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We shop at Kroger because it is the closest grocery store to us. As a bonus they have a Fuel Rewards program where we earn points towards getting gas at a discount. You basically get one point for every buck you spend and once you get 100 points you can get 10¢ of a gallon of gas. Each prescription gets you 50 points, even if it is a $4 generic. Buy a gift card there and they are worth double the face value in points. So with our weekly grocery shopping, our prescriptions and whatnot we usually end up getting 80¢ to a dollar off of gas each month. Sometimes it is all off one fill up in one car and sometimes it is divided between the two cars.

The whatnot mentioned above happens towards the end of the month when we need to round up to the next 100 point level so we don’t leave too many points on the table. After work we stopped in and picked up a couple of refills, those 100 points jumped us up to 269 for the month. We also needed a couple of small items for right then, so at the quick check out we spent $8. This should have bumped the total to 277, but the receipt showed our total at 177. It was like the pharmacy points didn’t really stick.

When we got home I called and asked about it, but the fellow at the service desk said I’d have to bring in my receipts and he would have to call Fuel Point HQ to get them to straighten it out. After dinner we went back out to get those 100 points back, spend $23 more to get us up to 300 points and then go fill up. I went to the service desk and Donna went shopping.

I got to talk to the same guy that I spoke to on the phone earlier, so I didn’t need to tell the story again. He took my receipts and called the Fuel Point Situation Room. The Service Desk Guy was raised around here, so he has a pretty decent southern accent going, and the Fuel Points Custodian must have been in the mid-west somewhere as he had to repeat everything he said a couple times to get his point across. Then, to make sure I wasn’t trying to add fuel points to some random person’s account I had to verify that I was the card holder. Only apparently my name wasn’t on the card’s account. Thinking back, it was Donna’s mom who first got the card back when she was living with us, so I volunteered her name. Nope, try again. I gave them Donna and that worked. Phew. Next they wanted the address for the account holder, thank goodness I got that right the first time or who knows what they would have asked for next.

By now there are now two other people in the Service Desk line behind me and I can sense the disturbances in the force they are creating. The service desk guy is doing a lot of one word answers that seem like this is going to be wrapped up, but it never does. Now I’m getting frustrated, I’m going to be buying 10-12 gallons of gas in a few minutes and the hundred points we are working on here is going to amount to to like a buck and a quarter. My time is worth more than this. I tell Mr. Service Desk Guy to just hang up, the hundred points are not worth my time, his time and the people behind me’s time. I get my receipts back and go find Donna to check out.

I figure we need to spend $23 to at least send us over the 200 point level, so after I ring up the stuff Donna has in her hands our total is like seventeen bucks. So I grab a handy 8-pack of AA batteries (we can always use these), crap, they’re on sale. We are still 4 dollars short. Donna goes back around the checkout area and tosses me a People magazine, $4.99, perfect. Our total is $25 and change.

Tax doesn’t count for points, so our order nets us 24 points. Our total should be 201 points or almost perfect, 20¢ off and only one point “wasted.” The receipt tells me we have 314 points?!?

So after I walked off, the service desk guy must have stayed on the phone and managed to get our 100 points back. Nice, but where did the 13 extra points come from… Wish I’d of known, we didn’t need to buy the batteries or the magazine.