Michael1942's Blog

Where are the rewards in using rewards cards with the points  worth .10 per dollar spent? , to buy  or redeem for anything significant requires a lot of money to be spent. Often to redeem the points you have to spend the points within a specific amount of time. To receive bonus points purchaser  must spend a specified amount of money and sometimes have to use the points at once with certain limitations. These cards are designed to maintain customer traffic while offering  the incentive of points for certain purchases along with “bundled” purchases. These bundled purchases are usually items that complement one another. These rewards come with limitations that unless the customer reads the fine print can be off-putting. So if a person has 8000 points , they have only 8.00 to spend, this means that any thing that is big-ticket would require a huge amount of points for redemption. Some of you may remember trading stamps, same premise but no books to maintain. There are chances for  additional points available through special promotions for partner companies but no guarantees on winning the extra points even with a purchase. Many national companies have their own rewards cards which gives them the control over  the use of the cards , often the rewards are limited to their company stores and in some cases specific items or areas of the store. This is much like coupon clipping  which requires some time to research and  pursue. I wonder if the rewards are worth the effort but looking at this from the point of view of the issuing company, the fewer redemptions they get the better as they have gained in the purchases made. One could say ” the companies” have made a big investment in advertising and rollout of the program but there are tax advantages whether they make a profit or not. Carrot and stick?