Well, what ELSE would they name it? 
In a press release today, ToysRUs announced it was launching a free rewards program for its customers called RewardsRUs. Here’s the low-down:
The program is open to: US residents age 13 or older
How to join: You can sign up online or in-store
How to earn: You’ll earn when you present your membership card at checkout (or you can enter information from a store receipt into the website to get credit if you didn’t have your card). $150 in purchases through 12/24/08 = 5 “R”Us Dollars. This excludes purchases of gift cards and Pampers Value Boxes. There is a separate benefit for members related to Pampers Value Boxes: Buy 9 within 12 months and get 1 free.
How to redeem: Your “R”Us Dollars are mailed to you automatically each time your total spending tops $150 (with those two exclusions above). The $5 “R”Us certificate must be spent on a purchase of $5 of more before tax. Certificates must be spent by 1/31/09. I’d assume some new promotion would replace this one at that point.
My take: It’s not stunning, but it is free. Spending $150 to get $5 is like a 3.3% rebate. If you were going to shop at TRU anyway, you might as well take advantage of it. This is the second major retailer (the first being JCPenney) that has rolled out a non-credit-card-tied loyalty program in the last couple of months. It’s something I think is long overdue. You want to reward all of your customers for their loyalty (and study their shopping patterns to provide better marketing), not just those who use your store’s credit card.
I think we’ll see more of this type of program in 2009.
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I enrolled in this program in November 08 and was supposed to receive $25 in rewards and it is now March 09 and I have still not seen them. I have contacted them several times and they keep saying they will resend them, and I wait and nothing happens. This program has been a mess for me. If you enroll, make sure you stay on top of them, you are spending money to receive a reward that they you may or may not get!!!
I recieved two vouchers in January that totaled $25. When I tried to use them online it said they were invalid. When I called customer service, i was told there were bad batches and they were going to send out giftcards instead. I called today because I still had not recieved them. There is nothing they can do since the person I talked to never logged in my call. I am so irritated.
I have a complaint about this program. Once you earn the rewards the time frame to redeeem is extremely short barely two weeks. I delivered my baby by c-section right before the certificates were valid by the time I was able to feel comfortable enough to leave the house to use them I found out they had expired the day before. The customer service rep and her supervisor had no sympathy towards me being a new mom. Im sure they are banking on new parents to not use the rewards. BTW, I spent over 800.00 in merchandise to get the 15.00 rewards, so I think it is pretty awful of them to not try to accomodate me as a courtesy. I dont rate this program well and will stop using the membership and stop shopping there. It certainly isnt the only place to buy baby items.
I have purchased many, many things at Toys R Us and Babies R Us in the past year, and I’ve always put them on my rewards card, expecting that I would be getting rewards eventually. When they kept not coming, I asked at the store, and they said to call the 800 number. I called, and the customer service rep (who was nice) explained that customers only have a 3 month period to get up to $150 and then they start over again, and there’s a black out time for a couple of months around Christmas when no points are earned.
I think these are both very poor policies, especially since they are never explained to customers. Apparently, one 3 month period I was just a few cents from the $150, and when I bought a $220 car seat in February, it didn’t count because it was during the black out period.
This is ridiculous, stingy and extremely unfriendly to customers. I’ve never heard of another rewards card with black out dates and 3 month windows.
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