Posts Tagged With: Albert Heijn

A few random photos from an Albert Heijn in The Hague:

It is smoked meats (meat covered in spices like paprika, black pepper, and similar).

Just a random thing that caught my eye – “Hmm, this would make a good photo for the blog.” 🙂

Albert Heijn’s latest promotion is saving up for pans designed by Vivo. The last promotion Vivo did for Albert Heijn was kitchen knives. That promotion was kind of funny because people ended up complaining that the knives were too sharp. (Seriously? What did you expect?)

But this time we have luxury pans. Cool.

Actually, Marco and I don’t really need anything, so we’ve been saving up for Roger to use them if he wants.

Since this photo was taken we’ve collected more stamps – at this point we have exactly enough.

Definitely “luxury” pans – one pan requires 60 stamps. In theory you receive one stamp for every 10 euros you spend, though there are ways to get additional stamps if you buy certain items and sometimes you get more stamps than you should.

We’ll probably keep collecting stamps on the off chance someone else needs them, but I don’t think we’ll attempt to fill another card. However, we have until mid-February so you never know.

The weather is absolutely, positively cruddy today. It’s been raining all day — even pouring during the evening commute. Yuck!

On another note, it is my 4 year anniversary by WordPress today. Hard to believe.

Albert Heijn (a grocery store) has been running a promotion the last few months. Save up 50 stamps and you can exchange them (for a bit of money as well) for luxury silverware. You can get one stamp for every €10 you spend. Don’t get me wrong – it’s an expensive way to get the silverware. But if you don’t change your buying habits just to get more stamps it works out. Marco and I have about two cards full (with help from Roger and others). Marco is specifically saving up for a few of the knives.

An Albert Heijn stamp booklet

A look at the knives on offer

Some of the knives are so sharp they even come with instructions on how to get them out of the packaging safely.

If you are also saving stamps — happy (future) slicing!

Today I unexpectedly had to give up my now old Albert Heijn bonus card (bonuskaart). They have been announcing for a month or so that new bonus cards were coming, though at the top of my Albert Heijn app it said ‘fill in your new bonus card number before January 6’ so I thought I had a bit more time. Perhaps it was a language barrier issue – I said yes to a packet with the new card in it (so I could look it over) and then all the sudden the cashier was taking the bonus card off my key chain and throwing it out. Opps. Maybe if I had said no, I would have been able to keep my old one for a bit longer.

The biggest controversy with these cards is that they also offer personal deals beyond what is offered to everyone else. Nice, huh? Well, of course to get those deals you have to activate your card and give up more personal information about yourself. (For the record this does not bug me THAT much, except for giving out my phone number.)

At first I was concerned because I didn’t want to activate my new card right away – I thought I had more time. But after getting home and reading through the instructions, it does say that the card can be used right away. It says: Deze nieuwe kaart vervangt uw oude Bonuskaart. Uiteraard kunt u met uw nieuwe Bonuskaart gebruik blijven maken van al onze Bonusaabiedingen. Daarvoor heeft u niets te doen. U kunt deze nieuwe Bonuskaart meteen gebruiken aan de kassa. 

Exception: if you want to see previous purchases you need to make an online account and register your card. I can no longer see previous purchases on the Albert Heijn app (newest version, iOS7). As soon as you update the app you are required to do this, whether or not you have an old or new card. It ‘forgets’ your old card.

the card itself (with option to cut off the blue part and use it on your key chain/”sleutelhanger”), as mentioned at the bottom in Dutch)

I’m not quite sure how it works in this country – previously I was using a copy of Marco’s card – but perhaps it is not as common to require personal information for grocery cards as it is in America. Perhaps the old cards had no personal information on them at all and only collected anonymous data about shopping patterns. Whereas in America you usually have to give your address, phone number, and email. Whether or not they were actually valid was up to you…

Of course, like anything new, there are issues to address: there is no pin-code or password needed to see prior purchases online, and almost all of the bonus card number is displayed on the receipt (only a few standard numbers are missing). Though that article is from September so perhaps it has been fixed already.

what you get if you activate. 1: exclusive deals. 2. faster air miles (note these is not the same as airport air miles!) 3. gifts.

various coupons you can receive if you activate before the 27th of December. ‘Welkomstdeals’ -> Welcome deals