This got me thinking as the store Shoppers Drug Mart is notoriously expensive and this week they really jacked up the prices for some items. For example, a bag of nuts that is normally say around $10 is now almost $15. However, at the same time they were having these massive points deal such as here if you bought two bags of nuts they would give you about 10,000 which is $10. So it worked out to about the same. You can argue you save more if you buy it and wait for one of those point redeeming events where they give you more dollar value than normal. But in the meantime you basically paid more for less as the company fundamentally gets to keep your money like a bank and say earn interest with it.
Add that up with how many customers they have and it can more than make up for the extra money they are offering people in say their once-a-year pints redeeming promotion. Kind of sneaky way to make money. That’s why in these cases I don’t feel bad when I am extremely frugal in places like these by taking advantage of every coupon there is to try and make everything free.
Overall, reward points should be a bonus versus a necessity to make the item reasonable cost wise.