They save you money, but they irritate me. Why can’t they just put the damned stuff on sale without having to load you down with yet another card to carry? Besides which, there are six local grocery stores and every damned one of them has their own card- I have enough credit cards, membership cards, ID cards, business cards, etc. in my wallet as it is. What is the huge benefit to the stores of having to swipe that damned thing before giving you $.30 off your Coke? Hell, Winn-Dixie has filed for bankruptcy since they initiated it, so to quote Brother Boy “It ain’t a workin’” if it’s to increase sales.
And it’s not like they’re exclusive- anybody can join. And I use a different name and address every time I join (I must have gone through 2 dozen of the damned things by now because in order not to have a Costanza wallet I purge it of the things I don’t use often and then realize when I go to see Naomi at the Raytown Food Circus for the first time in six months that I don’t have that card and without the meat is $1.00 per meat higher so I get another one and promptly discard it.
I think that very possibly those little cards are the Mark of the Beast from Revelations. At very least they’re damned annoying.
I don’t carry my cards (because they are a complete pain in the ass, as mentioned), I just enter my phone number. Is this not an option where you are at?
Not any more around here. Possibly because people, like me, would supply an entirely bogus and random number every time they shopped.
One solution to the “they are a complete pain in the ass” is a card that is keychain-sized, and hole-punched to fit on a key chain. Works for me.
Of course, I still sign up with a fake name and a fake address. That works for me, too. Screw their demographics. You want to keep track of what I buy? Fat chance – but I’ll let you keep track of what someone else, possibly fictitious, buys.
I refuse to shop at any store that uses these things. I hate them. They don’t save you money - it just gives the store an excuse to charge you more if you don’t give them your information. When I go to a grocery store, it’s for a specific transaction - I give you money, you give me my food. If you want my personal information on top of that, you can make me an offer. “Jacking up prices if you don’t cooperate” is not an offer I’m willing to accept. So I drive past two card-using stores to go to a store that doesn’t use them.
Now, judging from past experience, anyone who expresses disdain for this system will be sneered at by other posters as paranoid tinfoil hat types for thinking that their personal information is sooooo valuable. To them, I say “bite me”. The stores clearly want my information, having put these elaborate systems in place to get it from me. So if it’s valuable to them, like I say, you can make me an offer. A real offer.
Yeps, they are a pain in the butt to carry around on yer keychain, and I muy don’t like the shopper tracer thang.
I’ve found this to be the ongoing truth about keying in yer tag at the register for discounts, and when you don’t have it with you:
*Most often, the cashiers will just scan a spare card, or their own, or ask someone for a spare. So, ya get the discount, anyway. Of course, this isn’t kosher with the powers that be as to marketing stats, but it is the best expedient/kind route, so happens most often in the checkout, in my experience. Go On human ingenuity vs corporate tactics!
Some places, without the card, just enter your phone number into the register, and ya get the discount. Your phone # is always in the system, so no prob w/o card onsite. I see now in preview that this is mentioned.
As to the Mark of the Beast, ya may be right there. Ten years ago, I did photos for a story on the then nascent Mississippi Casino industry. The casino operators, all starry-eyed at that point, led us on a tour of operations, including how intricate the card marketing was. Again, rather new at the time, so they wanted to show it off. They could, by use of a membership card, trace slot machine usage (most common casual gambler), and get a ton of beneficial info as to time of use, frequency within the day, type of preferred gambling, etc. They could then tailor the person’s habits and send out appropriate incentive by mail to come back.
Supermarkets use the same tactics… But I’ve found in most cases , least here in the South-NC-, the cashiers usually undermine it, heehee.
I worked for the headquaters of the supermarket chain that pioneered these things in the Boston area. An executive family friend has been a big push for them nationwide.
Here was (as sometimes still is the reasoning behind it):
Data analysis allows them to target and promote items tailored to an individual customer. When I worked there, people generated all kinds of crazy idea about the could be used. For instance, they suggested sending a customized coupon pack for each person on a regular basis. The logistics and statistical analysis for that were an unworkable nightware. The databases grew to terabytes of data. Companies have toned it down quite a bit on those ideas. It was great fun to analysis the shopping habits of people that you knew.
Incentive for loyalty - the thinking was that once you signed up and carried that card around with you all the time, you were more likely to become somewhat of an exclusive customer. It was also daily advertising up close and personal.
More profit from people that don’t have a card - some people insist that this is the primary reason for the card but it isn’t. Companies would prefer that everyone have a card but, if they don’t, a little extra money is a pretty good consolation prize.
One nice thing about the Giant Eagle card is that they send you coupons for things you buy a lot-or bonus coupons around Thanksgiving and the like. AND now they have a program where you can save money on gas. With gas prices what they are, how cool is that?
Preach it! Around here, the stores that do use the cards seem to have significantly higher prices, often even with the card discount, than stores that don’t use them. That’s one reason I don’t shop at the stores that use them, but mainly, I don’t just because they piss me off. It wouldn’t bother me to have my buying monitored; I have nothing to hide. But I just find the obnoxiousness of the cards a big turn-off.
I seem to think I had to show them my I.D. to sign up for one. And they know me, so I doubt using a different name would work. I think its unfair to charge more to people without them. I know no store around here that doesn’t have them.
I have come into this thread to make no useful contribution whatsoever, but rather to inform Guin that you’ve now gotten the following jingle stuck in my head:
They give you the card as soon as you sign up. At least, my place did. The checkout chick actually helped me make up a fake address - 6969 Kellogg Lane, as I recall. I think my telephone number was 320-382-5633.
Oh, and for those of you who administer websites? I’m usually the 104 year old Albanian male making +100,000 a year.
I know of at least one grocery store chain here that uses the cards also to cash cheques for people, so you have to show ID. So giving fake info is not an option in some cases.
I restrict my grocery shopping to HEB, Wal-Mart [Neighbourhood Market], SuperTarget, and the little mom 'n pop place near me, because they’re pretty much the only ones that don’t use cards in my area. I think the cards are obnoxious, especially considering that they’re trying to make you give them your information in exchange for something as vital and necessary as food. Discount cards for other (less necessary) types of retail bother me slightly less, since you can go without it.
You mean sign up for the card service, or get the tiny, keychain-sized version?
To sign up, just ask the customer service desk. Or tell any cashier that you don’t have a card, and you will be deluged with applications. I’ve never been asked for an ID, but YMMV.
Presumably, if you give a nonexistent address, and they mail some promo material to it and it comes back, they might inactivate the card. I don’t know if they bother.
All the markets near me use a prepared plastic card “set” on a single sheet which includes one or more standard credit-card sized cards and one or more keychain-sized cards, ready to punch out and use at your leisure. If yours doesn’t, it’s probably not available.
