What should you do if suddenly all the pluses of your Delhaize card disappear? While that may not be an urgent question for most people, it was for the Walloon Jean-Philippe. In February, the sixty-year-old was very surprised when suddenly there was nothing left of his 21,000 plus points, while he had not used them himself. The points turned out to be stolen, writes the Walloon newspaper ‘SudInfo’. Moreover, according to store chain Delhaize, it was not the first time that something like this happened.
Jean-Philippe had saved up points for more than two years at a Delhaize store in the Walloon Brabant city of Nivelles. With the so-called ‘Plus card’, customers receive a discount voucher of 5 euros per 500 points. In February, Jean-Philippe had collected no fewer than 21,000, good for a nice discount of 210 euros. When the man finally wanted to bet his points, he saw to his great surprise that there were no more points left.
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They told me it wasn’t the first time a customer’s points had been stolen.
The loyal Delhaize customer went to investigate himself. Jean-Philippe soon learned that the pluses had been exchanged for purchase vouchers from the online store bol.com, also part of the Ahold Delhaize group. Jean-Philippe didn’t understand. He himself had never visited that website before. “So I went to the boss of the Delhaize store in Nivelles (…). He sent me to the ‘SuperPlus’ card service,” he says.
“There they told me that it was not the first time that a customer’s points had been stolen and then exchanged on bol.com. They also said that their security system was not up to scratch, but that they didn’t know how to fix it and that I just had to change my account password,” said the sixty-year-old. “Although it was their fault, they blamed me.”
data breach
As a result of Jean-Philippe’s story, ‘SudInfo’ contacted a Delhaize spokesperson, Karima Ghozzi. According to her, the retail chain cannot be held responsible for the system error. “During that time, there was a leak on LinkedIn that sold users’ passwords and logins on the dark web,” she explains.
Hackers then tried to enter that data on all kinds of different sites and eventually ended up at Delhaize profiles. It is difficult to determine exactly how the scammers got to Jean-Philippe’s data.
According to Ghozzi, additional security measures have been taken since the data breach. “If a wrong combination is entered too often, the customer will receive an email to change his password. If the customer does not take action, the company will block the profile as a precaution.”
Recover points
Jean-Philippe also encountered problems for the recovery of the points. “Finally I called Test Aankoop, who in turn tried for a month to contact Delhaize, without success. When I asked the customer service of the retail chain again, I was told that it was not possible to recover my points,” it sounds. That claim, according to Karima Ghozzi, is astonishing. “In situations like this, a customer should be able to recover their points normally,” the spokesperson said. However, she points out that the pluses are only valid for two years. Once they have expired, they cannot be reclaimed.
‘SudInfo’ reports that Delhaize has already done everything necessary to return the 21,000 points to Jean-Philippe.
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