Technology

I recently ordered something from Walmart (I try to avoid it, but I could not find this one thing elsewhere) and you get a link in your email to notify them when you're in the pickup bay. The link goes to their app. I tried going to the website through Chrome, to no avail. It kept sending me to try to download the app. I did not. I don't shop there often enough to justify it. I drove to the pickup bay and lo and behold, the sign had a phone number you could call; a very pleasant person answered, asked my name, and I had my order in a few minutes.

I do have a couple grocery store apps for 2 reasons: 1 - there are some extremely low prices that you can only get by "clipping a coupon" within the app, and 2 - loyalty points do turn into cash back.

Safeway (a west coast grocery chain) has implemented it in the worst way possible, though. They had a physical loyalty card which you scanned at checkout/self checkout, which let you access lower prices. But now they have even lower prices only through the app. The app, however, 1 - does not let you enter your old loyalty card number, combine points and cleanly separate from the old method and 2 - you cannot use the damn thing at self checkout. You have to have a checkout clerk scan your barcode in the app, which is insane. I'm just glad Safeway is not my main grocery, because if it were I would have to change to some other grocery.