Retail reward programs incentivize customers to keep coming back, but as most shoppers know, stores don’t always make it easy to redeem your hard-earned points.

When one customer’s rewards came with an expiration date and a gift card ban, one shopper decided to take matters into their own hands with a loophole the cashier didn’t see coming.

Read on for the full story!

You can’t buy IKEA gift card with credit card reward certificate! Sure, I’ll get them anyway.

I have an IKEA credit card that gives me good cash back on their purchases.

I purchased a large item from them and got a good amount of cash back.

The only thing is that the cash back is given as a reward certificate that expires in a few weeks.

This is to drive the customers back to store to get them to spend more, but I didn’t have anything in mind that I needed.

I went to the store a few days before the reward certificate was expiring to get a gift card that doesn’t expire.

But the path forward wasn’t going to be straightforward.

Me: Can I get a gift card please? I’d like to pay with the reward certificate.

Cashier: No, you can’t buy gift cards with reward certificates. You can only buy other stuff.

Me: I don’t need anything else today, and the reward certificate is expiring in a few days. Is there any way I can extend the expiration date?

Cashier: No.

This shopper wasn’t prepared to take “no” for an answer”

Here comes the compliance part. I quickly grab an item closest to the reward certificate amount and buy it with the reward certificate.

Then I immediately go to a return counter to exchange it for a gift card and happily walk out of the store.

They can’t understand why the store chooses to make things so difficult in the first place.

I don’t understand why they have this dual policy of short expiration duration of the reward certificate and not to sell gift cards with that.

This’ll only make the customers frustrated.

I got their credit card for a reason — to be a returning customer!

Not sure how their reward experience would help that.

All it takes is one smart shopper to disassemble a store’s rigid policy.

What did Reddit make of all this?

The logic of companies can be just as puzzling as it is infuriating.

The “rewards” companies offer aren’t usually super worth it.

This commenter thinks they may know some of the method behind the madness.

Most businesses count on their customers just plain not noticing!

When you push a customer too hard, they may just end up outsmarting you!

This policy really doesn’t make a ton of sense.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.