Walmart Announces BIG Changes to Savings Catcher!
Walmart just announced some BIG changes to their Savings Catcher program! Starting tomorrow, February 14th, 2015, Walmart will no longer catch prices or items that generally do not have a like for like match at other retailers like bakery items or produce.
In addition, Walmart will no longer include drug stores as stores they will “catch”.
Now it should be made perfectly clear that you can still Ad Match these items at the register, they will just no longer be automatically “caught” by Savings Catcher.
We haven’t heard yet what prompted these changes. I know I have really enjoyed getting money back on my produce as it seems I miss those deals more often than not. Perhaps it’s just a labor thing, they time and energy it takes to enter in all those different ads must be a huge cost.
If anyone from the Walmart Newsroom team sees this, I think we would love to have a few questions answered for us.
- Why were these changes made?
- Can we expect more changes in the future?
- So far, every change to Savings Catcher has been to expand its scope and make it capable of catching more and more, this is the first time it has gone in the other direction. Can we expect more restrictions?
- Can we expect future changes to the the Ad Matching policy to bring it in line with these new changes?
- The new restriction on produce is the one that jumped out at me the most because they are like for like matches. Produce has the same PLU code across all stores. Does this change affect certain types of produce or is all produce off the table for Savings Catcher moving forward.
- And on a slightly unrelated note, when are we just going to be able to type our phone number in at the register and have our receipts entered automatically into Savings Catcher so we don’t have to scan anything anymore?
UPDATE: I spoke to Danit Marquardt who is a spokesperson for Walmart and asked her the above questions. Here is what she gave me to share with you readers.
· We are known for offering low prices that help our customers save money every day. It’s a reputation we’re proud of.
· We’ve updated Savings Catcher to focus on grocery and consumable items that make up a significant portion of our customers’ weekly stock up trips, including pantry staples, dairy products like yogurt, cleaning supplies, health and beauty items, and over-the-counter medications.
· Savings Catcher will no longer match departments consisting mostly of items that do not have a like to like match at other retailers such as produce and bakery items.
· Additionally, we are limiting our comparisons to offers of other mass market retailers, grocery and dollars stores – where we know consumers often shop for stock up trips. We are removing comparisons with drug stores.
Sooo…essentially no new information was added to the conversation. The one thing she said that I tried to push back on was she kept saying that produce didn’t have like-to-like UPC matches across different retailers. I pointed out that produce didn’t use UPCs at all unless it was prepackaged, (like salad mix or 5lb bags of carrots) produce uses the 4 digit PLU codes that are identical across all supermarkets. For instance, the PLU code for bananas is 4011 regardless of where you shop. For whatever reason, she didn’t seem to have an answer for that.
The other thing I just could not get a clear answer on was why drug stores were dropped. I got the sense that they were removed because people generally don’t buy their groceries at a drug store but the list of what they wanted to focus on includes “health and beauty items, and over-the-counter medications” which are exactly what people go to drug stores to buy.
I guess, the big takeaway here is that as soon as February 28th rolls around and our Savings Catcher money won’t get doubled by Bluebird anymore, we should probably get back to using Savings Catcher as a “safety net” for our weekly grocery shopping. W do all our own Ad and Price Matching at the registers and use Savings Catcher just in case it happens to find something we missed.
What do you think?
Here are a few other posts that might interest you.
Dana Reay
If you read the new Savings Catcher “terms of use”, basically NOTHING qualifies to be price-matched anymore! Delete this now pointless app and bring in your store ads to price match.
Darla Dixon
I’ll just return to Kroger, Publix, and Aldi
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[…] NEWS- Big Changes to Savings Catcher -starts today 2/14/15 – Not Good. […]
Josh Jeffrey
Soon they will only compare prices with other Walmart stores and guess what, no one will get any savings. I knew this program wa Sri good to be true.
Mary Louise Harper
Aaron can you and Dian do a class to talk about this new change at walmart so we can understand what is going on and what we can do? I just started doing this and understand because of your classes but now it has changed i don’t know what i can do anymore sad face.
Elizabeth Reusch
This seems to be in response to changes in their third party data provider ACNielsen. ACNielsen has decided to split regular top retailers, e.g.those making >$2M in annual sales, from drugstores and has removed data collection on items that do not carry UPC codes, e.g. produce.
Penny McGrew Groff
Another ploy by Walmart to offer an “amazing” opportunity to save money in an attempt to lure us in to do all of our shopping there. Most people won’t read the fine print and only see the “money back” and convenience of the mirage of Walmart doing all the work for us. If not for blogs such as this many would not even realize these changes were being made and would just continue to tippy toe joyfully to our local Wally World thinking they are doing us a grand favor. Trust me, since Sam passed away Walmart is only focused on its bottom line and sucking the life out of its competitors. Never mind that the produce referred to is 90% poor quality from beyond the borders of our great country and so GMO’d that we would be better off paying the higher prices at local grocer’s where they concentrate on our farmers and not those in Columbia, Chile, etc., and there is less of a health risk for our families.
Yes, Walmart is saving us money, but I use my savings on non-perishables, brand name organics, housewares, etc., and then take the savings and invest in our local organic delivery service for dairy, meat, and produce.
I understand not everyone can afford to eat this way, I took small steps and worked up to 80% organic, I rarely shop at Walmart now, but like a deal like everyone else.
Please don’t be fooled buy their seemingly sacrificial efforts to save us money, Walmart cares about one thing and one thing only………WALMART!
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Jennifer Bolander Joy
Not happy about the changes. I was saving $7-8 dollars a trip on ad match, now I am saving $.50-$1 seems pointless. I will go back to shopping multiple stores rather than waste my time and money at Wal-Mart.
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[…] UPDATE: As of February 14th, Savings Catcher will no longer catch deals from drug stores or on produce or bakery items. You can read more here. […]
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Cristi Wilburn
My Walmart has gotten so picky on ad matching produce I just gave up and started going to Aldi’s for it. I have always kept ad matching and then if it caught something I didn’t I was happy. I really just didn’t trust the program from the beginning to catch everything.
Sarah Kathryn Powell Roberson
Shopping at Walmart is a waste of time if you price match or use coupons they treat you like horrible they don’t even know there own policy on price matching they always ask me for the ad when I say I didn’t bring it it takes them 20 minutes to go find there ads and they usually only have 3 registers open so the customers behind me get upset it’s just not worth shopping at walmart. Customer service is just not there anymore.
William M. Miller
These changes stink. Please provide a manual entry option.
Thanks, Bill