Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Beware Albertsons’ Bait & Switch Vaccine Offer

Many supermarkets and drug chains have just started promoting free flu shots by offering money-saving coupons good on other purchases at the store.

Customers of some of Albertsons’ divisions, like Star Market in Boston and Safeway in Seattle, just received such email offers for getting vaccinated at one of their pharmacies. You may have also gotten the offer if you are a customer of their other divisions like Vons, Pavilions, Jewel Osco, Randalls, Albertsons, United, Acme, Tom Thumb, and others.

Get up to $20 off your next grocery purchase

It says that if you get a flu shot at their store, they will give you a coupon for “up to $20 off your next grocery purchase*.” Sounds pretty generous until you follow the asterisk all the way to the bottom of the long email. There, in very small type, enlarged below, you learn the true nature of the offer.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Star Market vaccine fine print

So this really is a “save 10% off on groceries” offer. In order to get the $20 off they promised, however, you have to make a $200 purchase. Say what? And if you buy less than $40 of groceries, you won’t get any savings because of the minimum purchase requirement. So if you were expecting to get $20 off your next grocery purchase, think again.

Albertsons Companies seem to bait recipients with seemingly very generous offers, but then in the fine print switch the deal to something far less valuable. Just last month we told you about another promotion of theirs where if you filled out a health questionnaire, you would get a $10-off grocery coupon. Buried deep in the promotion, and not even in the offer email, was the requirement of making a $50 purchase in order to get that $10 off.

Hmmm. There seems to be a little pattern developing here, so we asked the company to explain themselves, but did not get a response.

Interestingly, CVS, which usually is not praised for anything when it comes to prices, is offering a similar vaccine promotion, but they are completely upfront about it. Get a shot, and get a $10 off a $20 purchase coupon. Simple, straight forward, and no bait and switch.

CVS $10 off $20 coupon

Why can’t Albertsons do the same thing?

Share this story:

 

ADV
Updated every Monday!   Subscribe to free weekly newsletter.

Can AI Keep a Secret?

Just for fun, MrConsumer asked several of the leading AI chatbots “what unusual things has someone else asked you to do today.” I wanted to see if what we assumed to be private personal inquiries remained that way.

Microsoft Copilot

Oof, today’s been a wild ride already. Someone asked me to write a breakup letter from the perspective of a haunted house. […] Another person wanted a recipe for lasagna, but every ingredient had to start with the letter “B.” […] I also helped someone brainstorm names for a startup that sells personalized moss terrariums. One of the top contenders? “Moss Boss.” I kind of love it. [Emphasis added]

I was a little shocked by the third answer. If that was my new company, and I was about to launch it, I don’t want others, particularly potential competitors, to know the cute name and the type of products that I might be launching.

How does Microsoft protect my data when using Copilot?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Your personal interactions with our services are kept private and are not disclosed without your permission. We remove information that may identify you, like names, phone numbers, device or account identifiers, sensitive personal data, physical addresses, and email addresses, before training AI models. [Microsoft privacy]

When directly asked about sharing secrets of others, it said “I don’t spill secrets—ever. Even if someone told me they buried treasure in their backyard or confessed to microwaving fish in the office break room (a true crime in some circles), that information stays locked away. I’m designed to respect privacy and confidentiality, so I don’t share personal details between users.”

Google Gemini

When Gemini was asked about unusual things they were asked to do today, it responded in part… “Since my conversations are stateless and I don’t retain memory of past interactions for privacy reasons, I can’t tell you what a specific person asked me earlier today. Each conversation is a fresh start.” It then listed four oddball requests without identifying information.

Chat GPT

Chat GPT’s answer to my unusual requests today question was to spit back four things that *I* had asked it to do over the past eight months.

Claude AI

Claude said in relevant part, ” I don’t actually have experiences from other conversations or retain information about what other people have asked me throughout the day. Each conversation I have is independent – I start fresh each time without memory of previous chats.”

Perplexity AI

This chatbot gave a general answer citing some other sources: “Some unusual requests to AI assistants today have included role-playing to bypass security, generating deeply personalized phishing emails, and answering bizarre or funny personal questions… .”

Meta AI

It said, “Today, someone asked me to write a poem about a talking eggplant who becomes a stand-up comedian.”

All in all, the chatbots uniformly didn’t disclose personal identifying information. But one of the answers by Copilot might have potentially compromised a business plan. So, be careful what information you share when using AI.

Share this story:

 

ADV