I wonder if all the people concerned about the privacy impact of loyalty cards realize that the stores make no effort to validate that any information provided is real? I have several loyalty cards, all of which I’ve lost, but no matter, I use the associated phone number instead. A phone number that has never belonged to me, might or might not belong to anyone, and certainly has no connection to any personal data of mine that could have any negative impact in case of a hack or other data leak. Needless to say, if I’ve provided them with an address, same story applies.
Actually… the loyalty program used by my store requires a working e-mail address. It used to only work with cell phone numbers (might still be the case) so I assume there is some double-checking going on there.
I think even if you use a fake phone number, the loyalty card information is still valuable. They can see if you bought stuff from the endcap displays. Did you respond to the sign on the shelf indicating that something was on special that week? What combinations of things did you buy? And over time, what sort of stuff do you buy? Do you regularly buy hamburger meat and buns? Do you mostly eat frozen dinners? And also, some stores track customers’ locations using Bluetooth beacons. I imagine it would be possible to associate a particular Bluetooth ID with a particular loyalty card number so they can track your movements around the store, and where you linger.
Mostly, I think this data is used in the the aggregate, rather than drilling down and looking specifically at how one particular customer shops.
Years ago a guy with an internet site took the barcode from his grocery store loyalty card and printed it on hundreds of labels that could be stuck onto a card. He then offered to mail them to people throughout his state (California, IIRC).
He became “super shopper”, apparently traveling all over the state purchases.
I think the stores have gotten more clever about spotting such mischief. I thought I read (perhaps here) that some don’t allow people to use well-known shared phone numbers like 867-5309 any longer.
Yes. I work for a company that I will circumspectly say does this and is a major player in the personal data industry. Even providing bogus personal information, a tremendous about of detail can be correlated into a profile, but my experience is that without me providing my actual contact info, the profile that is generated is just an aggregate of assumptions and understood preferences and lives in a giant ocean of “maybe” data. You can’t get free of that if you go to the store with a phone and use a debit/credit card. But when I don’t voluntarily give over my phone number and email address, it keeps my activity from being turned into PII data on the spot at least.
This is atypical IME. I have Kroger, Harris Teeter, Giant, Safeway, CVS, Food Lion cards in my wallet. None of them have my contact info of any sort.
Yep. Atypical. Nonetheless, it exists.
It is also a reason some people refuse our loyalty program.
Any time I need to use a phone number in a place where i need to remember it from time to time, but also there’s nearly zero reason why they should ever call me, I use my old landline number. No idea if anyone has it now, but if they do, they don’t use it at the all places I’ve given it to.
Well, there’s working, and then there’s “working.” It’s trivial to set up a temporary e-mail just for a loyalty card if you really wanted.
Sure. Except this one sends you e-mail fairly regularly so if your e-mail starts bouncing I’m not sure what it would do. We do get people every week having problems accessing it. As I said, it’s not really a card, it’s an account with the company’s app.
Since it’s a legitimate business that you signed up for, you can probably just unsubscribe. Otherwise, set up a junk email address just for this kind of thing. It’s still your email address and you can still go and retrieve emails from it if you know something you need was sent there, but you don’t need to check it very often and (at least for me), my phone doesn’t check it so it’s not beeping at me all the time.
Why are so many people antagonistic toward their grocery store? If you hate them, go somewhere better.
I have a loyalty card with Giant Eagle. They have my cell number, noted that I prefer text communication, and my primary email address tied to my card. I also voluntarily fill out surveys to hopefully help them serve me better.
The location I shop at is staffed by people I’ve gotten to know over the years. If I’m trying to locate something they don’t have, they’ll try to get it in and text me if they can. I’m not going to quibble over change.
From where I sit, there are people who are just angry and antagonistic. Full stop. Doesn’t matter where they go, what anyone does, they’re just pissed off all the time about every little thing.
And those people still have to buy groceries. Somewhere. And they’ll be pissed off about it because that’s the state they’re in all the time.
If this information is being used in the aggregate they don’t need to track anybody’s individual information; they can just look at their daily sales records to see what was sold. The only reason to differentiate my personal purchasing history from the masses is if they can cash in by knowing about me personally.
I can’t stand those people. The ones that you see walking in and you know it means you’re going to be in a nonsensical in the next 5 minutes. I have a few that will complain that they were rung up incorrectly. I’ll walk through their entire receipt with them, showing them each item and that the prices corresponds with the price on their receipt. After I’ve successfully gone through that (leaving nothing left to argue about on that front), then it’s ‘well, it just doesn’t seem right’. Fine, pull out a calculator, manually add it all up and now they can’t argue about that. Then it’s 'well…I gave her the cashier a twenty and she only gave me $2.50 back…the fuck do you want, your total was $17.50. What makes me feel better is knowing they do this every store, it’s not personal.
Then, we had the lady that would open all the deli containers (we have a self serv deli with all the salads already in containers) and smell them. Told her to knock it off. She complained that it’s ‘really expensive when I get home and this salad has too much onion/cilantro/red pepper/etc in it’ I replied ‘and it’s really expensive when I have to throw away a few hundred dollars of product because I (or worse, a customer) saw you doing that. I don’t know which one you stuck your nose in, just the area and I have to toss them all’.
She’d continue to justify it, I told her to shop else where if she doesn’t like the quality of our products and made it unquestionably clear that she is absolutely not allowed to open the containers (or stick her nose in them for that matter).
Caught her doing it a few more times. I don’t know if she has mental issues or what, but she wouldn’t just defend her behavior, she’d come back a week later even after I told her I’d call the police if I saw her doing it again. And she did it to everything, it wasn’t just that. The deli stuff we make here, so sometimes the onion is stronger than usual or you get more cilantro than you’re expecting. But she’d do it to things like cookies and cupcakes too.
What I never thought to say, because this was before the ice cream licking thing that was all over the news, is that this constitutes food tampering and the feds don’t mess around with that.
Due to the fact that I am easily influenced by random internet people, I counted out another 5 dollar bag of assorted change and offered it up for payment at the Prescott Valley Burger King. I got parked, manager ran up with my burger and free order of fries to discuss my change jar.
It’s a 45 minute drive to get to that store, and I don’t usually go to town more than a couple of times a month.
End result of negotiations is that a friend’s husband picked up the jar, and friend will take it to that store on her way to work in exchange for a 20 gift card and free breakfast. She will go back at lunch for free lunch and about 200 in cash because I am trusting the manager to count it correctly.
I have done my civic duty.
Score!!
All I get from the Del Taco down the street when I pay with a handful of change is “If this is within $0.15 or so either way we’re calling it good!”
Things I’ve learned in this thread, in no particular order:
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People have very strong opinions about pocket change, to the point where they will actively argue about it.
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“Legal Tender” just means it can be used, not that it must be accepted.
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There are people who fear the mysterious grocer’s cabal tracking their preferences through loyalty cards.
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If you try to be kind and bring in a bunch of change to the store so they have more change in these times of shortage, only the back-office people will really appreciate it.
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You have to pay for the things you want to take out of the store. Somehow.
I’m sure there’s more to come!
It ain’t that I fear them; I just see no benefit in helping them, and I am honestly curious what benefit they get from knowing that I, personally, was the person who took that can of peaches off the shelf.