The Offer
Kroger stores have a fuel points offer for three days only, Friday 1/27 through Sunday 1/29:
- Receive 4x fuel points on a gift card purchase from Kroger by adding the digital coupon to your Kroger card
This deal should be valid at Kroger and all other Kroger-affiliated stores, like Ralph’s, Smith’s, Fry’s, etc. Check out your online account to find the coupon at your local store and load it to your card.
Additional Details
- The standard deal at Kroger stores is 2x fuel points on gift card purchases, and they’ll occasionally release offers like this one to get 4x fuel points.
- All third-party gift cards seem to be included in this offer. In the past, there have been mixed reports on whether fixed-denomination Visa/MC/Amex gift cards worked to trigger the bonus fuel points. The terms imply that they do work, but it’s YMMV in practice.
- To maximize the deal even further, remember that you can get free cell phone service with Kroger when you earn fuel rewards points; no points are used up with this benefit, it’s just an additional free perk which you get from fuel points, aside from the free gas.
Usually, every 1000 fuel points will get you a discount of $1 per gallon with a 35-gallon limit, a max value of $35 per 1000-points. These details do vary by store and region.
Our Verdict
If you can max out the 35 gallons, you’ll get a $35 value from purchasing $250 worth of gift cards with this deal, a 14% discount on the gift cards. There’s also a digital coupon to get 20% off Carter’s gift cards with unlimited use which will stack nicely with the 4x fuel offer.
The big question here is whether this deal is for unlimited use – the terms are vague about this. In the past, the 4x fuel points deals have always been unlimited, as I recall. We’ll find out more on Friday when it goes live.
Update: a reader confirms that it’s one-time use.
There’s also currently an offer to get 2x fuel points on all groceries until the end of January.
Hat tip to Slickdeals
This promotion is not unlimited. Once you use the coupon it is removed from your account.
People need to contact kroger and ask that it be changed to unlimited. Currently they are recommending that you just purchase the gift cards and call to get the points added. We shouldn’t have to do this.
The 4x fuel points promotion is a one time coupon. Just purchased a gift card and now the coupon is gone.
Thanks, I’ll update. I guess the plan is to do one big purchase, then.
I think it’s also at the end of the month for another reason. The system uses your available fuel points for next month if its a higher amount than what is about to expire this month.Example: you have currently, $.80 off per gallon set to expire on 1/31, you buy gift cards that mean you’d have $1.00 off gas set to expire 2/28, you go to get gas and it uses next month’s dollar off and leaves you with $.80 off that is now probably useless unless you can fill up again in the next few days.
if anyone has found a way around this I’d love to learn.
Oh! So that’s why I got screwed out of -$.40 / gallon in December when I filled up on November 30 for -$.60 / gallon! Damn you, Kroger.
*correction: -$.60 / gallon in December; I had wanted to use the -$.40 / gallon in November, but all I had was the -$.60 :/
There is a way around it, I know, because I’ve done it before (and if you read up on the Kroger website, it tells you how to do it) Anyhow, in the scenario you described above, if you select $1 off, it will take the $1 off that expires next month, its easy to make this mistake because the default question is “Do you want to use $1 off.” What you have to do is press “No” and then, in this case, enter $0.80. If you do it like that it will use the $0.80 that is set to expire this month. Basically, if the default question is, “Do you want to use a $1 off?” but you don’t have a $1 off that expires this month, of course it’s going to use the $1 off that expires next month. Hope this helps.
This only works at the actual store gas stations. If you use Shell gas stations, you’re out of luck.
If you go to a Fry’s gas station (thats the Kroger near me) and have .80 off for the prior month and $1.00 off of the current month like your prior example, the system will default to the $1.00 off. You can change it to .80 and it will use the prior month’s amount. It requires you to know how much you still have left from the prior month, but it still works. I do it quite regularily.
I’ve done this at my local Kroger fuel island as well. Like you say, you have to know how much you have remaining but it does let you change/lower the amount to use the remaining previous month fuel point balance first. I suspect most people just accept the default highest amount, though.
well done, Alex. Took me a while (and several phone calls) to figure this out. (I’m among those with two Kroger accounts in the family — and two legacy phones….. and some big gas guzzlers …. so $35 off in gas plus about $20 in value for phone/text minutes — great deal for us. (per phone)
Alas, the days of Kroger i-wireless seem numbered…. they don’t even sell them in stores any more. (and you can’t buy data for the older legacy plans — and I’ll be d*mned if I switch over to one of those over-priced Kroger I-wireless monthly rate plans… I’ll switch to Republic long before that)
thanks for the info Alex
I have noticed it and it pisses me off they don’t use the expiring stuff first. Pretty cheap imo.
There IS a way to go around their set up. When at the pump it asks you if you’d like to use “full amt” (all fuel points for discount), select “other amount”. Then, select the number of points you have left from the PREVIOUS month. For example, if you have 60 c/gallon worth of savings from December and 80 c from January, select 60 cent discount in order to activate the older month’s deal.
My understanding is that at the pump Kroger will display the most points available for discount, however it will always draw the points from the most recently expiring bucket. That is, if you had 800 points expiring in January and 1000 points expiring in February, if you were to ask to redeem only 800 it would come from January.
notice that kroger offers this bonus near the end of month so customers only have about 5 wks or just little more than a month or so to use the fuel discount
I just bought a visa gift card at Kroger a few days ago. Received zero fuel points.
They don’t pay points on variable load visa cards
yep, only work on the fixed amt