This probably bugs the shit out of me more than it does most people. But I’m fucking sick of businesses and their stupid fucking cards. The Pick n Save, the Jewel store, now speedway has their stupid “speedy Rewards” card. “Oh, you could have saved $3 on your groceries if you had our card”. I always go to the service counter and tell them I don’t have their stupid card and they ALWAYS give me the money I would have saved with it.
:rolleyes: I know what your thinking: Wouldn’t it be quicker to just have the card at the check out? They don’t need to have a database of what I’m fucking buying! Besides, if I had the stupid card for every store I shop in my wallet would be full up like George Castanzas on that one Seinfeld episode.
What jack off is thinking these stupid things up? Why don’t they just knock their prices down instead of having these stupid cards? Yeah, I know, I know; the database for “marketing purposes”:dubious: Hmmm. Sometimes the cashier even tries to make to feel like some kind of pariah because you didn’t have the card to save 50 cents of a box of corn flakes. “You should get our card like the rest of the sheep”. Eat shit, twat! You should get a life!
Now I’m getting shit at the Speedway. The dork at the counter goes into a sales seminar about the speedy rewards card like he’s selling timeshares or something. I mean they are REALLY pushing that card there!
All I want is a 59 cent refill of my coffee mug you mealy mouth prick! Fuck you and fuck your stupid card!
The problem, my friend, is that you are looking at this all wrong. Try having a little fun with it while polluting the marketing scum’s database as well. Make up names and addresses! Use that of prominent politicians that you disagree with and use that card to for all of your deviant or embarrassing purchases! Dead people of fictional characters! Have several different cards and use them at the same store so that it gets to the point that the cashier that rings you up regularly knows that you are doing so!
I asked for an application at a local supermarket, and when they gave it too me, I noticed it had the card on it, ready to be detached. I told them I would fill it out and return it the next time I shopped. Of course, I simply detached the card without filling in the data or returning the application, and I have been using that card for over two years. I don’t know what they are tracking, but it isn’t me.
I’m sure that purchases are being recorded for some purpose, but it’s a mistaken idea that the purpose of the cards is to build some überdatabase that knows how much you like RC Cola and Pop Tarts and is storing this information from some nefarious purpose.
The purpose of the cards is purely economic: they enable the store to perform price discrimination, which is a common economic practice. The easiest example of that is coupons; the stores can get some extra foot traffic from people who are poor enough to bother clipping coupons, and successfully sell them products they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Basically, by offering coupons the store can sell a product for cheaper to folks with less money, while knowing that most people making decent money wouldn’t go to the effort of cutting out a coupon just to save 40 cents on their Tide with Bleach Alternative.
The cards work the same way. For people who read the store circulars and decide they want to pick up some Hot Pockets while they’re on sale, it gets extra foot traffic. Meanwhile, folks who are not bargain hunters or frequent shoppers most likely won’t carry around the card on their keychain, and thus will pay the full price.
The store’s goal in offering those cards, then, is to charge people like you who hate the damn things more money, while those who are willing to go to the trouble of carrying the card around and looking at ad circulars are most likely going to shop and buy more than they would if the sales weren’t offered. It’s win-win for the store: they get to charge more for people who don’t care as much about price, while also successfully selling to those who do count their pennies. It’s basic economics at work here.
Quick question: Do you have some information that we don’t about this? The reason that I ask is that, while the rest of your post makes a whole lot of sense to me, I can not imagine why a company would not create such a database. They have all of the information right there, and really setting up such a database and feeding it is a pretty trivial matter given the state of computing.
Moreover, such a database could be mined for information that would have staggering usefulness. Not necessarily “Aha! We see that **Binarydrone’s consumption of condoms and Astroglide is up this month”, but more along the lines of “these are the people that signed up for the card so that is where we send the circulars” or “looks like the folks in this neighborhood buy more panty-liners than expected, we should up the shipment”.
But the problem with that scenario is that shoppers who hate the damned cards will actively avoid buying anything at those stores. I will drive across town to shop at a cheaper store that doesn’t have cards than the store near me that does. Yeah, I’ll go to the nearer store when I’m in a real pinch and pay a little more but that happens maybe once every couple of months. The store is losing waaaay more from me by running the card program than it would without.
Plus, the grocery store chain in town with cards (Randalls) is almost always more expensive (even with the card discount) than the other grocery store chain (HEB). The Randalls is rarely busy while the HEB is always packed. I really don’t get how the Randalls turns a profit.
I fucking loathe the things too, don’t get me wrong. And I suspect the backlash has been noticed by grocery stores; a local chain discontinued their use of the cards a couple years ago and posted signs about how they loved making their customers’ lives easier. Whether the economic benefit of price discrimination is relevant, if the whole thing pisses off customers too much, it’ll overcome the benefit. Now that the things are common enough that anyone who uses them has to have like five on their keychain, I suspect people will get more pissed off.
Like I said, I’m sure the stuff is being recorded. I have no cites, but I know that I’ve never gotten any visibly targeted junk mail when I’ve used the cards and I’ve read claims from the industry on multiple occasions that they’re not using the cards to track individual purchasing. Given how easy it is to avoid giving your address, I don’t think they care all that much about trying to link purchases to people. I can’t prove it, and perhaps the companies that say they don’t track individual purchases are lying, but I really think that that idea is a popular misconception.
I’m bitching about it now because over the last week I’ve been in a bunch of stores that had them. The drug store, grocery stores, gas stations, even the auto parts store!
And lets not forget the other kind of cards some stores have. The kind of card they want to stamp or give you a little stamp to stick on everytime you make a purchase. “eat 10 bad subs and get a free one” ( :smack: oh Gawd. Another Sienfeld reference!)
If I had all these stupid cards my wallet would burst! :mad:
The thing that pisses me off is when they ask me if I have my card, I say I don’t (it’s in car, or I don’t have one) and they scan in a card they have that gives me the discount anyway. So why do I need a card? I am perfectly prepared to pay full price if I have chosen not to remember or get my card.
The worst is when I say I don’t have my card (prepared to just pay full price and leave) and they call over a manager to swipe theirs and give me the discount. Then I end up waiting minutes for something I don’t deserve when I could just be on my way.
I hate “loyalty” cards, and I hate stores that ask me for my personal information when they don’t need it. If I’m returning something, sure, ask me for my name, phone number and signature. When I’m paying cash or debit card, anything but a look at my face is violating my privacy. On the plus side, the recent privacy legislation seems to be making stores more careful about when they ask for personal information.
I do think Safeway and stores like that do have databases. When I told a cashier that I had moved and hadn’t changed my address, she seemed quite distressed at me running around with inaccurate information in their database. That made my day.
Meh. I don’t see anything staggeringly useful about this. Raw data is one thing. It takes time and money to convert it into useful information. Targeting flyers to specific houses is going to be way more expensive than a normal flyer delivery to all houses in a certain area. I doubt if the extra cost would be worth it.
And one neighborhood buys more panty liners? So what? Really, what would they do with that knowledge? One store draws from many neighborhoods, so upping the supply at one store isn’t necessarily the right response. It might be offset by lower purchases from another neighborhood. It might be a fluke in the data and not a permanent trend. The profit margin on panty liners isn’t likely to support any great effort to analyze the raw data.
At Vons you just enter your phone number into a machine to get your discount. Meh. Every once in a while they spit out some coupons based on what I bought during that specific trip to the market.
I don’t do Vons because they’re too expensive for me. Ralph’s and Albertson’s, however, are also good about letting me enter my phone number (I can’t be bothered to keep track of my cards). And EVERY time I use a supermarket, I get coupons for a different brand of what I just bought.
featherlou, this confused me:
Followed by:
If you’re so concerned about your privacy, why were you bothering to tell the cashier about the fact that you weren’t at that address anymore? Or were you paying with something other than cash or a debit card?
Further, I suspect most stores manage inventory in other ways. I mean, if the store consistently notices that they’re running out of panty liners, they’ll do a larger order next time, right?
I’m not so sure. Robert Rivera tried to sue Safeway(Vons) when he injured himself in one of their stores. According to him, their mediator threatened to publicize his shopping records, which indicated that he purchased a lot of liquor. It was obvious that they were going to attempt to paint him as a drunkard. The supermarket denied his allegations, of course.
In the end, his injury suit was thrown out due to lack of evidence. Whether Safeway did, or would have used his loyalty card records remains unknown, but it makes me wonder…
LionelHutz405. Just as an example of how such a database could be used, I am pretty sure that Wal-Mart already uses one. IIRC what happens is that there is no point at which a manager of store X decides what to order. Trucks just show up on the appointed day based on what is selling. I maintain that such a database has very useful applications, moreover it is not really that exciting to establish and maintain
Our local grocery store stinks for many reasons, of which this is just one. The other day Mr. S bought a bag of Starbucks whole-bean coffee. He got a coupon for EIGHT-O’CLOCK GROUND COFFEE (available in fine gas stations everywhere). In what dimension do buyers of those two kinds of coffee intersect? Are they actually trying to get him to buy cheap shit instead of the premium expensive stuff?
The coupons are but one in a string of annoyances at this store (currently the only one on town). The latest is some contest they’re running, which they feel compelled to explain at some length to every shopper IN THE CHECKOUT LINE. Can I just buy my half-gallon of milk and go home? Then there are the aisles piled full of dollar-store “specials” so you can barely get a cart through, the scantily stocked shelves, the horrible selection, the produce department that’s frequently out of staple items, and on and on.
We had a wonderful independently owned grocery store that was giving this one a real run for its money, but it burned down a few months ago. We were thrilled to find out that they’re rebuilding (a larger store!) and will reopen in the spring. Thank God – I’ll never set foot in the other one again!
Okay, Let me try to clear up a few things. I worked for Safeway for awhile. I was there when they rolled out the program to the SoCal division, and then I moved to the backstage and worked with their marketing division.
The cards do in fact track what is sold (it is not merely price discrimination). While it is theoretically possible to track an individual’s purchases to name, it’s not done in general. What does happen is the recognition of shopping trends. 40% of card holders who are women purchase this and this. 80% of Cardholders who are men buy this much worth of groceries and are more likely to buy this brand… etc.
SOMETIMES though, they do track by name. For example - Tide has a new type of laundry detergent coming out. They would like to send a coupon to all the customers who buy All brand detergent. They would give Safeway money and safeway would then send out that coupon to all those card memebers who bought ALL in the last 6 months (or whatever the criteria was).
Anyway… they care less what Joe Schmo buys, than what Joe Schmo’s demographic buys
