Savings Catcher Devaluation
Ok so I am probably the only miles & points blogger who has written about Walmart’s Savings Catcher program. I really don’t know why, because it involves two things that we are mostly all involved with. Walmart & trying to save money. There is even a Bluebird component, so it is right up our alley.
What Is Savings Catcher
For those who don’t know, Savings Catcher is Walmart’s price matching program. While you can still bring in competitor’s ads to the store and have them match the price, you don’t have to. All you have to do is scan your receipt and Walmart’s program will automatically match the prices to local competitors and you receive the difference back in Walmart Buck$.
To sweeten the deal, Walmart has been offering 2x the price difference back if you redeem your “Walmart Buck$” to a Bluebird card. Unfortunately that promotion ends on 2/28/15 and has yet to be renewed.
If you are interested in finding out more about Savings Catcher, I suggest reading these posts:
- A Complete Walmart Savings Catcher Review & Guide – 360 Degrees
- Walmart Savings Catcher in the Real World – How to Use, Does it Work & the App!
- Avoid Problems Redeeming Walmart Bucks with Bluebird (Background, How-To & Tips)
- A Huge Savings on Thanksgiving Dinner – How I Combined Deals to Effortlessly Save Significant Money
The Devaluation
I received an email from Walmart the other day that they are making some changed to Savings Catcher. Updated terms went into effect on February 14, 2015 with the following changes:
- The removal of some departments consisting mostly of items that do not have a like for like match at other retailers, such as produce and bakery items.
- Limiting comparisons to offers of other mass market retailers, grocery and dollar stores, removing comparisons with drug stores.
So they removed drug stores from the mix. This is a shame since CVS often has competitive prices on many items. They also removed some product categories. While I understand understand their justification for baked good, it doesn’t hold up for produce. A roma tomato is a roma tomato. It isn’t like Walmart is known for the quality of their produce.
If you are one of those crazy people who loves to bring an ad into the store and hold up lines, then don’t worry! You should still be able to match items in those categories with the ad. It isn’t quite as easy, but it is possible.
How Bad Is This
This devaluation is not a huge deal in my opinion. Savings Catcher is still valuable for Walmart shoppers since it is so convenient. I won’t lie, before Savings Catcher I wasn’t a regular Walmart shopper and I am not a huge fan of their in-store experience.
Since Savings Catcher offered a 2x return to my Bluebird and the convenience of price matching without any work, I did shift some of my shopping to Walmart. After all, I am already there quite often taking care of other business.
Conclusion
I recently made the switch from Serve to Target’s REDcard, which means that I plan to spend MUCH LESS TIME in Walmart. With these changes and 2x going away at the end of the month, I think I may just find my way back to my favorite local grocery store.
What do you think? Is this a huge deal? Have you ever used Savings Catcher?
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
I spend around a $100 a month on groceries and get maybe .10 cents on SC each time. I stopped typing in the reciept numbers, not worth the effort.
I do 60% of my grocery shopping at Walmart and have done so since i moved near one about a year ago. My total savings for the year is $28.00. I probably spend $125 a month there. I do the rest of my shopping at Costco, Safeway, Trader Joes. Anyways, I just bought an item at Walmart yesterday that i knew was on sale at Safeway but i was in a bit of a hurry, so figured i would just get the difference on Savings Catcher. Well, Savings Catcher missed it. Walmart was $5.00 higher for this item, so when I didn’t the difference i googled Savings Catcher and found this site. To be honest I’m not all that impressed with Walmart’s prices for the things generally buy. Moving forward i will only shop there when I’m in a hurry. Frankly the produce sucks too at my store, not fresh and doesn’t last. I have seen other stores where it appears to be nicer. FYI- I live just outside of San Francisco.
I have been trying to get a resolution for the missing money on my Bluebird card. I have spoken to both Walmart & Bluebird employees. At one time I had almost $600 when I checked my PC for amounts. A couple of weeks later I was down to about $150! I regularly change passwords so something else is happening. Both companies said they would advance my “concerns” to higher but I have received NO CONTACT from anyone. Latest amount was $0.15. Bluebird says they sorry but are not aware of anyone else reporting this type problem. They will GIVE me $50.00. So far I feel these 2 companies have scammed me and wasted my time.
Well, since Wal-mart has taken away the Bluebird double your savings program, I now find that everytime I enter a receipt all of sudden it’s invalid. I’ve entered three receipts lately and their all invalid for some reason. Now, I think it’s Wal-mart way of frustrating customers so they don’t keep trying and eventually doing away with the program all together, but instead of their azze’s companying up and just admit they can no longer afford to do this, they would rather employ other fruitless tactics. Just shaking my head…going back to Target!!
As of April 20th, I can tell you this restriction made a lot of difference. I used to get as much as $3.00 back from a single receipt. After weeks and weeks of using the Walmart savings catcher since the new restriction, most receipts come back with no lower prices found. Or, I get back about 18 cents. It is now no longer worth my time to enter them.
I’ve used Savings Catcher since it was first released and the devaluation is a big deal. We shop a lot at Walmart. Over 1000,00 a month. and I loved Savings Catcher. In 3-4 months time I saved an additional 30.00 (which combined with their doubling the amount to the Bluebird Card was 60.00 so that was great!!) Almost no savings since they removed the drug stores. I believe those were only removed because they provided the most competition. Petsmart and Petco are still there. How are they different from CVS and Riteaid? Oh yeah, their prices are higher than Walmart most of the time. 🙁
I feel like what they’ve done is really blatant and I’m so annoyed that it’s made me more likely to go to Smiths or other local stores.
I shop at WalMart since we have a lot with Kate and they have friendly staff. While I don’t have a BB, I avail of WM’s ad match program where I just tell the sale price from other stores and cashiers match them. If asked, I show my ad but this is rare since they have all the ads at each register if they have to verify. I prefer to keep my Serve cards, WM has been a good MS partner for me.
It is good that your stores have the ads available for match. My stores make the person show each and every item from each ad. I have been stuck in long lines because of it. Thanks Barb!
I completely agree with everything you said! I wasn’t a Wal-Mart shopper either until the savingscather and especially the 2x to Bluebird made me comb through the Aldi, drugstore, grocery ads to make at least 1 shopping trip to Wal-Mart each week just to get the items that would be caught by Savings Catcher with the 2x in mind as well. I used several coupons for 12 pack Coca Cola for free Coke during Super Bowl weekend knowing that CVS would have them for 2.50 per 12 pack and I would get about 1.98 before 2x back even after getting the 12 pack for free anyways. I too will be shifting back to my local grocery store where there is less crowd and hassle. I will depend on your blog to keep me posted on the savings cather going forward. Also, I am still waiting for Target Redcard to come to TN!!
It has in Memphis!
I agree with everything you said. I got this email the other day and assumed you would opine on the situation soon. 🙂
I haven’t used the SavingsCatcher too much (especially since I had already changed to SoftServe and now RedBird). But the first 10 (or so) times I’ve used it, I never had it catch anything (not that I’ve expected much – since most of the 10 times have been pretty short receipts). I finally just had an item caught for the first time the other day … and, ironically, it was a produce item!