Almost every receipt has a URL at the bottom and says something like “Take our survey and be entered to win a $1000 gift card!”. I have never heard of anyone actually winning. Is the prize draw a lie?
I know my former company did pay out on these. But keep in mind that we issued over a billion receipts per year, and pay out a few hundred (maybe couple thousand) gift cards. The lottery is a better bet if your time is worth even minimum wage to you.
You do realize that the “survey” is a roundabout way to extract more shopper/consumer tracking info from you, and has almost no other purpose?
Save-a-Lot grocery stores used to have a decent deal. Some register receipts had a number to call to answer a survey. After the survey was finished, you got a number to write down on the receipt which entitled you to a free loaf of bread or maybe a free box of mac and cheese. I used to get those receipts a couple times a month.
What more could Dillons (Kroger) possibly learn about me that they don’t know from my customer loyalty card? They might send me even more coupons for stuff I routinely buy?
It does have another purpose, if they find that 75% of the people from store #2011 give negative response to the questions “Was the staff courteous?” and “Were you able to find some to help you when you couldn’t find what you needed?” they know they need to fix those problems and it helps explain why the numbers for that store are slipping while the numbers for store #2033, in the next city are stable (they had mostly positive reviews). Corporate also now knows which store to send the secret shoppers to, what they need to work on, which store(s) need retraining etc. Giving out a few hundred or thousand dollars in prizes saves them money when the alternative is to shotgun problems. Stores spend an insane amount of money to make sure you shop there, so trimming off some of that spending saves you money in the long run. You don’t have to fill it out, but plenty of people like doing it.
Also, if they just have the survey going all the time, most people probably don’t bother…unless they had a problem, so when they start getting a lot of surveys showing up from one location they can start keeping a closer eye on it.
Yes, if it asks for person information and what you bought, that’s one thing, but if it asks about your experience, they’re just trying to make their store better.
The funny thing is how freaked out people get about it. A few years back my (little mom and pop) store was trying to figure out how far away people came from so we asked everyone for their zip code for a few days. Most people gave it to us, a few declined, but some would yell at the cashiers about ‘tracking’ them or sending them junkmail. Even my 15 year old cashiers knew that we couldn’t do anything to a customer with just a zip code (no address, no phone number, no name, just a check mark in a box).
Ultimately, if it’s anonymous, who cares. I don’t get why it bothers people so much when stores do all this work just so they can put things on their shelves that you might want to buy. Yes, if they’re selling the data, that’s one thing. But if they’re just doing it to get a better feel for what to stock or which receipts should print out when you scan your loyalty card…oh noes.
They could learn, for example, that you also shop at Home Depot and Old Navy. Seriously. I remember reading that when your name is entered with other to get that gift card, it’s not just one store running the contest. Lots of stores get together for those surveys, and that causes several things: If makes your odds of winning even weaker, and it gives them more ways of looking at the data.
I’d cheerfully tell Dillons I shop at Home Depot, but not at Old Navy.
I really and truly wish that, occasionally, someone would actually watch me in the store, and come over and ASK ME why I chose this or that, or if I have complaints or comments, etc. So much stuff in the store is absolutely idiotic, and I’d love to tell them, but it is SO difficult to explain these things on a survey - and that’s presuming I remember the details when I get home. It would be SO much easier to actually SHOW them. But if I try to approach the Customer Service people about it, 99% of the time they are uninterested, a/k/a just doing their job.
Did you consider phrasing it in terms of “We’re trying to figure out where our customers come from; mind if I ask what town you live in?”
My mother-in-law doesn’t work and they eat out a lot so she has a lot of time to do those surveys. They did win a $300 GC from Applebees.
As long as you pay cash for the transaction, you remain anonymous. But if you pay be a card (credit or debit) they can tie one with the other and yes, track you.
I’ve never won money but I’ve gotten lots of free food just by saving fast food receipts and doing the survey
All data is good data, and by replying you’re giving them more information - including info you would never provide as a customer and were not likely to put on your loyalty card application. Key indexing and search info like email address - which is also the real reason so many stores are helpfully offering emailed receipts.
Not true. There are regulations at several levels (federal and state) that prevent customer tracking by payment card. That’s the whole reason loyalty card/discount card/club cards came into being - to provide a customer id that they do control and can use as they wish, while making it seem completely innocuous, nonthreatening and even beneficial.
There was the New York Times story about Target figuring out such things as when women are pregnant as early as possible. It contained the claim, straight from a Target employee, that they did track customers based upon what credit card was used for payment:
My online Dillons account is tied to my loyalty card. Of course they have my email address, I gave it to them.
Here in the Keystone State, we have a chain of convenience stores called Wawa. Every receipt has a mention of taking a survey for a chance to win a gift card. At a recent party, I had a chat with a woman who was a Wawa manager. She told me that the head office was always pushing them to get more people to take the survey. She also told me that one month, nobody took the survey. Had just one person taken k.the survey, they automatically would have won.
Re Zipcodes
I shop at the local Goodwill at least once a week. They occasionally ask for zip codes. “What city do you live in?” would mostly get answers of “Philadelphia”. That’s not a very helpful answer. A zip code is much more precise.
The bottom line is that no data collected is for your benefit. A few coupons does not offset the other costs to your wallet, privacy and consumer choice.
Dressing it up with terms like ‘discount card’ or ‘loyalty card’ or ‘rewards’ is just misdirection.
As for tracking by credit card, there are ways around the exact regulations, such as generating a key index from the card number. It’s unreliable in that most people use at least two payment cards along with cash, gift cards, etc., so the tracking by payment gets erratic. They are also allowed to track customers using a store credit card, or even a store-brand major card (a Costco Amex, a Target Visa, etc.) But in the absence of all else, getting customers to sign into, agree to and use a tracking identity is of priceless value to retailers. Not to the shoppers, no matter how many survey prizes you win.
This. You can get $1 off or a free burrito at Del Taco, for example, just for taking 3 minutes to fill out their on-line survey.
I certainly agree with this.
Many times it seems to me that these surveys are designed to elicit the answers they want, or from a small range of answers, without leaving an option for the customer to actually give their option.
An example: a recent survey from my Wells Fargo bank had asked if I was greeted upon entering the bank, and upon departing. But there was no way for me to tell them that I would be much happier if they would take that useless greeter and put them in a teller window, so customers didn’t have to wait in line so long.
Of course, that would take someone actually reading the survey responses, or a more sophisticated computer program, instead of just counting up the responses like they do now.