Once upon a time, I noticed that many of the products I was buying had a Kelloggs Family Rewards box where I usually see a Box Tops for Education box. I started saving Box Tops when my kids hit grade school, and while I don’t think we’ve ever seen big money, our school does pull in several hundreds of dollars each year from them. So, I looked into the KFR program.
Are Kelloggs Family Rewards Worth It?
Like most rewards program the only way to make Kelloggs rewards worth it is to consistently purchase and redeem the rewards codes from the Kellogg’s rewards products. Since we eat a lot of Pop-Tarts and Cereal, getting the products wasn’t difficult, so the only question was about redeeming the Kellogg’s codes.
Originally, the codes were inside the boxes. To redeem them, you had to log on to the kellogsfamilyrewards.com website and enter the code. This was a bit too much effort for me, and so I decided that Kellogg’s Family Rewards were not worth it for me. But, then, I noticed that I could set it up so that I could text in my codes. Basically, you logged into the website, entered your phone number and confirmed a text message, and then you just texted the codes to the number. There was no need to log in, or anything else. Every valid code received from your phone number was credited to your account. Easy peasy.
Unfortunately, the people at Kellog’s have recently changed how you redeem your KFR rewards codes. They no longer put the codes inside the boxes at all. I can only assume that the redemption rate wasn’t what they wanted, so they decided to change how to redeem the codes. The better strategy might have been to ADD ways to redeem codes instead of just doing something completely different, but that isn’t how they chose to go.
Instead, you are supposed to take your receipt, circle the items that you bought that qualify for Kellogs rewards, and then, take a picture of that receipt and then send the picture in.
Check out my latest personal finance article which is a review of Credit Karma.
Yeah, right. If logging into the website was too much effort, you can about imagine how I feel about doing this.
Theoretically, you can register your grocery rewards card and link it to your Kelloggs Family Rewards account and get credit automatically. That would be perfect, except for the two biggest grocery stores in Colorado, King Soopers and Safeway, are not part of the program. That means I can shop at another store, or do the receipt photo thing.
I’ll pass.
What Rewards Can You Get from Kellogg’s Family Rewards
This is a shame for me, because it turns out that you can get some decent rewards from the KFR program, even if it takes a long time to get enough points to do anything. We earned 60 points for each box of Pop-Tarts, 150 points for most cereals, and 160 points for the Nutri-Grain cereal bars my kids like in their lunches.
Don’t get me wrong, many of the so-called Kelloggs rewards are worthless, but there are some good ones in there too, mostly gift cards.
For example, as of this writing, I can get a $10 iTunes eGift Card for 15,000 points, or a $10 Best Buy gift card for the same points. It will take a while to add up to that many points, but when I was just texting in a code before I threw a box into the recycle bin, it was worth the effort. However, until they get my area grocery stores on board, it is no longer worth the effort to submit Kellogg’s Family Rewards codes into the program.