veteran+ wrote: ↑October 10th, 2023, 7:51 am
So why have I not seen Catalina machines at Pavilions or any of the Ralphs in Los Angeles areas?
I did notice one store had the machine but nothing ever comes out of it for me or anyone before and after me.
Weird
Pavilions wouldn't have it anymore since Safeway removed all of them last summer.
But Ralphs definitely has them, should be at every register on front end and self checkout. Not on pharmacy, fuel, etc. registers.
Walgreens has them on every register as they tie a bunch of promotions to them. They are frequently broken which is bad because they tie merchandise based promotions to Catalina, Vaccine-based promotions to Catalina, etc. As in like last week they had a promotion get a vaccine and you get a coupon good for $20 Walgreens Rewards with $1 purchase, printed via the Catalina machine in pharmacy when they rung your vaccine through the register. So you had to take that coupon then make some other $1 purchase and then when scanned it could credit $20 Walgreens Rewards to your loyalty card. But their machines are frequently broken. I've also had it where you do a transaction a the front register and no Catalina prints then you ask about it and they say oh this register's Catalina prints over at photo or cosmetics or something and you go over there and you can see the last coupon that printed was the one you were expecting to get (along with a giant strip of coupons that weren't given out that should have been given out and now must be destroyed per Catalina policy).
I was in a Rite Aid last week with 3 machines, all turned facing the customer so you can take your coupon off the machine yourself. But 2 of the 3 machines were shut off. In the old days Catalina would actually monitor machines that were off and do something about it (and the horror of running out of paper in one of those machines....).
Also at Smiths just today the Catalina printed me something but it was blank... the paper was in correctly but it just wasn't printing, no ink or something.
I don't think these Catalina machines are maintained properly anymore based on all the problems I have with Walgreens machines not turned on, ones like Smiths that print a blank thing, etc.
