An experience related to our rewards points program last week really put our corporate values to the test – and we almost failed it.   As many of you know, we give our customers rewards points that can be redeemed for free groceries if their grocery order size is above a certain level.   We even offer double and triple points for very large orders because it costs us the same to deliver a small order or a large order.

Last Thursday  I received an email from a staff member indicating that our computer system had somehow given some of our Portland customers hundreds of thousands of extra rewards points back in July!   It was also reported that those customers were, quite naturally, redeeming those unauthorized points and dramatically reducing their grocery order revenues.

I was initially skeptical that this could be true because our rewards points program had been working flawlessly for over seven years.  I was even more skeptical that such an error could have gone unnoticed for over four months.

However, when I asked our programming staff to look into it they confirmed that a freak computer crash in July caused the computer to somehow give 244 Portland customers 10,000 times the number of points that they were supposed to get.    There was one customer who routinely placed large orders that had been allocated 1.7 million points!  As every 1000 points is worth $10 in free groceries,  this customer had the potential to get $17,000 in free groceries!
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