Tidyman’s rewards program revamped

Tidyman’s LLC, of Spokane, has revamped its Northwest Fresh Rewards loyalty card program.

Called “crazy prices,” the new program features deeply discounted prices on 10 of the most-purchased items in a grocery store. Customers collect points every time they buy goods at Tidyman’s, then can redeem those points to buy eggs for 9 cents a dozen, for example, said Alex Plummer, the company’s vice president of marketing.

Tidyman’s developed the new program using input from its customer advisory panel, Plummer said.

The company first introduced a loyalty card program in 1993, making it one of the first grocery store chains in the region to do so, Plummer contended.

Tidyman’s operates nine Tidyman’s stores and eight other grocery stores in Washington, Idaho and Montana.

Wholesale inflation level rises .4 percent

Inflation at the wholesale level rose by 0.4 percent last month, the biggest increase in three months, as the price of energy and food products shot upward, the government reported Tuesday.

The increase in the Labor Department’s Producer Price Index followed a 0.3 percent increase in January and an actual decline of 0.3 percent in December. It was the biggest jump since a 0.6 percent surge last November.

The price pressures were generally confined to food and energy. Outside of those areas, the so-called core rate of inflation rose a much more moderate 0.1 percent in February, a big improvement from January when core wholesale inflation had jumped by 0.8 percent, the worst showing in six years.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday pushed the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other, up to 2.75 percent, marking the seventh quarter-point increase since June.

Genetically engineered corn sold by mistake

Biotechnology company Syngenta AG said Tuesday it mistakenly sold to consumers tons of experimental genetically engineered corn never approved by U.S. regulators.

Syngenta said the corn, inadvertently shipped between 2001 and 2004, doesn’t pose any health risks because it’s similar to a Syngenta product approved by federal regulators.

The Swiss company said it discovered the mistake itself and reported it to federal authorities. An afternoon news conference was planned.

Free IBM program spams the spammer

Electronic mail touting cut-rate Viagra or how to make big bucks working from home will get pitched right back to the senders by a free program from IBM Corp.

The program, announced Tuesday, will identify computers that originate unwanted e-mail, or spam, and bounce it back at the sender — in effect spamming the spammer. The program, designed for use by large businesses, underscores the frustration felt by companies that see the vast majority of their e-mail flooded with junk.

IBM’s surveys suggest that about three-quarters of e-mails received by businesses last month were spam. That’s down from more than 80 percent in January.