I got a $20 coupon, with 30% off if I used my credit card, and the cashier told me that the card was obsolete (I figured it was) and I had to present my driver’s license (which didn’t weird me out) and give my SSN on the keypad (which did) and then she told me that CapitolOne now administers the cards. So, I called them when I got home, and the very nice CS rep, long story short, had me convinced that they’re just modern-day data miners.
They have also been an Amazon-return place for some time, and I saw more people in line to do that than I did in the rest of the store! Anecdote: I sometimes was a YouTube channel called Franchise Kicks, a couple who buy undeliverable packages and open them on camera. I once asked them in the comments if they’d ever been contacted by someone who said, “Hey, that’s my stuff!” and they said they hadn’t.
Kohl’s changed from their own weird private card to a store-affiliated Capital One Visa good anywhere over a year ago. I’m not sure which rock you were living under, but I got easily a dozen emails telling me about the change and many snail mails, followed eventually by a new card.
For years now at Kohls you could show up in person, not have your Kohls card on you, and still charge things to your Kohl’s card account by providing your DL & last 4. Macy’s is exactly the same with their affiliated Macy’s branded Amex. There are lots more stores like that beyond just those two. I have many store cards I don’t bother to carry because I know I can just show my DL and answer a couple questions and they can look my affiliated card up in their computer with that info.
I don’t see anything suspiciously datamining about any of this.
I think you should assume that any corporate chain that has a loyalty program or branded credit card is also in the business of mining, using, and selling your information. They can use your data for everything from personal recommendations and offers to informing what they should stock to outright selling it to other data brokers.
Depending on your state (eg California) you may be able to request a copy of the information they have on you, or request its deletion. But I would be surprised if there were any big chain today that didn’t harvest personal information by default… it’s just another line of business for them, and most people don’t care (or know) enough about privacy to make a fuss about it.
'Zactly. I did not mean to suggest Kohl’s wasn’t datamining. Just that asking for your DL to authenitcate who you are before pulling your CC from their database is not an example of it.
Every time somebody scans a SKU and you don’t pay cash while also giving no phone number, email, or loyalty number, you’re being datamined. Every retailer is datamining that. Every time everywhere.
You wanna be anonymous? No loyalty numbers, phone numbers, emails, pay only in cash, and wear a facekini. And bodily recognition by gait is getting good enough that soon the retailers will be able to identify you even hiding under a burkha.
I just thought of a woman who told me the story about how her therapist had a Barnes & Noble (or some similar book megastore) discount card, back in the 1990s, and then realized it could potentially track her purchases. The therapist said that she had just purchased some books on satanic cults, and made sure to pay cash for them.
I don’t have a grocery discount card either, and I do qualify for a few. It’s my own decision.
One of my friends posted a picture of a baby-picture contest her granddaughter was in, with the prize being something like a $500 college scholarship when the time comes, and I figured out it was data-mining before I started filling it out. She replied, “No, it’s not a scam; it’s legitimate!” but those are not the same thing.
There is, of course, this famous article (gift link) that describes how Target Stores used data collected from its customer loyalty program to predict when customers were pregnant, perhaps before they shared that information with their closest family members.
Same here. They sent a bunch of notices about it, and then sent the card, without asking if I actually wanted it, which led to me having to call Capital One to cancel it.
Exactly this. Unless you are paying cash at a store, and not using any sort of loyalty card…someone (the retailer, your credit card company, your bank) is getting and using that data about that purchase, and adding it into your profile.
I had Bally Total Fitness as a client, while they were still in existence. I’m not even joking when I say that BTF’s core business model was getting people to buy three-year financed contracts; in order to make their core business model work, they had to also operate health clubs.
Their core metric for how they were doing was, literally, “how many people signed new membership contracts yesterday?” They absolutely looked at those numbers on a daily basis, and changed advertising and messaging tactics immediately if they saw those daily numbers weaken at all.
(Amazingly, they were only the second-worst client I’ve ever had, but they were pretty damned terrible. And, two of the most senior clients there wound up in prison soon after, for financial misdeeds.)
There was a period of about 15 years where something like 95% of my household purchases were from one company, Amazon. They knew every toy and gadget I bought, every laptop and video game, every over the counter medication, which pages of which books I’d read. I had a credit card with them, and was a Vine reviewer as well.
With all this information on me, they had a nigh omniscient profile of my buying habits and personal interests.
So one day they started advertising oversized bras and metamucil to me, and then never stopped. I never got a video game suggestion or any relevant ad again after that. It was all bras, more bras, and old people supplements.
Overnight I went from “20-something nerd dude” to “blocked old lady”. To this day I still don’t know if their algorithm glitched, or it had figured out some dark secret about me that I’d been afraid to face this whole time…
I’ve definitely heard about chain restaurants that, when they opened, seemed to place more emphasis on “OPEN YOUR OWN FRANCHISE!” than they were in serving food to individual customers.
IASTR that there was a Doper who ordered some non-sex related items from Amazon, and all of a sudden, sex toys started popping up right and left, which was quite annoying (to put it lightly) when s/he checked that page at work. A few e-mails did take care of the problem, which shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Hehe, YouTube generally seems to be very confused about who I am. I’ll go through stretches of being advertised baby products (no one here is having one of those), bras (no, my man boobs aren’t that bad), a shaver for my private area directed at women (even if I was a girl, it’s the 70s forever down there).
They seem to consistently be convinced I am interested in a concealed carry holster or any number of other dumb gun accessories. Nope, I own a pellet rifle. Don’t feel the need to upgrade. Also, I’m a person who apparently needs a concoction made from apple cider vinegar and other household products to imitate the effects of prescription drugs.
About the only two commercials I get there that I actually shop at are: Harbor Freight (if you need a tool really badly, we have a really bad tool, CHEAP!) and Grainger (sometimes they’re the only practical place to get that thing you need). Either way, even those commercials just serve to remind me “yeah, I buy stuff from there”.
All of this might be due to me running NoScript, though. For the most part, I use it because it prevents running javascript from sites you don’t allow. You can show me all the ads you want, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to use my CPU to figure out which ads you want to show me. I’ll let sites I’m doing business with (e.g. grainger.com) run javascript on my machine. From there it’s not much work to show me thier ads, and by extension figure I might be likely to pick some stuff up at Harbor Freight. Beyond that, it seems their imagination runs wild.
But the datamining can be crude. Too crude, and funny.
I don’t have any kids, aren’t planning to have any, but once I was videorecording a 4th grade field trip. Some kids saw some honeybees, and asked questions about them. Since I was once a beekeeper, I could answer them.
Then I ordered a 4th grade bee book from Amazon to give to the school. From then on, I was deluged with coupons for child’s toys and clothes. The only thing that could have caused that was the book order.
Most major businesses are data mining you these days. If there is a 2% chance that a person with your demographics is more likely to buy a miter saw April 10, Home Depot might send you an ad.
I don’t know what the low level Capital One phone bank person told you, but that’s not exactly an insider source.
For years we got Kohl’s mailers with a sticker you could peel off to save 15%, 20% or 30%. I told my wife years ago “only use the 30% and see what happens”, and after a bunch of years, we started getting only 30%-off stickers.
Because I wasn’t tracking mailer frequency, I don’t know if they figured out not to send us the others and now we just get a mailing when it’s 30%, or if we’re getting more 30s than we would have. But someone is definitely optimizing something.
