8 Food Lion Traps That Drain North Carolinians’ Grocery Budgets
Food Lion rewards come with deadlines, and savings that need a tap each month are easy to forget.
North Carolinians who shop there also deal with coupon rules, a price guarantee with fine print and fees on online orders.
Here’s what to check so the savings you planned on show up at the register.
1. Coupons Shown on Your Phone
Food Lion’s coupon policy says it won’t accept a coupon displayed on a phone or tablet.
Screenshots don’t count.
Digital coupons work differently.
Food Lion requires an account for them, and you clip each offer from the Coupons menu on its website or the Save tab in its app.
If you forget, you can stop by its in-store kiosk to clip new coupons automatically before you shop.
Clip before you leave your house.
2. Stacked Paper and Digital Coupons
Food Lion lets one coupon work on one item.
A digital coupon can’t share that item with a paper coupon, and none of them is doubled or tripled.
Copied or altered coupons aren’t accepted.
No coupon can take off more than the item’s final price.
Pair a $1 coupon with an item that rings up at 75 cents, and you save 75 cents.
Pick one per item.
Choose the bigger coupon for each item, and keep the smaller coupon in your wallet for another trip.
3. Competitor Coupons From the Wrong Stores
Food Lion takes printed coupons from competing grocery stores within 10 miles.
Store management decides which stores count as competitors.
Wholesale clubs, drug stores and dollar stores such as Dollar General and Dollar Tree are out.
So are competitor loyalty-program coupons, coupons on a competitor’s app and percent-off-the-total-order coupons.
If you clip a coupon from one of those stores, you’re carrying paper that won’t work at your Food Lion.
When you buy two of an item, Food Lion honors only two of the same competitor product coupon.
Dollar-off-total-order coupons are limited to one Food Lion coupon and one competitor coupon per day for each household.
A competitor’s private-brand coupon does work on the matching Food Lion private brand item.
Check the store first.
4. Skipped Monthly Activation
Food Lion enrolls you in Shop & Earn automatically once you have a digital account.
Activating your offers is a separate step, and you have to visit the Shop & Earn page at the beginning of each month to do it.
Food Lion’s Shop & Earn offers refresh monthly, and the rewards page puts the new batch on the 1st.
Qualifying purchases begin counting toward your monthly rewards once your offers are activated.
Food Lion advertises average savings of $20 a month with Shop & Earn.
Activate first, shop second.
5. Rewards Left to Lapse
Food Lion’s Shop & Earn rewards come with a deadline, so a balance you ignore can go unused.
Food Lion applies the rewards you earn automatically on your next trip when you use your MVP loyalty card.
If you’d rather give them away, you can donate them to charity under “Your Rewards” on the Shop & Earn page.
Use them or lose them.
How Long Food Lion Rewards Last
Food Lion says rewards earned during one month stay available through the following month.
That gives you 30 to 60 days to use them, depending on when in the month you earned them.
Earn a reward in early October, and it stays available through the end of November.
Earn one on the last day of October, and you get the same end date with only 30 days to use it.
6. Minimum-Spend Coupons Your Cart Misses
Say a Food Lion coupon needs a $50 order, and your cart rings up $52 at shelf prices.
Food Lion checks that minimum after MVP discounts and other coupons come off, and before tax.
Take off $6 in other savings, and you’re at $46.
The coupon doesn’t apply.
The same coupon policy keeps discounts off tobacco, gift cards, postage stamps and services.
7. Food Lion Scan Guarantee Fine Print
Food Lion’s Scan Guarantee starts when the price at checkout is higher than the shelf tag or sign.
It only helps if you catch the higher price.
Then you get one of that item free, and any extra units ring up at the shelf price.
BOGO items count as half the regular retail price with your MVP card.
Alcohol and tobacco are excluded in every state. For those, you get the shelf price but no free item.
If you come back after you’ve left the store, you need your receipt to get credit.
Check your receipt.
Psst! How much do you know about Food Lion’s fine print? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Food Lion Fine Print Quiz
Answer these questions on Food Lion and its savings rules. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Before Shop & Earn went chainwide, Food Lion piloted it in which two North Carolina cities?
8. Pickup and Delivery Fees
On its service-fee page in late September, Food Lion listed a $1.99 pickup fee on all orders, with a $25 minimum.
Delivery was as low as $2.95 with available discounts.
As of late September, you'd also owe a $15 redelivery fee when a driver makes multiple delivery attempts.
Canceled orders with specially requested items face a restocking fee equal to 15% of those items.
You'd owe a $50 restocking fee if your order couldn't be delivered, or if you canceled it after Food Lion started preparing it.
Pickup costs you less.
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