Last month I shared our reaction to the radically revamped Melaleuca Tooth Polish rebranded as Exceed. At the beginning of the year I outlined the new rollout for the enhanced loyalty incentives Melaleuca introduced this year. Neither of those was in error or me messing up. No, that just happened this month but both the above were related and hopefully my mistake can be a learning experience for you.
This entire screw up started perfectly normal enough. I did what I usually do and properly queued up my monthly order in advance according to our needs. That included a new 3-pack of Exceed Essential Oil Tooth Polish which is discounted for savings versus ordering individual tubes (that’s true of all product bundles for extra savings). Another normal part of product ordering is that during checkout, another selection of savings opportunities appears which is typically the best discounts and a good thing to take advantage of.
All of these factors were securely in place, and for the month of May, one of those extra savings at checkout was a 3-pack of tooth polish at an extra $5 off. So yes, I took advantage of that!
Everything looked great and was great but I missed a small detail that could have shaved another $5 off my order. The enhanced loyalty incentives mentioned above provide full reimbursement of the $10.22 standard shipping charges as long as your order is 44 points or more, something I find very easy even as an empty nest shopper. And sure enough, the order was 47 points so I was totally safe to qualify.
Here’s that small detail I missed before committing to the order. The 3-pack of tooth polish I had already queued was worth 5 points but $5 more than the May checkout special. I successfully took advantage of the $5 discount on the second 3-pack but failed to realize I could have gotten both 3-packs at the $5 off and still met my 44 points to get free shipping. Here’s why. The May special reduced the points from 5 to 2 (that’s normal due to the money being saved). The regularly priced 3-pack got me the 5 points but was $5 more.
I didn’t need all of those 5 points! Only 44 were needed for free shipping and I had 47. Guess what. I could have removed the regularly priced 3-pack which would have brought my points down to 42 but the checkout special would have added 2 points back in to meet the 44 points while taking $5 off the total order price with no change at all to what I received in my order.
Note: If you’re not already familiar with Melaleuca points and pricing, I covered that 3 years ago as a Featured Post when I began this site, which is also included in my January post on the enhanced loyalty incentives noted above.
The point of all this is not that I’m overly concerned about the $5 or mad at anyone other than myself for not taking an extra step to think more carefully. My past ordering has been more carefully calculated but now I can add May 2022 as a month with one less craft beer at the local brewery and one extra for Melaleuca. If by some chance Melaleuca company founder Frank VanderSloot should happen to read read this, enjoy that beer on me, sir. I’ll have plenty of tooth polish to combat the live active cultures used to ferment the craft beer at any beer budget, so I’m still good regardless.