Update 2: They have changed their minds entirely and now points can be used for these purchases. The following e-mail was sent out:
Attention Kmart Shoppers (Sears too) !!!
You Screamed, We Listened!
You can once again redeem your points on all of your grocery, home essentials and health & beauty products.
Reach out to me for assistance placing your orders for all your favorite products.
Update: This is for online orders only, in store still works.
Shop Your Way Rewards points are no longer usable on products found in Grocery and Health & Beauty categories. Reader RM saw a message stating that there points could not be used for these products yesterday, but it’s not clear if this ban has been in effect for longer. Earlier this year redeeming SYWR points stopped counting towards the $59 free shipping threshold. Sears is filing for bankruptcy, so if you’re still earning these points I’d recommend always redeeming them as soon as humanely possible as it’s only a matter of time until they are worthless.
I just tried online orders; doesn’t work for me :/
Save today with
$0 in points
Points cannot be used toward Marketplace, grocery and drug items.
I have tried store pick orders for several items in the grocery and health & beauty categories like deodorant, mustard and laundry detergent and they all say “Not eligible for points redemption”.
This will happen at any time. a year ago, I was hopping that the company can survive at least for a year and here we are now. I bought some appliances and furniture a year ago with almost 90-100% back in points in 11 months. It was too good to be true and one year later I can say that I’m only 1 month away to use my points. Most of the appliances was on sale, and it was on a good price (compared to other stores, that is not common in sears). It was risky to buy this way, but I have credit that protects the purchase. Some months was harder to redeem the points because the store were closed, later the online purchases wasn’t counting the points in the free shipping and later because I was trying to find items on sale (with a good price or at least the same price as other retailers). Overall it was a good Return of investment.
I spent three evenings searching for what i could get. The problem that consistently kept popping up, “not deliverable in your area”. Most frustrating.
They want SYWR to only be used for high profit margin items, sold at full price.
I think it also has to do with the breakage on points. They now only issue $15 or $20 at a time for 7 days to keep people crawling back to get their money’s worth. If they get rid of the cheaper/lower margin products the effective cost of SYW goes down more.
Not sure there is anything in the stores they are profiting on at this point. Higher margin yes, but profitable, probably not.
I saw this and thought “Not really Shop Your Way is it?”
The next thing they would do is that SYWR can only be redeemed for the yearly SYWR MAX 2 day shipping membership for $150 and that you must meet the minimum $150 threshold in order to be eligible for free shipping.
Its already in effect for a few month. But it still works when you buy in store, not online
Are there Kmart stores that are still standing? If so consider yourself lucky.
Thanks, updated post
This has been in effect for online orders for probably 4 months; please confirm that this means that they can’t be used in-store for these items now? I was using them to purchase dog food and baby wipes every week, but they killed those (included in ‘grocery’) a few months ago. Still work for xmas gifts though 🙂
Seems to be online only
This has to be a joke… I literally set out to pick up contact lens solution at Kmart as my last errand today…