Vons is actually a Safeway company, so if you have a Safeway in your area and already have a card, you are registered.
When we've been in SF at Safeway, I enter my phone number (registered at VONS) and get the discount.
You still have to actually register with Vons.com for deliveries, though. Even if you are a Vons Club (Safeway) member and getting the discounts while shopping in the stores, it is a different process to order online and you still have to create the online account for home/office delivery, although they connect the online account to the existing Vons Club store card # (
if you have an existing Vons Club card or membership, that is, and if you don't have one, then they essentially create it for you when you make your online shopping account). And yes, most supermarket chains will take phone numbers to activate discounts now, because often times when people get up to the registers they have forgotten their actual cards or lost the cards or whatever, so a phone number is something that everybody has and they don't have to worry about having the card with them.
I have had soooooo many problems with Vons delivery over the years. It largely has to do with my area, and I guess the shoppers and delivery guys they use over here where I live are not that great. Also, if one store in my area closes for refurbs, they have to get my groceries from another store in the meantime, and that could either be a blessing or a curse. I have had it both ways. I have heard that the Vons delivery experiences in Anaheim are MUCH better. Albertsons had quite a few advantages over Vons in the grocery delivery realm (and I ordered from both of them for years), one of which was the fact that you didn't have to order a minimum of $50 of groceries to get a delivery. You could order one or two items if you wanted to and just pay the lofty delivery fee. Now that Albertsons stopped their delivery service and Ralphs/Kroger does not seem to be venturing into that territory at all, Vons is pretty much the only game in town unless you go with smaller delivery chains like Pink Dot or (in my area) Yummy Delivery, both of which have much more limited selections and, yet, higher prices!
