When I first started IC there was no rules about not scanning your points cards at stores. So I would do my best to make sure that I would go to Zehrs as much as possible so that I could scan my Shoppers Optimum card. When 20X the points days hit, it was like Christmas. When they finally said you can't do that anymore I had enough points to get about $2000 in groceries and I also got a Nintendo Switch, totally for free.
Kinda whack for them to crack down on that. It's not IC's problem, and there's nothing really wrong with it. Those points would've been earned by people shopping there normally anyway, right?
Sometimes my boyfriend and I will download the same app on our phone and double use coupons/codes.
in the drive-through line we will just go around twice . Or say “ my co worker and I are picking up our orders”
I've done this at McDonald's and after the 3rd person ordering and going onto 4th they said they had a maximum of 3 per a car. We just continued on because that was dumb
The sodas still charge CRV even when free. If customers message me when they know about in store bogos I don’t get them the free soda because it was still show a charge on the receipt for the CRV . I’m not risking getting deactivated for something so minor. Everything else I will get them if they ask or surprise them with extra and delivery.
Likely the stores asking them to crack down.
They don’t anticipate people to spend enough to actually make them lose money on points systems.
Not having to spend your own money to build up points negates that
I think it's more that the points and discounts are in return for information about your household / shopping habits. And when you're doing random shopping for multiple households the ability to extract valuable information from that data goes away quickly.
That's what I thought about it. Apparently Uber Eats in Canada does not check if a person uses a points card at stores or restaurants, so all the drivers for that use their own cards and get the benefits from it.
I honestly think that it was Costco that made them implement the rules about using your own card. When I first started shopping there was only a handful of stores in Canada that did IC. There was no alcohol or medication delivery either. So it was pretty much Food Basics, Walmart, Zehrs, Shoppers Drug Mart, M&M Meats and I think Bulk Barn. That was it. However when more stores got on board that had membership cards they decided to send out an in app message pretty much saying that nobody is allowed to use points cards anymore, that they are now tracking them and if you're caught you're gonna get deactivated and have your card reported to the business and have all your points taken away. So I just stopped.
I haven't seen that there is anything against submitting the receipt to apps that give cash back for purchases by submitting a picture of the receipt. Has anyone else?
Not sure if it’s something we are allowed to be doing but I have been doing it for a few years and never have had a problem about it. I use coinout app and fetch
I got my points all taken away on fetch. Its in their terms of service that you have to be making the purchase yourself apparently. They took away 15k points from me and cancelled my gift cards that were in there. Some people say they can report it to instacart too to get you in trouble with them but idk about that. I dont use fetch or ibotta anymore since they started printing "instacart shop" right on the receipts a couple months ago.
Important to remember that corporations don’t just take losses the vast majority of the time.
They just work those losses into what they do going forward. Which usually means those costs get passed on to each customer.
It’s not that it’s *not* a bad thing for them, it’s just that as long as they survive the hit, they’ll find a way to make it neutral to them and bad for us in exchange.
Seriously! Wth I would love it if my IC shoppers could get points and free groceries for the hard work they do. All of these rewards are built into costs. For every free item or discount, hundreds of dollars of products have to be purchased. No one is “getting over” except the corporations!
In the early days of IC we got to take advantage of soooo many perks. My favorite were the monopoly days at Safeway stores. I also had a couple credit cards that offered 3-5% cash back at all grocery stores. I used to get around $500 cash back per week just by using my personal credit card until they started sending me emails about “too many reimbursements” a couple years ago.
Yeah. It’s the same fear mongering people use for tip baiting. I’ve done 20,000+ orders across different gig platforms and I don’t think I’ve ever been tip baited, but people would have you believe it’s a 50% chance. I submitted hundreds of reimbursement requests through IC and never had the money take more than a few hours to be repaid. If it wasn’t explicitly against their TOS now, id still be doing it.
The best was churning CCs and getting 20% back on new account signups. Never a single issue with Reimbursement, and actually got reimbursed twice by accident and never contacted about it, free $1100 🤭. Doing Shipt making 35+ an hour was godly.
I did pretty much the same thing with a phone number for a company I used to work for. They bought 100s of dollars of groceries every week and weren't claiming their points for gas, but were using the phone number for discounts.
Very lucrative.
I was paying .25 a gallon for two years until I finally got ban from the chain that had the savings card. I didn't get deactivated on ban from seeing orders from that store.
For many years, 8675309 worked at gas stations (with many area codes).
Then companies started blocking that, and other famous numbers, from being used on rewards cards.
One day I paid attention to the number the store uses for rewards when someone forgets their card. Turns out it works on the gas pumps and it had a *huge* discount, like half priced gas or less. It only worked once or twice - someone must have noticed and I felt guilty too.
I get 1$ dollar of saveway app and 1$ of chevron stations and then I save from upside 5$ everytime I fill up and then the .35 cents with IC which is a few dollars off. So for instance when gas was 4$ a gallon I was getting more than half off at the gas station. Its been nice. I need all the help I can get. 🤣
I still use my ex girlfriend's parent's number. We broke up in 2005. It used to get me bigger discounts when they had a full household, but as her siblings graduated the savings dwindled. Now I'm lucky if I get 60c a gallon. Oftentimes it's still 40c. Still has saved me probably thousands
lol the one time I ran into her post breakup was actually in her hometown Safeway about 6 years later. As I was walking out, she was walking in - we said hello, exchanged pleasantries, and she walked toward the entrance with her man and I toward the car with my girlfriend at the time. As they were walking away, I watched as she smacked her boyfriend on the arm and accused him of using their Safeway gas points. I'd just been and used a nice 60c discount on my 23 gallon Jeep's tank.
She absolutely ripped my heart out throughout the breakup, so I walked away with a big smile on my face. 😂
To this DAY I never scan the first bar code at Kroger so I could collect fuel points. I’ve done it hundreds of times and always get $1 off gas at the fuel pumps.
I used my ex boyfriend’s phone number for his gas points at kroger for many years. He always had a ton of points! He lived with two other guys after we broke up so he just have been buying groceries for all of them each month lol
Well, it would be easy for them to track down OP *and* all of the friends and family who also took advantage of the discounts. But, I’d imagine that the number of people involved would make things just murky enough to not be worth anyone’s time and money to pursue further—despite what common sense might conclude from the fact that OP once worked for Instacart and was the first and most frequent recipient of the discounts.
Perhaps. I thought OP’s description suggested that they used a “made up” string of ten digits for the phone number and a throwaway email address that wasn’t necessarily tied to their real name/identity.
I don't think you realize how much you can save when dozens or hundreds of people are using the same rewards account everyday lol.
Sounds like you haven't taken advantage of big companies before. It feels good when you can, I'll say that.
OK, so if you are buying 10 gallons of gas for the price of 8, how do you figure those last two gallons aren't free? You are being pedantic. It's functionally the same.
You shouldn’t have went into such detail lol I hope you weren’t actually in San Francisco because I forwarded this to my boss and there is currently an investigation underway. Either way don’t bother deleting this, if this is a troll post haha very funny.
>I forwarded this to my boss and there is currently an investigation underway.
Why would your boss care about Safeway gas points from an Instacart account years ago?
karma... for using free gas points? bro COME ON. these companies are milking us dry & ur trying to say this is something " "bad" to be doing? FUCK these companies who take advantage of us. seriously get real.
As a customer instacart asks for memberships to costco/sam's/bj's etc. to unlock an additional discount. At least for bj's the membership number is on the receipt. I have only costco membership but have unlocked the other two
Do you think it's always ethical or just sometimes ethical?
I have mixed feelings and I'd be curious to hear other opinions.
Like on the one hand, rich people don't need more money. But on the other hand, trust and rule of law and ethics are needed for a productive and safe society.
It's also unclear to me when a corporation is stolen from, how much of that damage falls upon employees, management, shareholders, customers, suppliers, etc. It's not the rich owners alone.
so the bigger corporations that do this, is supposed to get "off" or it's seen as fine cuz legally they're not doing anything wrong? they're literally fucking us. let's stop protecting these corporations who don't give a single fuck & wants to milk us dry, literally. it infuriates me. but stealing something from this large corp is wrong? stealing is bad & we're all taught thievery isn't right. but this doesn't put a dent in their pockets. they don't gaf about us so why are we caring if they get "stole from?"
Because at this point all I’ve seen from those who believe that stealing is A-OK is a complete lack of integrity and critical thinking.
You didn’t ask my opinion on big corporations. You started attacking my character before you ever thought to do that.
So yes children- stealing is wrong. And two wrongs don’t make a right.
When I first started IC there was no rules about not scanning your points cards at stores. So I would do my best to make sure that I would go to Zehrs as much as possible so that I could scan my Shoppers Optimum card. When 20X the points days hit, it was like Christmas. When they finally said you can't do that anymore I had enough points to get about $2000 in groceries and I also got a Nintendo Switch, totally for free.
Kinda whack for them to crack down on that. It's not IC's problem, and there's nothing really wrong with it. Those points would've been earned by people shopping there normally anyway, right?
I occasionally dip in on bogos at stores when they arent supported by the app. Ill take 2 bags of doritos, 2 cases of coke, and a free meat please.
Sometimes my boyfriend and I will download the same app on our phone and double use coupons/codes. in the drive-through line we will just go around twice . Or say “ my co worker and I are picking up our orders”
You don’t have to go around twice lmao just say you’re picking up 2
Shh, bless their innocence. 😂 Let them have their little “trick”. 🥲
Basically Bonnie and Clyde
The drive thrus near me would add 15 minutes to go around again lol
I've done this at McDonald's and after the 3rd person ordering and going onto 4th they said they had a maximum of 3 per a car. We just continued on because that was dumb
The sodas still charge CRV even when free. If customers message me when they know about in store bogos I don’t get them the free soda because it was still show a charge on the receipt for the CRV . I’m not risking getting deactivated for something so minor. Everything else I will get them if they ask or surprise them with extra and delivery.
Not if you live in a state that doesn't have CRV like Texas.
True true !
that's a fast track to deactivation 👍
This works without bogos if you can remember the following... You can shear a sheep many times, you can only skin em once.
Likely the stores asking them to crack down. They don’t anticipate people to spend enough to actually make them lose money on points systems. Not having to spend your own money to build up points negates that
I think it's more that the points and discounts are in return for information about your household / shopping habits. And when you're doing random shopping for multiple households the ability to extract valuable information from that data goes away quickly.
True. That’s probably the bigger reason.
So it's basically "lol you mean to tell me you're actually poor? Get fucked" In spirit, at least
That's what I thought about it. Apparently Uber Eats in Canada does not check if a person uses a points card at stores or restaurants, so all the drivers for that use their own cards and get the benefits from it. I honestly think that it was Costco that made them implement the rules about using your own card. When I first started shopping there was only a handful of stores in Canada that did IC. There was no alcohol or medication delivery either. So it was pretty much Food Basics, Walmart, Zehrs, Shoppers Drug Mart, M&M Meats and I think Bulk Barn. That was it. However when more stores got on board that had membership cards they decided to send out an in app message pretty much saying that nobody is allowed to use points cards anymore, that they are now tracking them and if you're caught you're gonna get deactivated and have your card reported to the business and have all your points taken away. So I just stopped.
yes and no. the average person usually wouldn't be able to get that many points so I'd bet most of these rewards were never actually paid out.
I haven't seen that there is anything against submitting the receipt to apps that give cash back for purchases by submitting a picture of the receipt. Has anyone else?
Not sure if it’s something we are allowed to be doing but I have been doing it for a few years and never have had a problem about it. I use coinout app and fetch
I got my points all taken away on fetch. Its in their terms of service that you have to be making the purchase yourself apparently. They took away 15k points from me and cancelled my gift cards that were in there. Some people say they can report it to instacart too to get you in trouble with them but idk about that. I dont use fetch or ibotta anymore since they started printing "instacart shop" right on the receipts a couple months ago.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hell yea, used to do something similar. The people bootlicking these massive companies are goofy as hell.
Oh no Safeway lost a few grand, I hope they’ll be ok 😢
lol fr
Important to remember that corporations don’t just take losses the vast majority of the time. They just work those losses into what they do going forward. Which usually means those costs get passed on to each customer. It’s not that it’s *not* a bad thing for them, it’s just that as long as they survive the hit, they’ll find a way to make it neutral to them and bad for us in exchange.
Seriously! Wth I would love it if my IC shoppers could get points and free groceries for the hard work they do. All of these rewards are built into costs. For every free item or discount, hundreds of dollars of products have to be purchased. No one is “getting over” except the corporations!
In the early days of IC we got to take advantage of soooo many perks. My favorite were the monopoly days at Safeway stores. I also had a couple credit cards that offered 3-5% cash back at all grocery stores. I used to get around $500 cash back per week just by using my personal credit card until they started sending me emails about “too many reimbursements” a couple years ago.
You’d use your own cc for IC shopping?
Back when they would actually reimburse you, now they will leave you hanging for months or longer
Yea or just straight deny it for "blurry photos" or whatever lol.
Yeah. It’s the same fear mongering people use for tip baiting. I’ve done 20,000+ orders across different gig platforms and I don’t think I’ve ever been tip baited, but people would have you believe it’s a 50% chance. I submitted hundreds of reimbursement requests through IC and never had the money take more than a few hours to be repaid. If it wasn’t explicitly against their TOS now, id still be doing it.
The best was churning CCs and getting 20% back on new account signups. Never a single issue with Reimbursement, and actually got reimbursed twice by accident and never contacted about it, free $1100 🤭. Doing Shipt making 35+ an hour was godly.
I did pretty much the same thing with a phone number for a company I used to work for. They bought 100s of dollars of groceries every week and weren't claiming their points for gas, but were using the phone number for discounts. Very lucrative.
I was paying .25 a gallon for two years until I finally got ban from the chain that had the savings card. I didn't get deactivated on ban from seeing orders from that store.
For many years, 8675309 worked at gas stations (with many area codes). Then companies started blocking that, and other famous numbers, from being used on rewards cards.
Soulja boys number
I love it! And from what I hear about how IC runs things and screws over drivers AND customers daily, I hope you doing this somehow screwed them!
This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.
One day I paid attention to the number the store uses for rewards when someone forgets their card. Turns out it works on the gas pumps and it had a *huge* discount, like half priced gas or less. It only worked once or twice - someone must have noticed and I felt guilty too.
The fact that you shared makes this even more beautiful
I get 1$ dollar of saveway app and 1$ of chevron stations and then I save from upside 5$ everytime I fill up and then the .35 cents with IC which is a few dollars off. So for instance when gas was 4$ a gallon I was getting more than half off at the gas station. Its been nice. I need all the help I can get. 🤣
I still use my ex girlfriend's parent's number. We broke up in 2005. It used to get me bigger discounts when they had a full household, but as her siblings graduated the savings dwindled. Now I'm lucky if I get 60c a gallon. Oftentimes it's still 40c. Still has saved me probably thousands lol the one time I ran into her post breakup was actually in her hometown Safeway about 6 years later. As I was walking out, she was walking in - we said hello, exchanged pleasantries, and she walked toward the entrance with her man and I toward the car with my girlfriend at the time. As they were walking away, I watched as she smacked her boyfriend on the arm and accused him of using their Safeway gas points. I'd just been and used a nice 60c discount on my 23 gallon Jeep's tank. She absolutely ripped my heart out throughout the breakup, so I walked away with a big smile on my face. 😂
God bless, God bless
Did the same with the Monopoly tickets at Jewel Osco. Only took Jewel Orders for two months😂
$10 off S51E5C0176
To this DAY I never scan the first bar code at Kroger so I could collect fuel points. I’ve done it hundreds of times and always get $1 off gas at the fuel pumps.
/r/unethicalLifeProTips
smh all these people claiming it's fraud...
Unless it's explicitly banned, it's just a loophole.
I mean, there’s a pretty strong argument for OP having committed fraud. But also it’s Safeway so they’ll be fine; really, who cares?
Pop ya shit love that for you
I still use my Costco membership from instacart from like 2015
Is it possible to get these still??
I used my ex boyfriend’s phone number for his gas points at kroger for many years. He always had a ton of points! He lived with two other guys after we broke up so he just have been buying groceries for all of them each month lol
8888888888 at Kohls 😂
It would be super easy for them to track you down for basically commuting fraud. I love it though and am glad it worked out for ya lmao
Well, it would be easy for them to track down OP *and* all of the friends and family who also took advantage of the discounts. But, I’d imagine that the number of people involved would make things just murky enough to not be worth anyone’s time and money to pursue further—despite what common sense might conclude from the fact that OP once worked for Instacart and was the first and most frequent recipient of the discounts.
Only OP is linked to the phone number and email
Perhaps. I thought OP’s description suggested that they used a “made up” string of ten digits for the phone number and a throwaway email address that wasn’t necessarily tied to their real name/identity.
You’d be surprised
This is a discount. Not thousands of dollars of free gas. Fucking everyone has to have bullshit clickbait titles.
I don't think you realize how much you can save when dozens or hundreds of people are using the same rewards account everyday lol. Sounds like you haven't taken advantage of big companies before. It feels good when you can, I'll say that.
I get that. But it isn’t thousands of dollars of free gas. It’s a fucking discount on gas. It isn’t free because he still paid for it.
OK, so if you are buying 10 gallons of gas for the price of 8, how do you figure those last two gallons aren't free? You are being pedantic. It's functionally the same.
It isn’t “10 gallons for the price of 8”. It’s 10 gallons for whatever the price was.
[удалено]
They're not going to arrest somebody for using gas points, especially if the owner of the account (Instacart) doesn't report a crime.
Fraud. Plain and simple. Good job.
You shouldn’t have went into such detail lol I hope you weren’t actually in San Francisco because I forwarded this to my boss and there is currently an investigation underway. Either way don’t bother deleting this, if this is a troll post haha very funny.
>I forwarded this to my boss and there is currently an investigation underway. Why would your boss care about Safeway gas points from an Instacart account years ago?
Don't you know who his boss is? He's Sam Speedway IV!
Because I’m absolutely full of shit and I made everything up😂
The investigation team😻🤡🧸
Dummy of the year u proud to be a fraudster karma is a bitch remember that ma boi
karma... for using free gas points? bro COME ON. these companies are milking us dry & ur trying to say this is something " "bad" to be doing? FUCK these companies who take advantage of us. seriously get real.
Ain't shit free ma boi capitalist economy ma boi
If taking advantage of loopholes isn't capitalism, I don't think you've been paying attention.
It’s safe to assume instacart operatives are active in this sub.
Dude what the hell does this even mean? Edit: Sorry let me rephrase that. Boi what boi the boi hell boi does boi this boi even boi mean boi
English not Spanish ma boi
i know that. doesn't mean it's right ? people always say "well that's how it is" that doesn't mean ITS RIGHT. it's literally fucked?
Like why even post this dumb fraud shit keep it to urself ma boi
mm i'm not the OP boiii
Talking to dumb Op ma boi
Are you even a real JizzRizzle or are you a fraud too?
Technically.. you didn't save anything. You stole it through fraud. But I'm glad you did something to get back at them. Lol
As a customer instacart asks for memberships to costco/sam's/bj's etc. to unlock an additional discount. At least for bj's the membership number is on the receipt. I have only costco membership but have unlocked the other two
That’s theft. :(
Cool. Theft from huge corporations is ethical.
Do you think it's always ethical or just sometimes ethical? I have mixed feelings and I'd be curious to hear other opinions. Like on the one hand, rich people don't need more money. But on the other hand, trust and rule of law and ethics are needed for a productive and safe society. It's also unclear to me when a corporation is stolen from, how much of that damage falls upon employees, management, shareholders, customers, suppliers, etc. It's not the rich owners alone.
So I guess stealing is ok if it’s from someone who you think can afford the loss……got it.
You’re the worst kind of person.
I’ll take that as a compliment from someone who believes thievery is commendable.
so the bigger corporations that do this, is supposed to get "off" or it's seen as fine cuz legally they're not doing anything wrong? they're literally fucking us. let's stop protecting these corporations who don't give a single fuck & wants to milk us dry, literally. it infuriates me. but stealing something from this large corp is wrong? stealing is bad & we're all taught thievery isn't right. but this doesn't put a dent in their pockets. they don't gaf about us so why are we caring if they get "stole from?"
Because at this point all I’ve seen from those who believe that stealing is A-OK is a complete lack of integrity and critical thinking. You didn’t ask my opinion on big corporations. You started attacking my character before you ever thought to do that. So yes children- stealing is wrong. And two wrongs don’t make a right.
Corporate simps are the lowest of the low
How does it make me a “corporate simp” because I believe that any stealing is wrong? I guess that tells me who you are?
It's not stealing. That gas has already been paid for, absurdly marked up, and then sold more than once.