I wanted to give you a heads up to an upcoming change for the Walgreens Balance Rewards program. Starting August 25th, points will expire after 12 month for active members. Currently, active members have 3 years to use their points. Active means you have used your account in the past 6 months.
In my opinion 12 months is still a very generous amount of time, however for those of you who have been saving up points for a larger purchase or for the holidays, you may want to check your account. If you have points that will expire because of this upcoming change, you should get a print out at checkout letting you know. However, you may want to check your Walgreens Balance Rewards account on-line to be sure.
Need some ideas on how to use those expiring points? Groceries, Back to School purchases, paper products or check my Walgreens weekly ad and best deals posts for more ideas! What do you think of the changes?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Don’t like it.:-(.
I agree that 12 months is a fair amount of time. What I don’t agree with is the 1 month deadline they gave for the change. I only have around $100 in points. I didn’t get a catalina with # of points expiring so I think mine are up to date but, for those with much higher values, a month is not that long of a time. I read where one lady had $3000 in points (wow!) that were about to expire. They could have at least given people until the end of the year. 1 month heads up is very small window.
Holy cow! $3,000! Too bad Walgreens doesn’t sell used cars! LOL.
I agree only a month’s head up isn’t much notice from Walgreen’s. It would have been nice if they gave their customers more time to plan on how to use them. Thanks, Christie for the heads up because I didn’t know they were doing that! I have around $100 in points to figure out how to use them and get the best savings.
Yes, I like to use them for the larger amounts to get more bang for my buck, so I’m going to have to come up with a plan!
I don’t get it-if they are announcing it now, then the “deadline” for points in our accounts becomes a year from now, doesn’t it? They’re not just going to take all the points that might have “rolled” for as many as 11 months and change their expiration to one month away, are they? Because I think that might be illegal. That said, a very good use is their printers, which occasionally go on sale for $39.99, AND they sell the ink cartridges for that machine too-getting one XLblack-&-white and one XLcolor usually exceeds the $50.00 limit for points in one transaction (40,000 points). I have also used them online-twice-to buy baby car seats for grandchildren. Once, my husband found that if he took our car seat on a plane out-of-state but didn’t have the grandchild traveling with him, he had to pay a boatload to check it, so instead I bought another one at walgreens.com, defraying the costs with 40,000 points and having it shipped free to my grandson’s home. Other baby supplies online can easily add up to over $50.00/purchase.
My understanding is points earned prior to Aug 25, 2016 are the ones that will expire next month. You will get a catalina if you have them. Personally I wish it was 18 months so I would know for sure mine were good through the holidays. But according to the company, most people use their points within a year. They wanted to cut the liability of people holding on to them for years. From a accounting perspective, I guess I can understand that.
Do you know if we can use the points to buy gift cards? Thx
Unfortunately, you can’t use them to buy gift cards.
I don’t agree, I rarely shop there anymore as they just don’t have that many great deals. When I do shop, it’s because I’m earning points and usually forget to redeem points when I shop. I have over $100 in points right now, looks like after I redeem these points (if I remember!) I will be shopping there even less.