Safeway Just 4 U – Personalized Coupons

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Safeways Just For U Savings Center

If you have entered a Safeway lately, chances are you have noticed the new Just 4 U (J4U) banners, tables and signs all over the store. You may have had one of the Safeway employees explain the program to you already, but if not, we are here to help. Safeway recently held a blogger event, and invited us out to learn all about this program – just so we would be equipped to share with you!

In short Just 4 You is a new program that allows you to save at Safeway, without having to clip coupons. One of the biggest perks of the program is that you get deals personalized for you. This is based on your shopping patterns, so you should be getting savings on products that your family likes to buy.

Highlights:

• No coupon clipping
• Deals tailored for the things you like to buy
• Use on your mobile phone in the store (Download the iPhone /iPad or Android app)
• Safeways system should always give you the lowest price
• No complicated pre-planning required for your shopping trip
• You can NOW use this program to get COUPON savings for online Safeway.com grocery deliveries (this service can come in handy!)
• You will find deals on products that are often hard to get coupons for (ie produce and meat).
• You will get a FREE dozen of eggs when you sign up!
• Some of these deals will be available to you on an unlimited basis (number of items you can purchase is not restricted for specified amount of time). Some will be one time use. The details should be provided on the coupon.
• Stay Tuned – Coming Soon: Search items in the store for the best price on items you are looking for (ie search on OJ, and get back a list of the brands with prices currently for sale in store), and tell the app which store you are shopping at and it will tell you where to find products by aisles in your specific store! 

Program Details:

You will need to start by signing up online at Safeway.com. Select the Just 4 U program and you will have to register your club card. You will then have access to the Savings Center which should include:

The Coupon Center – this includes eCoupons available to use at Safeway (you can stack these with Safeway coupons for additional savings!)

Personalized Deals – these savings are just for you. Some are available regionally (so in Seattle for example), and some are available just for you!

Your Club Specials – These are the same specials that you would find in the weekly Safeway ad, and more! There is no need to deal with Safeway ads any longer with this program, as you can clip your savings right here, plus you will find additional savings not included in the ad.

FAQ’s about the program:

I asked you all to submit your questions while I was at the event, and you came up with some good ones. Here are some of the more commonly asked questions and responses.

Q: Can you use a paper coupon and the eCoupons?

A: No. However, Safeway has taken the guess work out of this issue with their new J4U system. The system should recognize which one (paper or eCoupon) should give you the best savings. If its the eCoupon they will give you back your paper coupon for another trip. If its the paper coupon, they will keep your ecoupon in your account so its available for a future trip.

Where you can use both, is if one of them is a store coupon, and one is a manufactures coupon.

Q: Can you stack coupons?

A: Yes, you can stack one Safeway store coupon with one manufactures coupon per item. It does not matter if one is an ecoupon, and one is a paper coupon, or if both are ecoupons, etc. You cannot use two manufacture coupons (one paper and one ecoupon) on the same item (see response above).

This is important, as this is where you will often find the greatest savings opportunities. Store coupons are generally coupons that include a price point (ie Kraft Cheese for $3.99 vs. $1 off Kraft Cheese).

Q: How do I get the coupons I want in my personalized deals?

A: Train the program. By that I mean, you will have to shop for the items you like. The system should soon recognize the items you are buying, or closely related items you might like, and they should start showing up in your deals. That means the more you shop at Safeway, the better your deals should get for the things you like to buy most. For those of you who have not shopped with Safeway very often in the past, it may take a little while for system to get enough data on your preferences for you to really start seeing savings on the items you want.

Q: Can I load eCoupon from Safeways site and other eCoupon sites?

A: No. Safeway works with manufactures to deliver the coupons to you directly through the Safeway Just 4 U site, but they are he same coupons, and may not be available to you elsewhere once you have saved them to your card.

In fact if you load some of the coupons to your Safeway card, you may not be able to print from sites like Coupons.com. If you want convenience over savings, then load the eCoupon. If you want to save more, you might want to print it from Coupons.com (so you can print two copies).

Q: How long will it take for my coupons to be available once I load them?

A: Approximately 5 minutes. So if you load them at home, they should be available immediately. If you load them via your mobile app in the store, you will want to give it a few minutes prior to checking out.

Q: What happens if my savings or gas rewards are not showing up?

A: Call customer service at 1-877-723-3929, or talk to the customer service desk in your local store. Your card is associated with your telephone number, and as soon as someone punches that number into the system it will use any coupons for items in their cart that have been loaded. That means that if there is someone out there who use to have the number you are using, and they punch that number in when checking out – they will get your coupons. The good news is that customer service can resolve this for you, they just need to know whats happening.

A few of you mentioned not getting your FREE dozen of eggs when you signed up. There are a couple of possible reasons this might have happened (rare but possible). Again, call customer service and they will get it resolved for you, and make sure you get your eggs!

My personal experience:

We were able to try the program out during the Safeway blogging event, I learned alot there, and had a great time shopping with Angela from The Coupon Project and Christie from Thrifty and Thriving/All Things Target (both ladies are so much fun!).

I wanted to try out a more “real world” scenario for you all, so I shopped again a few days later. I checked my Safeway mobile app while I was waiting to pick my son up from track practice one afternoon. No pre-planning, I just pulled up the app and started my list right there in the middle school parking lot. I then headed to the store directly after picking the kiddo up. I had a list I was able to pull up on my mobile app that took me 5 minutes to put together. I was able to quickly run through the store and grab the items on my list before heading home, and got everything on my list at or under my usual price point.

Some example of coupons I had available – 

• Free dozen eggs
• $3 off $10 produce purchase
• 10lb bag potatoes for $2.49
• Avacados for $.89 ea
• Bananas for $.49/lb
• Johnsonville Breakfast Sausage $2.99 & a $.75 off Johnsonville Breakfast Sausage (so I could stack these for a final price of $2.24)
• 90% Lean Ground Sirloin $3.99/lb
• Gallon of Milk $2.19

In summary I really like the program for A) convenience and B) items like produce, dairy and meat – which are often harder to get coupons for. The convenience points include:  preparing for your shopping trip is easy, no coupon clipping and the ability to load to mobile app to view in store.  What you probably won’t find are as many of the 90% off savings shopping trips you get when you clip multiple coupons, etc. So for some of you this program is going to be the next best thing to apple pie. For others, it will be one additional coupon resource to add to your repertoire.

Let us know what you think of the program!

Just Because:

Local PNW Deal bloggers that I got to hang out with :)

Heather – Because More is More, Heather = Queen Bee Coupons, Amber- CouponConnections, Angela – The Coupon Project, Karrie – Happy Money Saver and Me (Sia).

Disclosure – I was not compensated for this post, but Safeway did host us at a VIP Blogging event (which included gift cards) to provide detailed information on the program. All opinions are mine alone.