The Deal
- Buy $25 Kroger and Fred Meyer gift cards for $22 from AARP Rewards.
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- Limit 5 discounted gift cards per month.
Tips & Ideas
AARP Rewards started offering a 12% discount on gift cards for the Albertsons family of brands (Safeway, Vons, Shaw’s, Randalls, etc.) a few months ago. They’ve now started selling gift cards for Kroger and Fred Meyer with the same discount.
Fred Meyer is one of Kroger’s affiliate stores and I believe you can use these gift cards at most stores that Kroger owns including Ralphs, King Soopers, Fry’s, Smith’s, etc.
These are therefore a great way to save 12% on groceries if you have one of their stores near you. Having said that, it might be worth only using these as a backup. That’s because AARP Rewards limits you to five discounted gift cards per month of any kind. That includes their Daily Deals which can provide discounts of 40% or more on some brands. If you’re coming to the end of a month and you’ve missed out on all the good Daily Deals, these could be a good alternative to make sure that limit of five doesn’t go to waste in any given month.
Important caveat from the face of the card: “Cannot redeem for fuel or products at Kroger Family of Companies’ Fuel Centers or fuel kiosks.” This is contradicted by the T&Cs further down, which state that this “card represents a prepayment for goods and fuel available at The Kroger Family of Companies,” so who knows whether this will be enforced. However, folks should not stock up on these cards intending to buy fuel until they know whether their local gas station will accept them. (Parenthetically, I ran into a similar issue with Safeway paper gift cards — the gas station outside the supermarket would not accept them. However, I was able to swap them out for plastic gift cards at the customer service desk inside the store, something that is not possible at Kroger-owned stores, where the POS system is hard-coded to prevent the purchase of gift cards with gift cards.)
I recently purchased 5 of these egift cards only to have it refused by Kroger. I even had the manager tell me these cards are not working. I’m assuming they don’t have a clue at Kroger, but it doesn’t do me any good sitting with worthless cards. The manager claims I need to contact the issuer regarding the problem. Anyone else having issues?
I’d seen some reports of people saying that they couldn’t use Kroger eGift cards in-store, but someone else says it can be done – it’s just that a lot of cashiers don’t know how to key in the card number.