Safeway is having a Mix and Match Event, where if you buy 10 participating items, you get $5 off your order, so I thought I’d give it a shot. There are several price point categories for the sale. The first time I went last week, I assumed I had to buy 10 items from the same price point category to get the $5 off. So I ended up buying 20 items, 10 at one price point and 10 at another. I felt like I got pretty good deals, so I went back a few days later to try again. I realized in the meantime that I should be able to buy across all the price point categories. After all, isn’t that why it’s called the Mix and Match Event in the first place?
So on Thursday, on the way home from Mary Judah’s swim class, the kids and I swung by Safeway. I needed a couple of items to round out dinner, and thought I’d see if I could get some deals while I was there. Just to be sure, I asked an employee I saw in the produce department if I could buy items at the different price points to get the Mix and Match sale. She looked at me a little blankly and asked me to repeat myself, so I tried again. Then she looked at me blankly some more and said no.
I was immediately frustrated. Clearly, she had no idea, but rather than (a) tell me she had no idea or (b) find someone who did, she just told me no. So I took my cartful of hyper children back to the front of the store to customer service and asked the person there. She also looked at me blankly, but at least pulled out the circular. I showed her what I was talking about, and when she understood, said yes, I could pull any 10 items, no matter the price point, to get the $5 off my order. So off I went.
I went through the store, checking the items carefully to ensure they were indeed a part of the sale. My friend Tiffany had discovered the hard way after checking out when she went shopping, that one of the items she thought was included actually wasn’t, and missed out on a free $5. When I finally got to the checkout, I made a point of telling the clerk that I had bought items from the promotional sale so I could get $5 off, in case they didn’t all go through.
Sure enough, after all my items had been rung up, the $5-offer never showed up on the screen. I asked him about it and he subtotaled it again, and it still didn’t show. At this point, neither of us knew what to do. I didn’t want to hold up the line that had formed behind me, so I asked him if I could take care of it at customer service. He canceled the transaction and printed my receipt to take over to the CS counter.
I had to wait in line there for a minute - someone was in front of me, the clerk was on the phone and there was an off-duty employee there as well. Mary Judah had corralled her brother into playing with the stuffed animal machine, and their late-afternoon blood-sugar drop had commenced.
When it came my turn at the counter, I tried to explain that I wanted to buy the ten items but that the $5 off wasn’t working. The clerk was only half-paying attention to me, and glanced at my receipt and told me I must have done it wrong. I asked her to check again. She seemed kind of flustered and looked at my receipt again without really looking at it. Then she took care of the person behind me, talked to the off-duty employee and said I must have not gotten 10 items.
I began to get frustrated, and started pulling items out of my bags and setting them on the counter, counting them. She pointed to one and said she didn’t think that one was part of the sale. I told her I had double checked on the shelf, so she pointed to a different one. Then she helped the new person behind me, again. I kept having to turn to check on the kids and make sure they were safe, getting along, and staying out of trouble and out of the way.
For a third time, the clerk tried to dismiss my purchases, and I started getting really frustrated. She wasn’t actually trying to HELP me at all, just get me away from her counter. I was on the edge of dumping out my bags, giving her a piece of my mind, and walking out of the store - I had already been at customer service for over 10 minutes!
Just then the manager quickly walked up, wanting to know what the problem was. So I explained all over again, and again the customer service clerk interjected that I didn’t have the right items. I held that I did. She looked at all my stuff, and then took me over to a closed checkout counter to figure it out.
She rang up just the ten items, and like the first time, it didn’t work. She looked as confused as I was. She looked at all the items and picked out a couple to go back and check. Meanwhile, Killian had started pulling all the Kit Kat Bars off the shelf, Mary Judah was stretching the closed lane cable as far into the aisle as she could go, and I was seriously starting to lose it.
She came puffing back a few minutes later, assured that most of my items were indeed a part of the sale, and had checked on the ones she wasn’t sure of, but that they were all included. Indeed. So she rang up the rest of my purchases (again) and manually gave me $5 off. From the time I walked up to stand in line at customer service to the time I walked away from the manager ringing me up, had been 20 minutes!
What’s really frustrating, is that all those items WERE a part of the sale, and I SHOULD have already had $5 off to begin with! I had to plead my case to the store to honor the sale they were using to lure me in. Someone had already given me the wrong information about it, the register should have rung it up properly in the first place, and then when I tried to figure out why it wasn’t working, the “customer service” clerk tried to make me think I had not actually gotten it right.
I wonder how many people walk out of Safeway $5 poorer because of misinformation and technical problems. I KNEW I had the right ten items and it didn’t work - how many people didn’t? How much is Safeway making off of people stocking up on things and then not getting their promised sale?
I’m not sure now that was all worth $5.