Signing up for Plenti Rewards (as a previous Rite Aid Rewards member)

If you are/were a Rite Aid shopper, chances are you are/were part of their Rewards program. And Rite Aid is changing things up again, this time they are moving their reward program to the more general-purpose Plenti Rewards program that has various retailers and services also hooked into. Think of it as a sort of Fatwallet for brick and mortar and online shopping and services – of sorts.

So as an existing Rite Aid shopper, I showed the cashier my old Wellness+ Rewards card. The cashier did some work (and check that my info was corrected) and handed me a new Plenti booklet that includes a full-size and a keychain size plastic Plenti rewards card, along with some more information and, of course, the obligatory Terms and Conditions. If you look around the RiteAid store, you may also notice a checkbook-size Plenti booklet that describes some of the initial promotions, it’s called “Save with welcome offers worth over $100 inside”.

In case it wasn’t clear, the Plenti Rewards program is part of American Express, which definitely explains why you can link it to the Membership Rewards program and transfer points there.

UPDATE: I added a section on how to contact Plenti Customer Support at the bottom of this post…

Completing the signup at the Plenti website
The Next Step is to go the Plenti website and complete the sign-up process. This opens up Plenti points for beyond just Rite aid. So here’s what happens there:

getting_started_with_plenti

  1. Enter your Plenti card number (16 digits)
  2. Enter the Activation Code (top right corner of the back of the full-size card)
  3. Verify your phone number (the one you used at Rite Aid)
  4. Once that’s successful, enter and correct your personal data, including phone, address, email, date of birth, and create a password and a PIN – all in one page!
  5. you have to enter the information including Date Of Birth – it won’t let you proceed without
  6. make sure you memorize or write down the PIN and password
  7. you then agree to four different sets of Terms and Conditions by clicking on them
  8. click Submit and voila, YOU ARE IN!
  9. a confirmation email is also sent (mine arrived 3 hours after completing the sign up)

Action-based Rewards
Remember, Plenti is an action-based rewards program, you don’t earn a simple percentage reward like credit-card cashback rewards programs. It seems more and more retailers are moving towards this type of offers (eg Walgreens). You then checkout the various offers, and if you see anything interesting, you may have to manually activate it before you can take advantage it.

Some offers are available automatically (they call them “Automatic Offers”), such as AT&T paperless billing, and many (but not all) of the RiteAid weekly ad specials. You can see circled below, the one on the left is automatic, while the one on the right requires manual activation – which in most cases means press the darned green button 🙂

plenti_automatic_offer_vs_manually_activate_offer

As of the time of writing (May 2015), their website has offers from Macy’s, Rite Aid, AT&T, Exxon-Mobil, Hulu, Enterprise, and National.

Unlike the sneakiness of Walgreens making 10 points be worth a penny, the Plenti rewards program is more honest, one point is one penny.

When you start the program, you have zero points. That’s kinda not pretty. In other rewards programs, they typically start everyone with at least some points to get them going and excited. For example, Lucky gives everyone 100 points to start with (equivalent to $1 in rewards).

plenti_online_marketplace_rewards_screenshot

FatWallet component
The program also works a bit like Fatwallet. When you click on the “Online Marketplace” tab, you see a variety of points promotions at various online retailers. For example, earn 5pts for every $1 you spend at The Body Shop (in other words 5% Plenti points). You can filter the offers on the left hand size, by category or by looking at special offers and such. I haven’t used this part yet. They also have a search box, so you can type in your favorite/regular stores or product or service there, and the results will show you the available options.

For Adblock Users
Another juicy bit from their FAQ, if you are using Adblock or Adblock Plus, Plenti has even created a whitelist filter list for all the participants in their Online Marketplace!

Optionally
You can also (optionally) link your Plenti rewards with American Express Membership Rewards, where the transfer rate is 400 Plenti points for 500 AMEX Rewards points. Also optionally, you can link your local Grocery Store reward cards to the Plenti program, but only some of the major grocery store chains are participating (eg Albertsons, Price Chopper, Bashas, etc). You enter the zipcode to figure out who’s participating. Rite Aid is also eligible for the household offers! Per their FAQ, new household offers are added every Thursday and on the first of each new month.

You can do a lot of these online, or by downloading their iOS or Android (Google Play) apps.

CONTACTING PLENTI CUSTOMER SUPPORT
I finally found their customer service contact info, it is buried in their FAQ pages:
* find and open the “Your Account” section
* locate the “Q: How do I contact Plenti customer service?” tab and open it. It has their phone number and a link to a contact page (you may need an account to use the contact page)

They also offer customer support on Twitter and Facebook 9am to 9pm eastern Monday through Saturday.

Comments

  1. Margaret Ernst says:

    I can not find a comment to see if my card was activated!! Margaret Ernst

  2. Carolyn Boucher says:

    For the last two days I have been trying to activate my new Plenti card to no avail. I fill out everything as required, however, when I think I am through it takes me back to the beginning and asks for a salutation, which I have tried to enter and nothing happens. I am totally frustraited and about to destroy this card and discontinue shopping at Rite Aid. Nothing should take this long to process, just to save a few cents.

  3. deal geekery says:

    @Margaret, are you able to see your Plenti account? If yes, it means you completed the sign-up process. They also send a confirmation email but apparently it takes a while, mine arrived 3 hours after I signed up. [I will add this to the post]

  4. deal geekery says:

    @Carolyn, did you try using a different web browser or a different computer? It may be a technical issue? I didn’t find a customer service phone number, but they have available people on Twitter Mon-Sat 9a-9p eastern https://twitter.com/Plentirewards

  5. sandra harris says:

    I am trying to sign up and it says I have already done so but I did not it may have been done at the store but it will not let me log in under my email and just keeps coming back to the same site. Help

    • @Sandra, how far does it go? For example, does it go past the page where you enter the card number? I converted my RiteAid wellness rewards to Plenti in-store but I had to complete the registration online using the Plenti card they handed me at Rite Aid. Perhaps the fastest way to solve this would be to contact their customer service.

      For all, I finally found more of their customer service, I added it to the end of the blog-post above!