My wife is the one in the family who keeps all those rewards card things places hand out like candy these days. She packs her wallet full of them just in case she happens to remember to use it the next time she is in the place. Of course, most of the time she’d forget to ever use them again. However, at Kroger, they’ve got a system that works better than most. You don’t actually need the card to get the perks, you can just enter your phone number. That works for me since I don’t like to carry a wallet full of pointless rewards cards. In addition to that, I actually enjoy the perks at Kroger because they give me $.10 off every gallon of gas for every $100 I spend buying groceries.

Now, my wife has sort of stopped going to Kroger since she has found groceries at Wal-mart are much cheaper. But I still get gas there for one simple reason – my phone number, which is tied to my Kroger Plus card, still gives me $.10 off even when we haven’t shopped there in months. Here is the catch, when my wife uses the actual card at the pump, it only gives her the typical $.03 discount. We only get the $.10 discount when we punch in our phone number.

Here’s my question: If I continue to use my phone number at the pump because it gives me $.10 off every gallon but I’m not buying my groceries at Kroger, am I stealing or doing something wrong? I’m curious what you think.