absolutely appropriate now, doesn’t it) which means you still get a savings off our new, INCREASED prices’!!!!
Whatever isn’t showing correctly, just means they haven’t got the newly increased prices on those items but, if you patiently wait, you’ll be rewarded with them being reoffered {ugh}. Or, it’s up to them to define your ‘favorite’ items i.e., they’ll identify if you bought enough to be considered ‘favorite’, at which time, you’ll note the new prices. Nothing said anywhere about prices locking in. Very deceiving.
beb says
I try my best not to shop at Dominick’s. I find that for every trip I do make, I spend an extra 20-30 minutes at the Customer Service Desk. EVERY SINGLE TIME. It makes running in for a few things, for a quick trip, impossible. Sad since Dom’s is only 1-1/2 minutes drive from my house. The pricing is always off or the coupons didn’t work or didn’t work right. It’s never easy, so even if there’s a good deal, I know it’s not going to ring up right, so I just skip it.
With that in my, I’m totally not surprised that the Just For U is, essentially, price scamming.
jpruyn71 says
This is terrible.
Jill – you should have asked them who their marketing director is, who programs the Just for U system, what system is it running on, and when there last update occurred that resulted in the onslaught of angry midwestern customers…. Not that it pertains to anything….
SADRAWEST says
My prices have also gone up and some have disappeared completely! :(
fab15683@aol.com says
I went to dominicks in fox lake on tuesday. While checking out I was told that they no longer accept expired coupons. Is anyone else having this issue? My cashier would not even attempt to scan the coupons- she looked at the dates and refused them. I am obviously very upset about this!!! The manager told me that this is a direct order from corporate and soon all the stores will have to comply or eat the loss.
coop says
“We regret to hear that you are having difficulty with the promotion. We have reviewed your club card and found that the reason the Ranchers Reserve coupon did not redeem is because the offer was redeemed on a different purchase dated 01/23/2011 and is stated that it is only good for one item. The Sausage coupon did activate on your purchase dated 01/31/2011 and the offer for the sausage also states that it is only good for one item. If you try using multiple coupons the register will cancel any coupons that are the same if the coupon has been redeemed and states that it is good for one item as per our coupon policy. Your comments are important to us and will be forwarded to our Marketing department for further review. Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your feedback and we apologize for any inconvenience you may have encountered”.
The coupons I was trying to use were out of the Joy of Football book. If the $2 meat coupon/offer was intended to be one per card then why not state it on the coupon? I purchased two packages of sausage and the coupon states one item. So when shopping at Dominicks does that mean one coupon per “like” items? Or are they saying that each coupon in the book is an “offer” and only one “offer” per card?
Coupon Maven says
Props to Rachel at Mashup Mom for staying on top of this story too – you’ll want to check out her most recent post. She emailed Dominick’s customer service to ask why her Just For U prices were not locked in, and they responded:
Rachel goes on to remind everyone that their email stated:
“Deals that you’ve redeemed,” to me, Rachel, and pretty much everyone on our blogs and the Dominick’s Facebook page, means “the items and their prices purchased by January 16th.”
Dominick’s believes it means “Lock in your Favorite Products.” Not prices. But when you tell someone they’re going to get to continue enjoying their “favorite deals,” that someone is going to believe they can continue to enjoy the products AND prices they’ve been paying for them.
Instead, what’s happened with Just For U is more akin to Dominick’s thinking “We now have a list of what items were important enough to our shoppers that they were motivated to come in and buy them to ‘lock them in.’ We’ll respond by RAISING THE PRICES of those items.”
This is not a game you want to play with shoppers, Dominick’s. Because you’re not going to like what shoppers’ next move will be.