I happened to notice the ‘Coles Plus Saver’ on the Coles site today.
For those unaware: it’s $7 a month, and it gives you 10% off, up to $50, on one shop per calendar month. (It looks to be completely separate from ‘Coles Plus’, btw, which is $19 a month and makes all deliveries free.)
Obviously you’ve got to average $70 in orders per month to make it worthwhile, but is there any other catch?
How do they make money on it? Does it actually increase people’s monthly spend with Coles? Or do they just rely on people forgetting about the discount or saving it for a bigger shop that they don’t get around to?
One thing that might be a catch is that it looks like you’ve got to sign up for FlyBuys and link it to the account. I don’t have a FlyBuys account, so I’m not aware of what exactly you’re signing away with it, but I would have thought Coles would be getting all your data anyway just with online ordering. Does FlyBuys membership give them permission to sell your purchasing data to third parties, or otherwise use it differently?
I’m super late to this, but I just wanted to say that I use the Woolworths equivalent of this (Everyday Extra) and it can potentially save you a lot of money if you use it intelligently. I paid for a year up front during Black Friday last year, which worked out to around $35 or something, and since then the 10% monthly discount has saved me $155 on groceries. I have been combining it with a 4% discount I get on Woolworths gift cards + the $10 vouchers I earn through the regular Rewards program to save a significant amount of money. It does require more planning and a different approach to shopping but depending on your income the savings may be worth the effort. Some will argue that if you use these programs you lock yourself into higher prices but a) there is nothing stopping you from continuing to split your shopping based on prices (I buy fruit and veg from wholesalers and independent grocers) and b) if you are already buying homebrand groceries to save money then places like ALDI are basically irrelevant because the price differences, if they exist, are minor on most items - Coles and Woolworths are basically as good as it gets in that regard.