Frank Zhang thought he was winning at the PC Optimum game — stacking up points on groceries, gas and gift cards by chasing bonus offers and swiping his PC Mastercard for extra rewards.
But his seven years of smart shopping didn’t pay off. Instead of cashing in on his hard-earned 43 million points — worth about $43,000 — Zhang found himself locked out of his account with no warning, no clear explanation and no way to access his points.
“That’s unfair,” Zhang told Go Public. “They can control my money. They can control my points, but I can’t do anything.”
Brain-dead PR catastrophe for PC. They could instead have make him the public face of their rewards program. Now they are in the news as the bad guys.
For a few years we collected points, simply a goal to see if we could reach 1 mil and then cash in for groceries at the local Real Atlantic Superstore. Reached the goal and then some, got to about 1.5 mill and then started using all the points for all grocery purchases in store. Once the points were depleted, the account would no longer tally points on purchases where points were offered. Tried the same methods of watching the sales, etc, and would buy the things on sale as needed. No points collected on purchase. Gave up trying, and now shop wherever is convenient. I was at the local store last week for a few things and the cashier said that now a person has to open the app and accept the offers, then buy the product during that sale period in order to collect the points. Yeah, no, not gonna do that anymore.
Besides, holding on to points while grocery prices continue upward only devalues the points at a future redemption date. Might as well cash them in as you go.
Adding offers manually used to be a thing back when we had physical cards, before the modern app came around. They just reverted convenience.
I wish there was a way out of this points hell being everywhere you go. Every item gets more expensive to pay for it whether you like it or not, so don’t lose out, collect today! Such a pain in the ass.
'Tain’t your money, dude—you didn’t actually pay a cent into this, and I’m sure there’s a clause in whatever fine print you signed that says they can freeze or close your account for any or no reason. Never count on loyalty bonus programs. Not only can your account vanish without warning, but so can the entire program (if the company files for bankruptcy, for example).
Cash out early and often.
Yes you did. Do you really think that companies will offer this stuff for free? The cost of it is paid by every consumer, every customer of these stores
Yeah, not saying it isn’t shitty of them to do that, but I can’t say I’m surprised, either.
Those fucking dickheads also locked out my CC while I was on vacation in a region I notified them of through their special “going on vacation? Let us know.” feature.
They slowly 2 weeks after I returned let me know that it was flagged for a sketchy purchase being made inside that region. The sketchy purchase? A water bottle from the polish 7-11 corp “Zabka”.
They offered me $20 in points for locking out my main spending source. I offered them a go fuck yourself, a cancellation, and picked up an Amex Cobalt and a Simplii Visa.
Learned a good lesson about traveling with just one CC though.
I’m wondering why people save up points like this. I use my $10 every chance I get.
I’ve been locked out of my account three times over the years because I forgot to turn off my ad blocker when loading my grocery offers. The reactivation process is repetitive, nontransparent and takes weeks. No way I would recommend trusting thousands of dollars worth of points to this system.
Redemption events at shoppers turn 200k into $300 or 250k into $400 on Black Fridays. Last year they had an event to double your entire point spend which was the best redemption yet (500k became $1000). I’ve used these events to get my PS5, PSVR2, Xbox, switch, Sonos speakers, Apple Airpod Max, sim race wheel. Of course starting this year they’ve stopped carrying all the cool electronics.
All this being said, you can only redeem a max of 500k in any translation so keeping anything more than that doesn’t serve much purpose.
a) its not money, its their points.
b) he would had to agree to their terms of service which state they can do whatever they want with the points or the account.
c) you have to be a special person to think that keeping $43K in store credit is somehow a good idea
c) you have to be a special person to think that keeping $43K in store credit is somehow a good idea
Why would you blame the victim here?
Will someone please think about Galen Weston’s public image!
