Oh good, we haven’t had a “reward cards are the devil!” thread in a while…
This is what gets me. I don’t have fears about privacy or tracking or whatnot - it’s mildly irritating, I suppose, but generally so what? No, the thing that irritates me is that these card systems OBVIOUSLY cost a fair bit of money to operate. Therefore, they are generating more money than they cost, or stores wouldn’t be using them. Now, stores have exactly one source of income - you and the other customers. To recap: stores with cards make more money than stores without cards, and that money is ultimately coming out of your pocket.
And yet, despite these self-evident facts, otherwise reasonably intelligent people STILL buy in to the nonsense crap the stores trumpet about how the cards actually SAVE you money! They clearly don’t. The stores say they do, sure. Of course they say that. But jacking up prices and then sending you an occasional coupon doesn’t count as saving money - it just makes you feel like you’re saving money, which is all that really matters.
It reminds me of the guy who once knocked on my father’s door, selling some book-of-the-month club deal. My dad, who incidentally earned an MBA from Harvard, was actually somewhat interested in the books, until the kid claimed that he was selling them for below his cost. My dad asked him how he was earning a profit then, and he said he was making it up on volume.
Or, for a more concrete example of how stores bullshit us, a few months ago in my local card-issuing store, there was a sign up proudly announcing that using our cards now earned us 10 cents off a gallon of gas for every $100 we spent! YAY! What good news, right? Except that up until that point, we had been getting 10 cents off per gallon for every $50 we spent. This is the kind of crap stores do all the time, all over the place.
You can argue specific instances all day long, but the bottom line is - and must be - that cards cost you money, no matter how much bullshit the stores fling to hide the fact. And again, it amazes me how many people buy into the bullshit.
I sincerely think you’re all missing the point and underestimating the scope of the problem. For one thing, there aren’t always “other places to shop,” especially as the last holdouts are starting to fall for the siren song of the cards. Raley’s in California has held out for decades but is now reportedly phasing them in.
So, fine, don’t USE the cards… and pay 20-40% more for your purchases. (As well as being hassled to death on every purchase, where you spend more time explaining that you don’t have, don’t want and won’t use a card than on the rest of the transaction combined.)
And underestimate the impact, both immediately and direct and in the larger view, all you like. What you’re doing by using the cards or permitting them to control where and how you show is being a voluntary Quisling for the marketing industry, which doesn’t give two shits about anything but finding ways to sell you more crap - crap you don’t need, crap that has no value, crap you never wanted until you were beaten into believing you needed it. By participating in tracking, you’re enabling this cycle like absolutely no phase of it before.
(Oh, but of course - you’ve never bought anything because you were marketed into doing so, and never will, and you only buy the things your highest level of consciousness permits. Right. So it’s okay if the consumption police monitor you like Number Six… you’re not doing anything wrong anyway.)
The evidence is beyond plentiful that few people are as rugged and independent as you… so by allowing this system to persist, in any way, even by strenuously trying to work outside it, you’re reducing *your *future choices and shaping *your *future consumer economy to what the card-bearing sheep want.
When I was a kid, the supermarkets printed and distributed flyers that showed the sale items for the week and included paper coupons that had to be cut out and presented to get the discount. My mother did that, but it’s too much hassle for me. So the courtesy card is an easier way of getting the discount.
Put me down for wholehearted concurrence with your last sentence. But even more so with your first.
The operating cost of these systems is trivial at the consumer level. The stores often do not pay for them at all.
The systems are the product of both the marketing industry as a whole and the layer of giant product manufacturers and wholesalers. They promote the system and give it to grocery chains for something between trivial and zero cost.
The data generated does NOT stop with the grocery chain. In fact, most chains make no use of the information at all except in the most trivial ways - you bought five things of soda, here’s a coupon for one more free. The data is sent upstream to Procter & Gamble, FritoLay, etc. where is is absolutely beyond any price they might pay for it. It also goes to aggregate marketing data firms like Acxiom. That’s the real coin of this realm, not the trivial costs of the cards and data collection and a few coupons. When it’s collated across stores and time and other barriers, it results in individual data files that may or may not have your name on them, but represent a lab rat to which anything can be done to analyze the information.
So if you’re all het up about the cost - which is not what you think it is anyway - and blase about the tracking, it’s like being all upset that the CSI team that spent two hours meticulously searching your consumer “house” left muddy footprints in the foyer.
How, exactly, are they going to do that by knowing “stuff” about me?
Answer, by offering me something that I desire, when other stores are not.
They are not reaching into my wallet, or redirecting my car, they’re sending me a flyer letting me know all about the awesome deals I can get on the things that I want to buy. Flyers and coupons that list items that I actually want, instead of items I don’t give a crap about.
50 years ago, a retailer mentioning that they had a special on an item that he knew I would enjoy would have been considered GOOD customer service. A retailer who actually takes an interest in his customer, understands his customer and can identify his customer’s needs, offering personalized solutions. Cards are a way to offer more personalization, and a better run store, while maintaining a low cost profile by hiring less skilled staff and having a larger store.
No, the stores could give discounts fifty different ways, all convenient for you. (Such as just pricing the item down on the shelf without any coupons or individual discounts.)
I want you to read the following sentence until you understand it:
The discount is the way the store gets you to use the tracking card.
Reward/Saver/Shopper cards are 100% about the tracking; everything they do to make using the card worth your while is window dressing. The failure to understand this basic fact is why most people think the cards are somewhere between benign and an benefit. They’re not for your benefit, at all, in any way.
Hey, that sounds kinda…apocalyptic.
By reshaping the world around you.
It’s not about finding what coupons to send you. It’s about limiting your choices until you make the ones that are most beneficial to them. So yes, they are reaching into your wallet, and redirecting your car, and shaping your shopping and purchasing habits, and more… all in ways you clearly haven’t thought about because you’re still convinced the process is all about “making it all a better shopping experience for you.”
Just because you can still drive across town to buy a flavor of soda sold nowhere else without a card being required doesn’t mean you still have completely free choice. Sooner or later, you’ll stop going to so much effort because you don’t have the time and stamina to do so. And you’ll settle for the choices and the processes left open to you, which were shaped by that endless tracking, which was fostered by the apocalyptic greed underlying modern marketing efforts.
Unless you plan your life around shopping, most people have a single grocery store that they consider “theirs” and do the vast majority of their shopping at, so why wouldn’t they just get the card? I save a little bit of money and I use my phone number, so there is no card to carry.
On top of that, there are plenty of reward cards that do save you money, such as Best Buy’s “Reward Zone” card. I am not an idiot, I can easily compare prices for items that I buy at Best Buy and, when I choose to shop at their store, I know I’m getting the best price and a few cents back (in the form of a gift certificate, yes, but it’s still purchasing power I didn’t have before). In exchange for this, Best Buy learns that I love TV and video games. The horror!
I honestly don’t think this happens. I have never been “hassled” for a card. I say no and that’s the end.
Blah blah blah. Look at the fucking superiority complex on you. The Internet has turned price comparison shopping into a trivial event. I’m pretty confident in feeling that I shop where I shop because those stores offer the best price or some kind of excellent service.
In short, you can take your “Quisling” talk and shove it. Besides, when you track everything, any one anomaly throws the whole system out of whack.
One tactic I learned while working at Kroger. (This wasn’t some super secret info, they straight up explained it in a training video). Say you spend about $50 every week on groceries. So they’ll start sending you a coupon for “Save $6 when you spend $60.” It’s only a few dollars more than normal and you’re saving money, so you get $10 more worth of groceries. They’ll keep sending you this coupon with some frequency so you get so used to getting $60 worth of groceries, that when they stop sending you the coupon you still get the same $60 worth of groceries, now at full price.
Great argument - blind assertion does wonders.
I can, however, throw a single web search out: smartphone apps spy on personal data - Search
But I suppose that’s not nearly as obviously correct as your firm declaration.
Look, not every app is spying on you - but they can unless you take some considerable precautions, and you don’t know what they might be using. Newer OS’s have a bit more protection in place, but not enough for any kind of security.
At least the pharmacy and optometrist are open to the public (the optician is not, though). I think there are certain times when the hoi polloi can shop, but I’m not sure how that works and I think there’s a surcharge.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t benefit from them, however. Your paranoia is a bit extreme, don’t you think?
You’re right. I never needed or wanted all that food I’ve been buying. DAMN THOSE BASTARDS! I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!!! :mad::mad::mad::mad:
Jeeze Louise NitroPress, did a discount card kill your mother or something?
Ontario. (Toronto, currently.)
When I lived in Saskatoon (decades ago), one’s Co-op account was only good for getting a dividend check at the end of the year, and Safeway didn’t have a loyalty program. I haven’t seen either of those chains since I moved east.
Costco doesn’t have two-tier pricing, so I’m not sure why you mentioned it.
I think I see what you are saying. If you are getting a service that looks for all intents and purposes to be free or saving you money, it obviously is costing the host company some money that they must be making up somewhere, right? Clearly there is value in the information they are gaining simply by you patronizing their establishment, even if they can’t link that to you, personally. Therefore, if you are getting something for free, you clearly are paying for it somewhere, else, right?
Thanks, Guest! Say, can we be friends on facebook?
Um. . . This very thing is what prompted my OP. The clerk, loudly and in front of other customers in line kept badgering me about getting this new card. “So you DON"T WANT TO SAVE MONEY??!!” This basic question was repeated at least three times, probably more. I had more than $200 worth of stuff in my cart. I wanted him to check me out and let me get back to my office.
I really, really wish I had just walked away and let him explain to his manager why he had to go around the store and put $200 worth of stuff back on the shelves.
My town has a Rite Aid, a Walgreens, a CVS and an Osco. We get our prescriptions from one of those places and we have their card. However, if I need to pick up some random health or beauty aid, a greeting card or whatever, I might pull in at whichever one of the four is on my way. So when I walk in and see the item I want with a regular price 50% to 100% higher than their “member price,” I’m upset.
And no I’m not going to sign up for their card. I’m going to Walmart where all the prices all the time are about the same as Rite Aid’s “member price.”