The cyclical love/hate relationship we have with the chain took a turn for the worse this week when we found that its Reward Zone program erased 140 points — that's $140 worth of purchases — due to some "annual point expiration." The point loss was fairly minor in the scheme of things. It was about halfway to $5 in store credit. But the decision to scrap these points greatly irritated and confused me. Is not the point of establishing a customer reward program to encourage customers to return? Why then would you actively discourage customers to return by nullifying points they've earned?
Honestly, there's little reason for us to keep shopping at Best Buy without the Reward Zone incentive. Video game and DVD prices generally are much better at Amazon. And for reasons beyond our control, we're certainly not going to be shopping for an HDTV or Blu-ray player anytime soon.
I can't help but wonder: Have you ever had a customer reward program backfire like this? How did it affect your shopping habbits? And how would you respond to what happened to us?
1 comments:
My points expired too. It said "see rules for explanation" but I looked at the rules and didn't see anything.
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