Getting Reimbursed

There are 3 ways to check your balance:

1. If you opened your account online – or you’ve established online access after establishing your account at a kiosk – you can check your balance by logging in at CLYNK.com/login.
2. You may go to a CLYNK kiosk inside Hannaford, scan your CLYNK card, and enter your PIN to view your balance.
3. Call CLYNK customer service at 1-866-883-4113 and use our automated attendant to check your account balance.

Visit your nearest CLYNK kiosk, scan your CLYNK card, and enter your PIN. You can check your balance and print out a payment slip that’s redeemable at Hannaford’s customer service desk or with a cashier. Or, if you have shopping to do, you can apply the balance on the payment slip toward your Hannaford purchases. Search for your nearest CLYNK kiosk.

If you slip doesn’t print, it is likely because the printer has malfunctioned. The first step is to alert a Hannaford staff member so they can access the kiosk to troubleshoot and to make sure your slip is not stuck inside the machine.  Often times it is a simple fix. If it can’t be resolved quickly, the store will ask you to call CLYNK Customer Support at (866) 883-4113 so we can ensure that you get paid when the kiosk is functioning properly again.

We are committed to crediting your account within two business days of your bag drop. During the high volume months of June, July, August, and September, it can take up to four days.

If your account hasn’t been credited within four business days, contact us at 1-866-883-4113 so we can resolve the issue.

CLYNK wants you to get every deposit you are due, so we maintain a series of safeguards to reduce the likelihood of bag theft or loss from the moment you drop your bag to the moment it’s processed at our facility. You play an important part in this process by making sure you scan each bag tag as you drop off. By scanning the bag tag on all of your bags at its initial drop off point, we’re able to track the bag’s journey to our facility. That helps us identify where bags may have gotten lost and troubleshoot accordingly.

That said, if you believe your dropped bag has gone missing, we encourage you to contact customer service for further research and resolution.

Since our inception 13 years ago, we have relentlessly innovated and improved safeguards to reduce errors. Today, we process a staggering number of containers and overall, we are extremely accurate, but errors do still occasionally happen. If you count containers in your CLYNK bags, and there’s a discrepancy between your container count and your account balance, there may be a variety of factors at play:

• Ineligible containers are the most common reason for not receiving a deposit credit. When we process a container that isn’t recognized as redeemable, we’re not authorized to issue a deposit refund.
• Another reason for a credit imbalance is non-registered containers (meaning the beverage falls into a category that should make it eligible for redemption but the manufacturer has not registered it appropriately or has discontinued sale of the product and unregistered it). Either scenario will delay the automatic credit. However, CLYNK may later award what are known as “research credits.” A research credit is issued when containers are eventually registered with the state as payable. We check our records against the registry daily and quickly update our system to apply those credits retroactively, even if it’s days, months or years later. Sometimes, a customer believes the container is worth more than it is – for example, in Maine, there is a common perception that a beer container is worth 15¢ because it is alcohol, but it is only worth 5¢.
• Very infrequently, we can have a processing error that affects a whole bag – the operator forgets to scan a tag, or the machine doesn’t register the bag tag data. This is why we encourage you to always scan each and every bag you drop, because then CLYNK has a record that the bag existed, even if we don’t see it getting processed. We will investigate the issue and credit you for a missing bag in the event that we made an error.
• Finally, the bag may be processed well, but there may be a container missed at the processing station – the container falls off without being seen, gets incorrectly put with another bag, or is missed by the scanner because something about the container makes it difficult to read. For these individual container errors, we rely on our master “lost and found” account from which we reimburse customers.

In situations where you believe your account has not been credited the correct amount, please call us at 1.866.883.4113, or email us. We will do our best to get to the bottom of the discrepancy and will gladly make you whole when a mishap happens on our watch.

It’s important to note that CLYNK doesn’t profit from the 5¢ or 15¢ deposit. That money is paid by the consumer when they buy a beverage and goes straight back when they redeem the container for a refund. The manufacturer then pays us a small additional fee each time we scan a bottle-bill authorized container and are able to refund the consumer for the corresponding deposit. We pay the customer first and are later reimbursed by the manufacturer.

At CLYNK, we make money in two ways:

1. Handling and processing fees. These are the fees described above – paid by beverage manufacturers and distributors. Under the terms of Bottle Bill laws in states where we operate, these parties are held responsible for retrieving the packaging they introduce into the marketplace.

2. Licensing fees for our proprietary processing technology. Typically, the Bottle Bill requires retailers to act as a facilitator in helping the manufacturers with their effort to collect containers back from consumers. Instead of maintaining designated container return space and staff in their stores, retailers pay fees to CLYNK to use our technology and services to assume those responsibilities.

CLYNK’s success as recycling facilitators depends upon our integrity. Every stakeholder, including you, relies on our commitment to efficient, accurate processing and deposit returns. Any failure on our part would threaten the viability of our business model. CLYNK only gets paid when you get paid. If we can’t refund your deposit, we don’t get paid by the manufacturer.

NO. CLYNK exists to reunite you with all your deposits. We do not take any share of your money. CLYNK’s revenue comes from the beverage manufacturers or distributors that pay us a small additional fee each time we scan a bottle-bill authorized container and are able to refund the consumer for the corresponding deposit. We pay the customer first and are later reimbursed by the manufacturer/distributor.