I usually reserve Friday for exposing an MLM/pyramid scheme scam, but today I thought I’d take a lighter-natured look at different kind of “scam.” I’m putting it in quotes, because I’m not sure many people intelligent people are tricked by it. It also doesn’t directly cost them any money. However, it does fall into the category of a “confidence game.”
In New England, one of the biggest grocery stores is Shaw’s. Following on the heals of McDonald’s popular Monopoly game, Shaw’s has launched their own Monopoly game. For some reason, I didn’t notice it last year. This year, it caught my attention.
It’s a bit of a kooky game. It doesn’t have properties that you collect like McDonalds. Instead it has pieces such as 122C and 187J. They don’t limit you to collecting 2 or 3 pieces, but it varies. The big prizes have 6 pieces to collect.
That’s not why I’m writing the article today. I’m writing it for two reasons:
You Have Almost Zero Chance of Winning Shaw’s Monopoly Game
I think everyone knows from the McDonalds’ game that there’s a rare piece. That’s what limits the company (I should say the insurance company) from paying out billions of dollars.
As Savings Advice points out McDonalds doesn’t pay out the million dollars very often. They explain why in detail, but the gist is:
1) The Boardwalk piece may never get shipped to a store… they make more pieces than necessary so they don’t run out before the end of the game.
2) It may never get served to a customer.
3) The customer may never open the piece.
4) The customer may throw away Boardwalk not realizing it is the magic piece.
5) They have to go get the easy Park Place place as well.
The last two are probably not too limiting, but the first three are. It’s a little scammy (as in “confidence game”), but not the kind of thing I’d waste my time writing about.
So let’s get to the Shaw’s version of the game…
When you spend a certain dollar amount or buy special Monopoly ticket items you get game pieces. Every time I have gone to Shaw’s, they ask me if I’m playing the game before giving me the game pieces. They aren’t automatically served to customers. From what I’ve seen, I’d estimate that 80% of customers reject the game pieces.
I figured I’d play the game. Figuring that there are rare pieces like McDonalds, I went on a search for a list of the rare pieces. Fortunately, Boston on Budget had what I was looking for.
However, I found something I wasn’t expecting… for the bigger prizes there appear to be TWO rare pieces.
We just covered how hard it is to find Boardwalk… and people know to look for it. People don’t know to look for 107A… pieces aren’t getting consistently served… customers may throw it out. They have to collect 6 total pieces.
But then they have to find the rare 105A piece as well.
(All this is according to Boston on Budget’s list, which comes with the disclaimer that I can’t verify the information.)
It is almost like having to pitch a perfect game in baseball and then them saying, “Well now you need to go out and pitch a no-hitter.”
Therein lies the scam/confidence game. The image you see above of $80,000,000 in prizes is tempting consumers to come in and play. It even tempts them to buy products that they might not otherwise to earn extra game pieces. Yet Shaw’s will very likely only pay out a small percentage of the money… and I highly doubt they pay out the million.
I’d be more harsh on the scam, but with so few playing the game, it doesn’t seem to be a big temptation.
However, perhaps the real reason I’m writing this is because I decided to play the game in hopes of getting one of the small prizes. I thought I might even be lucky enough for an instant winner prize similar to the free food that McDonalds gives away.
I was lucky. I pulled one of the instant winner prizes:
Worst instant winner prize ever from @shaws pic.twitter.com/5f66vaN5hB
— LazyManAndMoney (@LazyManAndMoney) February 20, 2015
I was a winner of something that literally had no cash value.
I do love Shaw’s response to rub a little more salt in the wound with the #BePositive hashtag:
@LazyManAndMoney But it's the prize that gives you a chance to keep on winning! #BePositive #Monopoly2015
— Shaw's Supermarket (@shaws) February 20, 2015
Update (3/9/2015)
I’ve been in good contact with Shaw’s Twitter account. They saw the article are responded with:
@LazyManAndMoney No scam here. Customers play to win, & get lucky. We just had a winner celebration of one of the $20,000 Tuition prizes.
— Shaw's Supermarket (@shaws) March 6, 2015
This lead to:
@LazyManAndMoney Great question. When the Monopoly collect & win game ends, you can request a prize summary.
— Shaw's Supermarket (@shaws) March 9, 2015
Which naturally lead to:
@LazyManAndMoney See some of the prizes we awarded from 2014 here: http://t.co/PzV1OaM9ag More prize information: https://t.co/OdIN8rHSZZ
— Shaw's Supermarket (@shaws) March 9, 2015
So I decided to take them up on their invitation to look at the prizes that were given out last year. In fact, I put them in a spreadsheet so I could add them all up.
Before I go any further, I want to highlight that not all prizes are listed there. There are many smaller prizes and the odds are here. Shaw’s made that point, but it isn’t exactly clear if that’s the 2014 or 2015 numbers. If I had to guess I’d say it is 2015 due to the copyright at the bottom (2015).
However, they only pointed me to that page of prizes claimed, so I can only go on that. To the best of my knowledge I have no way of knowing how many $25 grocery gift cards were awarded.
What’s interesting is that this Playmonopoly.us is not Shaw’s website. It appears as if the game is run across the grocery chain’s many brands. This means that it is possible they could limit winners by shipping different rare pieces to different geographic regions and pairing them with the “more rare” pieces to other chains.
All that said, I’m going to present the data from the link they suggested a few different ways.
Of the “over $55,000,000 in prizes and money saving offers”:
Overall: There were 77 people who won $600,500 in prizes represented on the page.
Winnings from game pieces: There appear to be 63 people who won a total of $73,500.
Second Chance Winnings: One person won $500,000 which only came into play as a second chance winning because none of the top 6 prizes were claimed. (the rare pieces on Boston on Budget no one won when there were two rare pieces… just as one would expect and as I wrote.
My analysis is that a little more than 1% of the over 55 million in prizes was awarded. The amount won from game pieces themselves appears to be 0.13% of the marketed $55 million number. (Again, this all comes with the caveat that it doesn’t include smaller prizes.)
I’m not one to nitpick, but at this point I figure I’m in for a penny, why not be in for a pound? Of the $100,500 in non-second chance prizes awarded, $42,000 or 42% of it was in the form of groceries or gift cards. It’s a fine prize and actually what I was hoping to win when I decided to play the game. However, it is worth noting that the $42,000 is value to consumers, not the value that Shaw’s has to pay. We know that it is much cheaper for McDonalds to give out free food than cash. No one thinks it costs McDonalds $1.25 for a soda or a $1.50 for fries… we are all smart enough to understand margins, right? To Shaw’s it is probably less than $30,000 worth of groceries… a very far cry from the big number they claim they are giving away.
2017 Update
Once again Shaw’s is running the Monopoly game. I had compared it to McDonalds before so I did a little research into that one and found this article on Priceonomics about McDonalds Monopoly being a fraud. One quote from that is how these setups can cause real consumer harm:
” So thousands of people with 3 out of the 4 railroads are all searching for Short Line Railroad, with only 1 in 150 million odds of finding it. The setup draws scammers, who put out Craigslist ads or post on forums that they have Park Place and want to team up with someone who has the (rare) Boardwalk piece. When someone ignorant of the odds agreed, he or she sends the rare piece and never hears from the scammer again.”
Totally agree with you that the probability is very little I played in 2014 and am playing now.. Haven’t won anything, quite tiring to see that only the rare ones have been left out then and now. Really would like to win something..
I play because my girl friend shops there, and I am retired.Entered the online codes,and after many (sorry it’s not a winner), I finally got a code that was a winner,actually 2. So I downloaded the form, and taped the matching code to the form, twice, gave them to my girl friend, and low and behold, after all that work we got 2 free tickets per code, I could not believe that was the prize, it cost me money in paper, and ink, and that was the prize, not even a jar of jelly, or a dozen eggs.As a post script, I did have an instant winner for a jar of smuckers, but she left without the jelly, and does not remember if she gave her the winning game piece, I had them all paper clipped together. It is a lot of trouble for nothing.
Here’s the thing: I’m shopping there anyway. The game pieces cost me nothing, and provide a momentary entertainment. Perhaps I win, although probably not, and almost certainly not a life-changing large prize. But in the meanwhile, I haven’t spent money I wouldn’t have, and unlike McDonald’s version, I can buy decent food. No promises have been made to me, and given the proliferation of real ripoffs targeting people out there, I think ‘scam’ is a little bit harsh.
Andrew, that’s why included it in quotes and wrote at the beginning that it was “lighter-natured look.” Some people may not shop there anyway and it might influence the products they buy (especially because some products earn free tickets).
I can easily imagine someone thinking, “Hey Pepsi comes with a ticket, but is 20 cents more than the Coke this week… I’ll take that ticket.”
And while no promises are made, I find the marketing of 55 million in prizes (last year) and 80 million in prizes this year worthy of calling it a confidence game when it seems like they don’t actually pay out nearly that much.
Also, instead of choosing to be transparent and post the details of the winnings online, they make you write in as if it is 1987.
This is a terrible post and mostly click bait. Nothing about this is a scam. It’s just low chances of winning. I’ve already won a fairly decent price from Shaw’s game.
I don’t see how anyone would call this click bait as it a region brand that my national audience would not know.
And yes it explains the low chances of winning in contracts to the scam/confidence game of those playing expecting that they’ll give out 80 million dollars in prices when they don’t.
Your own personal winnings are not indicative of the prizes won in general. A person winning the lottery doesn’t make a fair case for playing the lottery in general.
Also, your anonymous handle only cast doubt on your claims.
Next time, please debate points made in the article. If you think it isn’t a scam, please explain why it isn’t a “confidence game/scam”. Fair?
We should find out what the rare pieces are and connect through the internet to get a real winner and then split the prize!
The Boston website I linked to has a list of the rare pieces. People can connect there.
I don’t really see this as a scam; as someone said I’m shopping there anyway, and this is groceries and other essentials this isn’t meaningless, wasting your money purchases. Honestly this is less shady than the McDonald’s version because I don’t NEED (and probably shouldn’t) to go get food at McDonald’s, but my twice a week trips to pick up groceries, laundry detergent, cat food etc are pretty legit requirements of being a functional being in society, a few free game pieces? Oh that’s cool thanks, so I probably won’t ever win something… not a big deal.
its not a scam i have won prizes from this game last year and as well as this year.
The only ppl who seem to win are employees – and u better bet that all the countless ppl in front of me who refused their tickets aren’t goin to me the next one who Collevts them that cashier takes them- she told me- there’s zero way to keep traxk of how many are given out so employees are taking them right out of the drawer becsuer they aren’t numbered or tallied and inventoried. They should t be able to play if they work there.
Re: employees winning–
Employees have their own separate game with different tickets that have different numbers and a different (smaller) prize pool. They are forbidden to even permit their family members from collecting the customer tickets. If your teenager daughter works there, for example, you have to collect and use the employee game pieces and use the employee game board to play the game.
Also, the rule about customers refusing their tickets is pretty clear: if someone declines their tickets, they go back into the drawer, to prevent accusations of collusion between an employee and their non-employee buddy. The tickets are considered cash for the purposes of reconciliation, and they actually literally do keep track of how many they disburse to each register per day, even though they don’t keep track of how many are actually handed out by transaction log. There is a catch to this rule: if you don’t play the game but someone else does, you are perfectly fine to take your tickets and give them to whoever you want, but YOU must be the one who does so–the cashier may NOT give your tickets to anyone but you, for the reasons stated above. And every cashier will explain this to you literally every time you ask them to give your tickets to someone else.
All of that being said, I’m not going to claim that the game isn’t a scam, but I have no special knowledge of it being so either. All I can surmise is that it’s an advertiser’s wet dream because ticket earnings depend on which products you buy and this game permits them to partner with certain brands to control sales for those brands, generally in a mutually-favorable direction.
Also, just FYI, employees hate the game more than you do. It makes every transaction take longer, it takes up space in the tills, and people never shut up about it, whether they’re excited for it or justifiably outraged by it. Like consumers, employees much prefer the promotions where you would collect a generic stamp per unit dollars amount spent on your groceries be able to redeem stamps for merchandise like pots & pans, knives, and appliances. Supposedly (as in, unconfirmed hearsay from a supervisor), the company lost too much money with those promotions and stopped doing them. Rachael Ray’s siesta-ware that nobody wanted might have had something to do with that IMHO…
Source: I worked for one of the grocery store brands doing Monopoly for 5+ years, but not in any high-ranking capacity.
Pretty much anything Shaw’s does could be considered a scam. Even their sale prices. I know, so many people shop there anyway, but just look at their “sale” prices on any given item and many times any other local grocery store will have the same item for the same or lower price as a rule. The only time I shop there is if they truly have a lower price on a couple of items I want and I buy only those items. The store closest to me does have a bigger variety of items, but the cost is too high for me to think I’m getting a better deal and I know how to price items. It’s not worth it.
I did shop there the other day for some items that were on one of their 3-day sales and I was handed a bunch of these playing pieces. I wasn’t asked if I was playing the game and in fact, due to the fact that I rarely shop there, I had no idea what this was for. One of the tickets was an instant winner for….more free tickets. Since I probably won’t be going back in, I don’t need it. Kind of worthless to me.
We shop at Shaws but not too often. I have friends who give the pieces to me. I found a semi rare piece today and am looking for the owner of the rare piece. The piece I have is 145G for the $10,000 Jet Ski. If you own 142G please contact me and maybe we can work out a deal.
As a former Shaws employee who was in charge of training employees on the game as well as tracking the ticket inventory and awarding prizes I can see how people dislike it however I wouldn’t call it a scam. It’s good that cashiers ask if you are playing because then there’s a better chance that if that is the magical ticket then it wont just be discarded and thrown away with out being opened, looked at, and placed on a game board to be claimed. All game pieces are attempted to be handed off to people actually going to use them. Also the employees get sick of it and view it as a sooner we hand them out and run out of boxes out back the sooner its over for us. We even transferred between busy and slower stores to make sure all tickets were given out and would run out a good number of days before the official last day to earn tickets which people would get upset over because they were ONLY shopping for game pieces. I personally play before as an associate so we had a separate game however I now play as a consumer, but only if I’m actually shopping at shaws that day I do no go out of my way to shop at shaws just for the pieces. The way I see it and again its from both sides of it, this game is for people with self control. People get hooked and go crazy over it. If you normally shop there and continuously buy the same products then hey why not see if you win something cause you never know you might but if your soley shopping for game pieces and buying things you normally wouldn’t then it is not for you. People would get upset at the end when there were a couple days left of earning pieces and we had run out, it does state while supplies last and that’s when you saw people throwing fits and wanting to return cart loads or very specific things they only purchased for the tickets and those are the people that need to read this article. Because if you think your going to win some big prize your just crazy but if you view it as well I buy the same things every week here anyways and don’t think about the game those are the only people it actually benefits.
i play every year, because I’m stupid apparently, and never have won so much as a 10 dollar gift card. Hell, cvs gives 5 dollar extra bucks all the time and it’s not even a contest. You spend thousands at shaws and don’t even get a coupon for a free loaf of bread. Tightest pockets and worst contest ever. Even McDonald’s throws a free Big Mac at you occasionally.
So if you find 107A contact me and we can work out a deal! Or just post here! I don’t believe it will show up though! Good luck everyone!
you make a good point however in their rules https://www.playmonopoly.us/view/rules please read #5… As long as you do one of the online codes on their website they will do a second chance drawing for top 6 prizes. Someone will win something. You should read the rules before bitching when someone is giving a handout.
It seems you missed the point where I covered the second chance drawing in the article. They gave this out last year validating my point that no one wins the prizes as advertised. And yes, someone wins something, but the biggest prize is typically the single $500,000, which is a far cry from the marketing of $80 million.
I’d also invite you to read the introduction before claiming that I was “bitching.” I thought I made it clear that this was half tongue-in-check.
I’d also stop short of calling this a scam, but it’s REALLY close. Having now played this two years and collected literally thousands of game pieces without winning anything, I am left scratching my head about the value. Certainly my time is worth more than tearing open game pieces that offer such little chance of winning anything…last year for me!!
I won the $5.00 Grocery Card lol better than last year.
I won a 5.00 gift card, also a free tube of crest tooth paste. I have won a large number of 2 free tickets. I play just for the fun of it.I have noticed that the products, seem to be a little more expensive, when they are being featured. I shop by sale and coupons, so I have a pretty good idea of prices.I have 2 game boards that need the same rare tickets. What I hoping for is the online second drawing.
I have pece # 107A. It’s for the top prize. I think the game boards says it is paid out over 30 years. How should we split it?
I have 1 rare piece. If you have 134E let me know.
We can split it 50/50. Email me: [Editor’s note: Email address removed. If you have a matching rare piece leave a comment and I’ll try to connect you.]
Thanks.
James
I would be very surprised if James has either rare piece as it appears to be the same James. Odds are very high against it.
I don’t have 107a. I must have misread the ticket when I compiled the list. But I have 134E. I can text a photo of it to prove it. I want to make some money with it. The official rules states only 1 person can claim a prize. I may be willing to sell it if anyone wants to make me an offer.
I meant to say I need 134E. I have 131E.
Okay, thanks for the correction.
Okay James, I’ll bite. That’s all I need is the 107A. If you have it, post a pic of the front and back of the ticket, and we can escrow all the pieces, draw up a contract, and split the winnings.
Here’s the funny thing about “odds”. After opening just over 100 tickets, I only needed those magical “rare pieces” (31 of them). We made a major purchase, and received another 300 game pieces from a store in a different state. Of those 1200 individual tickets, there were 0 matches to the 31 rares. I was at my local store again, got 10 pieces, and had 1 rare match. I have also Instant Won about $15-$20 worth of merchandise. So I’m okay with it. I know a lottery is eventually won by someone, but since the monopoly tickets cost me nothing when I’m shopping anyway, and lottery cost $1-$2 per play, I’ll play the game.
Hello lazymanandmoney,
First off, I just wanted to say this article is perfect and catchy. I live in Lubbock, Tx and we do not have a Shaws store here, but we do have a chain of grocery stores named United Supermarkets. United is a grocery chain around the West Texas region and Dallas area from what I’ve been told so you may have never heard of it. United, and Albertsons grocery chain, also have the Monopoly collect and win game, so it seems this is a much larger scam than just a local fun game for the people playing and to add some advertising revenue. Last year United had a more localized version of the game and I personally won quite a bit more on the game pieces I recieved than this years game. It looks to me like multiple grocery chains have picked this Monopoly scam game up, making it completely impossible for anyone to win a decent prize, especially when you throw in the overwhelming odds you have shown. Thank you for your time, and I hope you find this information insightful. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.
I noticed this last year: you have to get TWO rare pieces to win. What a scam. It made us dislike Shaw’s so much that we stopped shopping there. We won’t even run in to pick up a couple items, even if we’re right next to it.
Screw Shaw’s and their sleazy promo.
Live in Chicago. Stores here are called Jewel/Osco. Have had well over 2,000 stamps and have won absolutely nothing. Not even a $5 grocery card. Also would like to know what company makes these tickets and where they are located. Can’t seem to find that out. Secondly would like to see/meet some of these so called winners and get their names to cross reference with the employees of the company that is making the tickets. My belief is that anything over a $100 grocery card rare game piece is pulled off the line when printed by the employees of the company making them. They are then given to friends and or family members of those employees. So winning a large prize is fixed. Maybe they are never distibuted at all in the first place to ensure that the company will never be out the money. I’ve tweeted to Jewel/Osco several times that this game in total BS. All they can say is that my comment has been noted?! I’ll believe it’s not fixed when I win something substantial. I also noticed in the 2014 game, there were no winners of any of the top 4 prizes. Not even in a second chance drawing. They should make it mandatory to divy out the prizes not won in a second chance drawing and that all the prizes must be won.
What I wonder is if the winning “rare” game pieces aren’t even printed until the VERY LAST print run of the tickets, and are among the last ones shipped to the stores. This way, the unsuspecting purchasing public continues to do 6 weeks of shopping hoping to pull a winning ticket and strike it rich. By the final week, deals and offers are probably a lot less enticing, dropping the number of shoppers and players who are just plain “fed up” with the game by the end.
I feel as if Consumer Affairs Departments of the states that the stores do business in should verify that the winning tickets have been printed, and have been mixed into the general distribution, and not all saved until the last few boxes, and that those boxes are not purposefully shipped to opposite ends of the country.
Let’s see how many winners show up at the end of the game..
I just pulled the 105A. Now if I could get the 107A I’d be in! If anyone wants to buy or split let me know. My email address is [Editor’s note: use my contact form to reach out to these people. I don’t publish email addresses on this website.]
Although I’m not typically much of a gamesman, I’ve become obsessed with this “Monopoly” promo from Shaw’s. Because you generally receive only one ticket with each store visit (unless you have items that qualify for add’l tickets), I’ve started doing my grocery shopping one item at a time. Yesterday, I made 27 separate visits to Shaw’s. Additionally, if the person in front of me in line declines the tickets and doesn’t offer them to me, I follow them into the parking lot and call them every name in the book. Oh, and I have a bumper sticker on my motor scooter that says “I play Shaw’s Monopoly–and love it!!”
I have 105a and 145g for sale. Contact ASAP
This “game” requires masochistic tendencies. Every time the checker asks me if I’m playing the “game” I say, “Yes, unfortunately.” and the game pieces collect dust until I’m prepared for all of the “fun” going through them. I even entered a hundred or so of the sweepstakes entries on the website an won a few more tickets to torture me.
A couple of tips:
* Don’t bother affixing the tokens to a game board. (You might end up like George Costanza’s fiance.) Make a spreadsheet with rows for each prize (letter) and columns for each token (number), Collect a hundred or so game pieces then go through them and check off what you have. You’ll see which tokens are rare. I highlight them to make it more obvious.
* Put the tokens in baggies for each letter just in case you actually get a rare token later an win something.
* As you collect more game pieces, check them against the spreadsheet. Throw out the losers (i.e., all of them) – we’re NOT going to win anything twice.
* It goes much faster if someone reads the letter/numbers to someone checking the spreadsheet. Hey, share the fun!
After collecting about 400 game pieces / 1600 tokens, I won:
* A bag of string cheese
* A candy bar
* Instant ramen noodles
* A small box of Tide detergent tablets
* A 12oz bottle of grape soda
* A million useless coupons.
Estimated value of winnings: $10.00
Time required to “play” the game: 12 hours
Return on investment: $0.83/hour (and deteriorating eyesight plus carpal tunnel syndrome)
I hated this game so much last year that I emailed the president of Albertsons or whomever owned Jewel at the time. His secretary directed me to the Director of Marketing for Jewel/Osco. I emailed her and she called me. I explained how much I hated the game and why (same scenario as this year but I won NOTHING.) At least I got string cheese, a candy bar, etc. this year. I’d complain again but I lost her email address and Jewel/Osco was sold again anyway.
Great post! Thanks for writing. I hate this game, too, after two years of playing and experiencing the same silly prizes. More tickets! There’s a sucker born every minute and lots of them shop at Shaw’s.
I have 122 looking to partner with 117.I have these also 105.145.131..contact me
I had all but the rare ones months ago. I kept printing all the ticket winning pieces and going to the store to collect more tickets which got me more winning tickets. I have a bundle of winning tickets each worth two more tickets…I went in with them a week ago and they told me that `the game would be over the next day and that I have until early June to collect on my winners…then they told me that they had run out of tickets and the other Shaws nearby was out of tickets and so I was out of luck. Since the game was going to be over in a day they did not expect any more tickets to give out. I am stuck with a bunch of winners that could have got me a rare sticker…so the potential to win was reduced by having all my tickets become useless. This is the part I really feel has legal ramifications.
I ran into the same issue – lots of 2 more ticket winners, but they were out of tickets. Then, I went to enter online codes today and they are no longer accepting them even though the deadline on the game board is 11:59pm on May 24, 2017!! What a scam!!!
I don’t understand the thinking behind this game. You’d think that the odds of winning $5 off your groceries would be arranged so that every couple of thousand dollars you spent would probably get you $5 off, just to keep you playing and coming back to Shaw’s.
Plus, the “game board” looks nothing at all like a Monopoly board, and really is just plain ugly.
I stopped playing well before it ended.
I did not participate in 2015 because I participated the year before and turned out NOTHING. I felt being played rather than playing. Too much hassle to play and nothing returns!
I’m playing the 2016 game now after entering over 50 codes on there website my last code I had I won I couldn’t believe it was so excited only to find out it was another 2 free tickets when You return to shaws lol nice blog
Total scam and waste of time – refuse the tickets at the counter, give them to the next customer, or throw the pieces away. Don’t bother with this game, it is impossible to win even a “joke” prize
I collected over 800 individual game pieces. I put them on the board, I threw away the duplicates. The end result was I got ALL of the “easy” pieces and could not get a single game winner. The same thing happened to me last year. Conclusion: This is a scam.
Hey LM,
I just went into a local Albertson’s (Shaw’s) for the West Coast I guess…and they asked me about “The Game”. I actually said to the lady, “I think I have heard of this before, but it was from a place called Shaw’s.” She said, “Exact same game.” To which I naturally replied, “No thank you, I don’t think there are many winners in that game.” She then had the nerve to start mentioning the 3 local winners, one of which apparently won $50,000 (BTW Congratulations to whomever that was, assuming they aren’t Harvey Rabbit), and that this was a legitimate thing. I could’ve probably spent the next 30 minutes of my life debating with her, but I was more in shock that she pushed so hard for me to join the game…She didn’t even have any incentive. It was weird and creepy, and I don’t think I will be doing much more shopping for a while at Albertson’s.
Yep, the chains are owned by the same parent company. That’s odd that she tried to convince you so much.
At my local Shaws, they now ask every person if they are playing the game before handing out the game pieces. That implies to me that many people consider them to be of little value. For example, I think everyone likes McDonalds’ pieces because there is a realistic chance of winning free food.
2015=shame on you.
2016=shame on me.
2017=not falling for the scam again!
Hey! I won a $5 gift card, an 8 pack of coca-cola and a jar of pickles. My son was delighted! ;)
AND I just won a box of kleenex!! (Which is nothing to sneeze at!)
This is the third year i’ve “played” this exercise in futility they call a “game.” I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was spawned in one of the Rings of Hell where crazed lunatics with beady red eyes sit around a table and try to outdo one another with their evil ideas,”…let’s make Game Tickets full of tiny unmanageable pieces!”…”yeah that are illegible!”…”yeah and if they win anything, it’s more Game Tickets!!…” And this year’s gem, “and let’s make the pictures black and white so they can’t even try and match the colors!!!”…cue the peals of demented laughter. Well enjoy your special place in hell…you earned it!
Just got 1 of the rares for the million dollars 613C, 618H is needed still , email me at [Email address: redacted… please contact me and I’ll try to pair you up.
I just need the 618h
I think many people are in that position.
Hey LM,
I have a weird update from my previous post about my unusual experience at the local Albertsons (Shaws). I decided to continue my protest against Albertsons, and went to a Vons (Safeway) instead. It turns out this game has caught on like rabies, because they too have a version of the Monopoly game now. It would seem the clerks don’t want to give you the option about the game, and instead try and give you the pieces no matter what. My check stand attendant handed me the pieces, and I said no thank you. She didn’t even take them back…It would seem by 2020 every retail store will have a version of Monopoly…should I be thanking McDonald’s?
I think the Monopoly game is ending soon. It seems to me that the clerks want to clear out the tickets. It’s not the worst thing ever, but it would be nice if they’d regularly give you free product like McDonalds’ does.
I shop at Shaws anyhow, playing the game doesn’t cost me anything so why not play. Remember “you can’t win if you don’t play” In past games I’ve won some free stuff and small cash prizes.
This year I won a $1000 Shaws gift card. Thats as good as cash to me, because I shop there anyhow.
I also got a nice cake and some balloons when they presented me with my prize.
All the little kids in neighborhood got balloons and the good size cake provided for 3 occassions that weekend. So that was a nice bonus
So I’ll keep playing
Congrats on winning $1000. That’s awesome.
I just didn’t want people to buy things they ordinary wouldn’t to get more tickets as I’ve seen people do with McDonalds version of the game.
I also wanted to help explain to people that there are multiple rare pieces for the big prizes which is probably why they are unlikely to be won. I bet there are people out there who think, “Hey, there’s an equal chance of getting all the stamps just like a more or less equal chance of landing on any particular Monopoly space.”
Well – may as well start the 2017 posts! First time playing. Stopped shopping at Shaw’s regularly for a few years as their prices were not as competitive as Market Basket and Hanaford’s, all three within a mile. But in the past few months they must have undergone some change as they are now more competitive.
Anyway, got my first game pieces this week. 23 tickets in all after two trips to the store, both under $50 spend. Only bought things on sale and items I would would buy anyway. I try to be a smart shopper.
So far I have won:
$5 cash collecting four pieces.
Free bagel or donut from bakery
Free yogurt
4X 2 free tix
Free Rouxbe online cooking course (valued at $24.99, but honestly probably won’t use it, so no real value to me).
.50 off body wash – wouldn’t buy anyway
$1 off Welch’s juice – normally would by it on sale anyway
So, based on the comments above over the years and the odds, I would say I am doing pretty good!
Ah, the blog post that keeps on giving :-)
Thanks Marc B. I noticed that and that there’s “over $200 million in prizes and money saving offers.” Money saving offers could be 25 cent coupons for products that you don’t want or ones that would be even cheaper if you just bought the generic. I’m not a fan of how they are conflated like that.
I like Shaws for the loss-leaders, but I mostly shop at Aldi and the military commissary. Our Dollar Tree also chips in with some value on some cheap things.
Okay, so normally I avoid this game like the plague, although I do open the tickets just to check on the Instant Winner possibilities. However, what I like this year:
1) App to scan in 2nd chance tickets. Boy was it a pain to enter all those manually before
2) More dollar discounts on name brand items. Yes, in years past it was always the “no frills” brands of stuff that I would never buy. I would, however, leave the discount coupons on the items in the store, in the hopes that some other person could make use of it
3) More instant wins early. So far, I have won a free 26 oz container of salt, which is worth it’s weight in… salt, as well as $1.00 off bacon, that’s a keeper, and some free Signature Brand veggies, which I will take and give to the Boy Scouts for their food bank.
And the game board is less “foldy” so my little tickets don’t always get bent or fall out.
Anyway, I’ll play because it’s free. I’ll shop there when the prices are good. So, nothing out of the ordinary just to chase the unwinnable…
-S
[Editor’s Note: This is a suspicious comment. See my note at the bottom before acting…]
You are right that it is very hard to win this game. They print 1.2 Billion tickets and I’d be surprised if they distribute even a tenth of those. This year only 6 tickets win one million. (And those are 1 million annuities, which after tax are worth about $390k, less if you are in a high tax state!!!)
As for your comment about two rare pieces for the big prizes, keep in mind that one of those two pieces is not very rare at all (1 in 5000). Last year, you could buy the semi-rare pieces for under $100 on eBay.
[Editor’s Note: Please don’t buy Monopoly pieces on Ebay. As I noted at the end of the article, the sale of such pieces can be a scam where you don’t get the piece and the scammer takes off with your money. Alpha didn’t leave anything close to a real email address (a long series of home row letters of “a”, “s”, and “d”) which makes me think he wants to drive people to Ebay to buy his fake pieces.]
This reply’s actually to the editor’s note. If you’re going to buy them then Ebay is probably the best place to do it (assuming the auction doesn’t get canceled anyway since it’s considered a prohibited item even though so many get sold there) since if you buy anything on Ebay & you pay and don’t get it you get your money back on virtually anything you buy via their money back guarantee.
The point is that you shouldn’t buy them as they are almost certainly as fake as a Nigerian Price scam. Why put your money on the line, hoping that Ebay’s money back guarantee is going to come through?
We’ve got about a 4″ stack of pieces. So far we’ve won (4) $5 cash prizes, one $5 gift card, at least two dozen donuts, 5 pounds of table salts, 3 bags of flour, 4 cans of corn, 2 pounds of pasta, a box of tea bags, two loaves of bread, 6 free yogurts, an $11 box of kitty litter, 15 Fandango $5 off discounts, and probably ten more things I can’t remember. We’ve probably spent $100 over three weeks and we’ve collected a cupboard full of groceries. Plus we’ve got a shot in the second chance sweepstakes on more than half the pieces.
Don’t tell me it’s not worth it. The free stuff is probably worth what we spent and we’ve got a slightly bigger than average shot at a bigger prize.
I’m getting some good freebies this year too! I wrote this article a couple of years ago and obviously I couldn’t predict what they’d do in the future.
This article is more about the collecting of Monopoly property pieces. I’m not playing the Monopoly part of the game, just looking for the deals on the other side like you seem to be Mike.
“5 pounds of table salts”
This made me laugh. I got 4 of those damn things, and I don’t use salt lol. I buy maybe 1 12 oz can of low sodium salt a year, if that. I was like “Why do you want me to have salt, Safeway!”
If you haven’t redeemed your Fandango ones yet, pick the last option. It says $5 for media or books (or something similar) and you have to have a virtual Visa account but it’s really a like a Visa gift card that can be used online on any site that will allow you to make just a $5 payment & takes Visa debit (like your cell phone company or your Internet provider; that’s how I used all of mine).
Ive actually won so the statistically I guess I was lucky, I won 5 grand in groceries playing the game, yes the more valuable prizes I’m sure I’ll never win but like most games you have to return all pieces inorder to cash in one part
We have the same thing out here in California at Vons and Pavilions grocery stores and what I see happening all the time is the employees ask you if you’re playing and since most of the shoppers don’t bother, they pocket the shoppers tickets for themselves and obviously the more tickets you have the better your odds of winning. So if an employee wins, they just make sure it’s not their name because they’re not “allowed” to win. Last year several employees at the store in the marina “won” and kept it on the low down. It was really unfair. One time in line, the woman in front of me had 20 tickets coming to her and declined them, so I asked if I could have them and the checker glared at me. Of course I never won anything. But it’s a waste of time, that’s for sure.
I’ve actually never seen the employees do that. In fact, they’re not allowed to play the customer game because they have their own employee game. 99% of the time when they ask & the customer says no they never take them out of the drawer. The 1% is where the customer would say no, give them to the next person & they’d hand them to the next person in line who was playing. They got some complaints about that from people behind the person who got them because they didn’t get any so now they say “I’m not allowed to do that but I can give them to you & you can give them to them.”
So, my local Safeway ran this game this year, and I feel your definition of it as a “scam” is pretty fair. I regularly shop at Safeway, so I obtained literally hundreds of pieces throughout the game. If they ever do it again, I will simply ignore the actual game pieces, and only play the instant win or second attempt codes. Here is why:
Of the hundreds of game pieces I obtained, each having 4 actual “code” pieces, I won not a single thing. doing a quick count of my stacks I have clipped, I had about 600 of the little pieces, and I didn’t even complete one of the smaller 4 piece prizes.
The good part: I did instant win a $10 Giftcard and a $5 Giftcard, in addition to about $20 worth of free stuff from Shutterfly. I would estimate I won about $20 worth of instant win food items that I actually used, though oddly enough I had 4 Instant Wins for the Safeway brand of 26 ounce salt, which I don’t buy. Apparently they are trying to get rid of it. Lastly, I was able to use the second chance codes to stack Fandango Tokens, and got enough to receive 5 $5 online e-giftcards, which were a pain to use, and I probably only used about $20 of the $25. So, I would say, I won about $75 worth of free stuff, but none of it was on the most time intensive part of the game, those 600 little pieces you have tio check all the codes on.
So yes, I think the overall massive prize advertisement is a scam, but if you just go for the instant win stuff (or the occasional useful coupons) it takes very little time of your day, merely opening the piece to see if you won. If you plug in the second chance codes, it will take a little longer, but it feels more “worth” it, due to the fact that every 2 or 3 codes usually gets you a fandago token, and 10 tokens gets you a gift card, so even spending like 5 minutes punching in the codes from your weekly shopping trip might be enough for it.
Daniel, I saved up all the instant wins and coupons and went shopping yesterday. I think I saved around $15 and probably spent $7 on stuff that I wouldn’t ordinarily buy. It took me an hour to find all the stuff through the store (the salt isn’t with the sugar?) Some of the coupons were “save 50 cents on 8+ oz. of Gold Bond cream.” When I found the cream it was nearly $10. I didn’t see the value in the coupon.
However, I’ll take the free salt and free donuts.
I didn’t do the second chance stuff this year.
Those e-giftcards work best on utility bills you can pay online, or if you have an Amazon account you can add them one at a time to that. I used them $5 at a time to pay my entire TWC Internet bill because they accept multiple payments as long as each payment is at least $1.00. It was a bit of a pain because I had to enter 12 different cards but I got my Internet paid for free that month.
Lazy Man, you lost out. If you’d saved all the coupons & instant wins & used them before the end of the game you could’ve got a free ticket for nearly every one of those items (or multiple tickets, depending on the location; I got 4 BOXES of game pieces the last day & didn’t spend a penny) which you could’ve then opened up & redeemed for even more free items. Also, the online codes weren’t just for the 2nd chance drawings; they were also for Fandango tokens. 10 Fandango tokens=1 Fandango Reward & 1 Fandango Reward=$5 off a movie ticket, $5 credit on Fandango Now/Fandango Go (can be combined), or $5 virtual Visa {can’t be combined but can be used anywhere online that will take Visa debit & let you make a $5.00 payment (like your cell phone or Internet bill)}. And they were way prevalent. I entered 193 codes on 5/7; 70 of them were Fandango tokens so that’s $35 in Visas just that day.
My Shaws was out of the tickets long before the end of the promotion this year.
I didn’t have “4 BOXES” of game pieces, so I didn’t have 193 codes to enter. How long did it take it to open up 4 BOXES of tickets and enter the 193 codes?
I let a huge stack of those Monopoly game pieces (unopened) pile up since the beginning of the game. I started to keep track but I have a busy life & I just put them on the back burner. Now there’s only 2 days away from the game ending date. I started opening them up & now all I’m getting are duplicate game pieces. I got some coupons for free doughnuts & bread & a few coupons. I’m stopping & throwing the rest away. Seems like the odds are zilch to none & I have more important things to do with my time.
I think it’s a little different than the McDonald’s game. While not everyone has to buy McDonald’s everybody does have to buy groceries. So if you’re already buying groceries why not buy them from a store that gives you a prize {a game ticket where half of it could be a coupon to save money on groceries, an instant win ticket for a free item that is most likely a Monopoly bonus item (which means you get another game ticket just for buying it for free), an Internet code (that could also be a prize or a Fandango token-10 tokens = a $5 online Visa), or an actual prize (GC gift cards) and the other half is collect and win pieces} just for shopping and extras for buying things that are Monopoly bonus items?
I actually forgot about the game until almost the end and think I probably spent less than $20 on groceries at my local Swan’s equivalents (Albertsons & Tom Thumb). On the Saturday before the game ended I spent $3.96 on groceries at Albertsons and won more instant win grocery items than what I’d spent. I redeemed the ones I could there and won even more. Redeemed those, won even more. Then I went to Tom Thumb because a couple of the items I won were only carried there. Redeemed those, won even more & went home to enter my codes; won $35 in Fandango Rewards. Next day I went back to the store to redeem the instant win 2 free ticket ones, spent no money & won an additional $5.00 in Fandango Rewards. Went back the following day to redeem more 2 free tickets winners and ended up with multiple free instant win items (including a $22 bag of dog food & a couple of $8 bags of cheese). It got to the point that I was getting so many tickets that I’d walk out to my car, open them in my air conditioned car, get a bunch of instant win tickets, go back in & get the free things, go back out to my car & do it again.
By the end, I had $75 in Fandango Rewards (most of which I converted to Visas which I used to pay utility bills) several hundred dollars in free groceries. And that’s not even counting the collect & win stuff or the Nickelodeon stuff. Granted, there were a bunch of duplicates like 4 boxes of waffles, 5 hamburger buns, 10 free hot dog buns, 5 flours, 20 salts, 10 loaves of French bread, 50 bagels/donuts and you might think “Well, who needs 5 hamburger buns, 10 free hot dog buns, & a bunch of flours & salts?” The answer, the food pantry down the street.
After I went through the collect & win stuff once they were done giving out tickets I’d also won $40, $25 in cash & $15 in gift cards. And the Nickelodeon stuff was multiple free Dora books, Boat-o-Cross game codes, 3 free mini-label packs, & 2 free TMNT games. So while I didn’t win one of the big prizes, $100 in cash or cash equivalents, $15 in GCs, $35 in Fandango now & a bunch of free stuff I can give to my cousin’s kids is well worth the less than $20 investment that I spent on groceries that I was gonna buy anyway.
That being said, I do have one massive complaint about an aspect that I think was really dishonest; the Fandango stuff. The rules did say that there was a limit of 15 Fandango Rewards per person or household and when you go to redeem them it also says a there’s a limit of 15 total regardless of how you choose to redeem the ($5 towards a movie ticket, $5 towards Fandango Now, or $5 virtual Visa). What it doesn’t say is that once you hit that 15 Fandango Reward limit that future codes that were supposed to win Fandango tokens will come back as non-winning codes. Since there are 272,500,000 Fandango tokens which =27,250,000 $5.00 Fandango Rewards (or $136,250,000) and the total prizes and money-saving offers is $200,000,000 that means that over 68% of the total was Fandango Rewards that will never be paid out.
Plus, there seems to be an issue accessing your code history to claim prizes that are still valid & can be redeemed during June, July, August, & September.
Pagan Wicca wrote: “I think it’s a little different than the McDonald’s game. While not everyone has to buy McDonald’s everybody does have to buy groceries. So if you’re already buying groceries why not buy them from a store that gives you a prize.”
If you eat at McDonalds, you don’t necessarily have to buy groceries do you? I see what you are saying though. I would argue that you could shop at a different grocery store. For me, Aldi and the military commissary have far better prices, so I’d say, “Why let the potential of a prize influence me to pay more than I should?” Even worse, a focus on buying Monopoly bonus items for the tickets could be used to get you to overpay. I’m not saying this is the case, and I have personally found deals that I bought anyway which gave me bonus Monopoly tickets. In fact, I think that’s how I earned most of my tickets.
I had hundreds of tickets and only won 1 salt, 2 donuts, and no buns, flour. I’m not sure how you turned $20 or $3.96 in spending into all that, but congrats!
Lazy Man,
The 193 took a couple of hours to enter. The four boxes worth took even longer because I got the “You have entered the maximum number of game codes allowed per day” (it’s not in the rules it’s 200) messaged almost every day I entered them.
I don’t know how long those took to open because I opened them up in the store 20 at a time. You only need to tear off the top perforation in order to see whether it’s a code, a coupon, an instant winner, or 2 free Monopoly tickets & you can tear the top part off of a stack of tickets in seconds. Then I threw everything that wasn’t an instant winner into a bag to go through later at home & redeemed the instant winner ones.
I went to the store on 5/6 and bought two bags of chips & two Edys/Dreyers slow churn ice creams which were all on the app for $0.99 each & all bonus items. There were so many tickets left that by the 6th that if you were supposed to get 5 tickets they gave you 20. And the number of instant winners this year seemed to be a lot higher than last year so I was checking out with $85.00 orders that were $0.00 by the time I used all the instant winners. Since nearly every instant winner was also a bonus item I was also getting hundreds of Monopoly tickets for those orders & since they were basically quadrupling them they’d just hand you an unopened box with 400-500 tickets in it.
I don’t know the exact number I got, just that I have over 1400 non-winning codes entered in the second chance drawing. That’s in addition to 150 Fandango codes, all the instant winners, coupons, and winning codes for Shutterfly, Let Life Bloom, Rouxbe, Albertsons & Nickelodeon. So I’d guesstimate that I received over 2500 tickets (there were between 1600 & 2000 just in the four boxes) between 5/6 and 5/9 because our stores still had unopened cartons of boxes the day the game ended & had to give out every ticket in the store before midnight.
Someone I work with told me her friend won a million on Monopoly. I was surprised because I thought it was a scam also.
I’m going to tell my wife that someone that comments on my website works with someone whose friend allegedly won a million dollars on Monopoly.
No it’s legit, I have a friend who knows Kathy and her friend really did win the million. I found the real story out when they trusted me enough to help them uphold the truth by forwarding the information to 40 of my closest and most trustworthy friends, at which point I would receive 20 (yes, TWENTY!) free Monopoly game pieces via USPS Priority Mail Express Overnight within 7 to 8 weeks, just had to cover the shipping with my debit card. And for those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to have access to good banking service, they are even nice enough to let you pay for the shipping with a green dot card or a moneypak which anybody in the world can buy. That’s why I’ll always play Monopoly when it comes along, aside from the McRib it’s my favorite time of the year! I suggest you also fight the first amendment (and many others) and give your support to help uphold the truth, because that’s just another law created by a overbaring goverment to keep us from doing what we were free to do for the past 7,000 years since we were given this Earthly paradise by our Almighty, until they showed up and decided to make this whole bill of laws and want to control every one’s lives according to how they think we should live. Now they’re colluding with the Rushians to put out all this fake ‘news’ about monopoly being a ‘scam’. Like how is it a scam if they’re giving away millions of dollars every year? And if it was a scam don’t you think they would have been shut down and not be allowed to keep running a scam? I mean, Enron couldn’t get away with it and Bernie Maddoff couldn’t either, so what makes you think that the Parker Brothers, one of the oldest and most respected game companies in the world, would be able to just get away with running a bold faced scam and targeting all these innocent people year after year after year. Don’t you think if they were conning people they’d want to be a little more descrete about it? Criminals dont like to draw attention to themselves. I guess people just don’t take the time to really look around and see how the world really works these days but I guess that’s because of they can’t take their eyes up off these appchats and snapps and tingers to actually see what’s going on right in front of them. I strongly suspect that this “lazy man’ who runs this site is probably just another one of the fake news bots created by the election hackers to get us all fired up about monopoly and keep our attention distracted away from the real issues like the attempts to overthrow our entire Christian religion by a major terrorist group led by former American actor Tom Cruise, or the suspected Chinese-Russian-North-Korean pact to overthrow the Mexican government in order to establish a close presents to the USA’s weekest border and commit an all out invation of war on the United States? Oh but it’s really important that we are informed and up to date about this “SCAM’ being purported by the Monopoly people. The name really fits, i’d say the ‘lazy man’ is a scam bot himself and isn’t even a person, just a creation from the lazy russkies (so clever how they worked lazy into the name like nobody would notice.) Oh well, maybe I’ll win the Monopoly million soon and I’ll just move to a place where I won’t have to worry about any of this. I could probably buy a whole island off the coast of Jamaica or Hawaii and live in paradise for the rest of my life and still have plenty left over for a nice car and a house and lots of nice new clothes. PS, i bet you really feel like an idiot now lazy guy, you were probably thinking you where so smart because you had got the last laugh. HA
So I have a history of blogging since 2006 with around 2500 posts and nearly 40,000 comments, but you think all my writing is some bot?
LOL, nice.