Do you have anything to back this up, or do you just like to think happy thoughts all the time?
I just finished writing a (bad) essay on this very topic for my http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~wfb/CMPUT300/ Computing Ethics class. As has been mentioned, the idea that the “savings” are really a penalty against non-card users did come up. The strangest thing was that I couldn’t find a good reason for having the cards in the first place. Customer trends? They can grab aggregate data from the tills for each transaction. Paper-less coupons? Stores used to say they would use the cards to send you coupons in the mail. (Besides, why not just have a sale?) My current guess is that it’s something psychological.
I tried to ask Safeway some questions about it, but the lady on the phone said any info to be used in publishing had to be submitted in writing to their Inquiries dept., with about a 2 week turnaround time. Pffft. This is university essay lady! I’m only researching/writing it because it’s due tomorrow. 
(Nah, just kidding. 3 whole days went into this I swear).
I could scare you with tales of people’s drug history being sent to print shops for reminder notices, or buying history being subpoenaed by lawyers, and hey I just did because I’m a bastard. 
Random URLs for people who care:
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/5395/clubcard.html
http://www.amadorbooks.com/nocardsc.htm
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/food/98/04/15/4-15-coupon.0-0.html
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1997/11/24/focus2.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/cceli017.htm
Part of it is perceived value. They get your personal information, and manipulate you into actually paying higher prices (of course, to cover the costs involved with collecting, organizing and marketing this new influx of data) by making you believe you’re actually saving money. As mentioned on the sites I linked to, prices with the cards are often more expensive than somewhere like HEB or WalMart’s regular prices which do not require a card or any kind of membership.
If they give out ‘savings cards’ to everyone, there has to be costs involved. Printing the cards, processing the cards, administration of data – all these costs have to be absorbed somewhere. They come from cardmembers paying what used to be the old regular/sale prices (or in some cases even more), and even higher prices for people who refuse to use the cards.
It’s a win-win situation for the company issuing the cards, and a lose-lose situation for the customer and everyone else. Except for perhaps the non-card-using competition.
I was glad that my local Albertson’s had done away with their card program, but they were recently bought by Kroger, which does use the cards. As does Randall’s, Gerland’s Food Fair, and most of the other chain grocery stores around me. Now I do all my grocery shopping at HEB Pantry Foods and WalMart. I’m not a huge fan of WalMart, but at least their prices aren’t misleading and I don’t have to give them any personal (or fake) information to shop there.
It depends on what happens to be on sale that week. I find Safeway is usually pretty good. (They in fact beat the pants off the so-called “discount” grocery stores like FoodsCo, etc.) Fer’instance: One week Hot Pockets might be “on sale” for 3/$10 when the usual price of the Safeway brand is $2.50, so no, there’s no savings over buying the generic there. However, the next week or month, either the name brand or the Safeway brand might be buy one/get one free, which IS quite a savings either way. You of course have to take into account that the Safeway line might not encompass all the “flavors” that the name brand might, so it’s a trade-off. The trick is to stock up on the stuff that’s on sale so that you don’t have to buy it when it’s not. Duh! If Raisin Bran isn’t on sale for 5/$10 that week (they actually have it that low sometimes) I don’t get it; if I’m lucky, I was able to buy 20 or so boxes when it WAS $2 a box so it won’t be an issue.
As for the collection of info. They absolutely do it, but I really don’t care. One time I went in with my parents when they came to visit; they bought 2 cases of beer, I bought 2 cases of soda and I think a bottle of vodka, my husband got our 5 gallon waterjug refilled. Hope the communists (or whoever) make good use of the information that our family is thirsty. :rolleyes:
Would you still have that opinion if one day you found out the insurance company wanted to raise your life insurance rates because of the kind of food you’re buying, or if you were in an auto accident and they checked your purchase records to see you had been buying a lot of alcohol lately? Right now they sell your information primarily to marketers, but if consumers show that they don’t care then there’s no telling how far they’ll push the limit back in who they sell your information to.
“I don’t care because I have nothing to hide,” is not a good argument.
This is why I stopped shopping at Kroger, even though it’s right across the street. Not only did they start pushing “discount cards” (which allow you to get the exact same sale prices they used to have without the cards, while adding a layer of inconvenience for the customer), but they started replacing some of their checkouts with “Auto-Scan” checkouts. What this means is that the customer scans and bags his own groceries. That’s their idea of customer service. Of course, Kroger was already notorious for never having enough checkout personnel on duty; on a busy day, like Friday afternoon when people are buying for the weekend, perhaps five of the sixteen checkouts would be manned, so that lines of people would go from the checkouts all the way back into the aisles.
I go to Publix now, which advertises the fact that they don’t use cards. They also seem to have better customer service in general.
I think one of the points of the cards is personalized marketing, targeted to the individual at the cash register.
I was visiting my mom recently and we went to a grocery store that used cards, and she didn’t have hers with her so she borrowed one from the person behind her in line. When we left my mom wondered why the custom-printed coupons they gave her along with her receipt included coupons for stuff like baby food and diapers, which she hasn’t bought since about 1967. I told her it was probably because the person whose card she borrowed had bought stuff like that recently, and that the other person was probably going to start wondering why the hell they were giving her cat food coupons all of a sudden.
It seems strange to me that it’s worth the trouble it takes to keep all that information and retrieve it when needed, but they’re doing it. I think they have every right to do it, too (as long as they don’t share it with Big Brother after flat-out lying to their customers about what the information is used for), but I’m not going to pay for it myself.
Targeted marketing wouldn’t be so bad if they were just sending you things you would want to know about. A new DVD TV comedy show release? Yeah, I might want to know about it. A DVD TV crime show release? Probably not.
My ex-company bought one of the Internet targeted marketing companies. They were interested in things like: How much do you earn? What age are you? Are you in the market for a new car, TV, or credit card? If so, you’re blasted by “targeted marketing,” i.e., every car and TV manufacturer in the world now knows where to send their junk mail. “Targeted” means the advertisers save money. Your personal needs and interests are quite incidental.
As jinwicked points out, one doesn’t have to be criminal to want one’s privacy protected. Any number of dishonest types would be glad to take your money. (Looking for a single old person in poor health to sell quack remedies to?) And then there are enemies who would be glad to advertise or capitalize on your “embarassing” purchases.
Like Twinkies.
Like jinwicked, I’m firmly against the cards and refuse to buy from those stores that use them. I’m surprised at the number of people who, when confronted with the fact that they are often paying more than they were paying pre-card, still don’t care.
I don’t use the cards, nor do I give Toys R Us my phone number. I don’t make any big deal about it, just tell them I’d prefer not to do it.
It’s not even really the privacy thing, it’s just that I see no point in it. Toys R Us claims it uses the information to send me targeted ads and coupons, but it never did that before when I did give them the info. I still got coupons for diapers and baby junk when all I ever buy there are Star Wars figures and Legos. The coupons I got were the same as the coupons anyone ever gets.
The thing that gets me is internet shopping. If I need a hammer, I just want to buy a hammer. I don’t want to set up an account at eHammers. I don’t want to receiev eth eweekly eHammers newsletter, hear about special deals on hammers, or get information from valued eHammer partners. I don’t want another goddamn password to have to remember in case I ever need a second hammer. I don’t need half the overhead on the online site going into making some stupid web page based on whatever items I have browsed. I don’t need “helpful suggestions” of things I might want to buy. Just sell me the goddamn hammer and get out of my face.
The key fob thing is similar to that. I go to your store because it’s close to my house and has the things I want. I don’t need to enter into a special relationship with you. You’re just a frickin’ grocery store. You don’t merit space in my wallet or on my keychain.
And as for you, department stores, I have a Visa card. I don’t need your own special credit card or club card. If I want to charge a purchase, I’ll do it on the Visa and write one check at the end of the month.
I was in Borders one day and the clerk asked the lady in front of me if she had a Borders card. “Let me check,” she said, and took out - I am not exaggerating here, this is the literal truth - a THREE-INCH STACK of cards held together with a thick rubber band. Christ Almighty.
To sum up. I go shopping to buy things I want or need. I’m not looking for friends, for a relationship, for a new password, for more email, or for some geegaw to weigh down my wallet or keychain. I don’t want to be quizzed, I don’t want to be targeted, I don’t want to be itemized. I give you money, you give me a thing. Then we tell each other to have a nice day and thank each other and I walk out and our relationship is over. Hookers do that all the time. If Hookers can do it, why can’t you?
First of all they wouldn’t be able to do that without proving that it was a) me who actually purchased the items with the card; and b) that I bought the items for myself and used them myself. (Not to mention there’d be no way to prove that I drank all the alcohol in one sitting then got in a car, or that I drink the recommended 1oz of alcohol per day for heart reasons. They just know I bought it!) Just because you bought a gun doesn’t mean it’s a SMOKING gun.
If however they could do that then, no, I don’t have problems with them using it that way. It’s no different than the insurance company making you pay more because you’re over a certain age or a smoker. If you buy a certain type of car and are a certain age/sex you pay more for car insurance for a reason.
Why isn’t “I don’t care because I have nothing to hide” a good argument?
Because there’s a better argument: “It’s none of their fucking business.”
If I buy bread from a store, I have given them money and got bread. We’re done. Why the hell do they need my phone number, zip code, stool sample, turn-ons, and so forth? To help them adverstise? Fuck their advertising. The only thing I owe them for bread is the buck and a half I paid for it.
I don’t have anything to hide either, but that doesn’t mean I want to be pestered for personal info every time I buy something. Where does it end? At what point do you think it’s okay to say, “You know what? Enough already. Get the microphone out of my face, I just want a gallon of milk.”
The “nothing to hide” argument is bad because it assumes that people who do care have something to hide. I don’t. But this doesn’t mean I want grocery store employees putting a camera in my kitchen to see what I cook so they can better know what to stock. They can track every item being sold in the store. Why the hell do they need any personal information about me on top of that?
The price comparisons at the nocard site and other price comparisons that I’ve seen fail to take one thing into account–supermarkets sometimes have lower sale prices than other times. For example–at my local ShopRong, Sorrento mozzarella is regular-priced at 4.49. It is sometimes on sale for 2.99, sometimes even lower. Yesterday, I bought some sale-priced at 1.84. I suppose it was a loss-leader type sale. If ShopRong got rid of the cards next week, then there would probably be somebody arguing “it was 1.84 with the cards, and 2.99 after the cards were gone. The cards are better!”
Point is, you can’t really compare one “sale” price with another. The thing that blew the nocard site’s credibility for me was that they were comparing before and after-card prices of grapes. Grapes? That’s a seasonal item, strongly affected by weather and conditions in the grape-growing regions. Sure the grapes might be more expensive after the card, but they might be out of season at that point.
Please don’t think I’m an apologist for the cards. I’m not. They suck. I don’t want my purchases tracked, I don’t want another thing in my wallet, and I don’t want to go through the trouble of asking for a “store card” if I don’t have a card at that store. I used to patronize Pathmark because they didn’t have cards. Now they do. Darn. I don’t go to a particular ShopRong because they refuse to use a “store card” if I’ve forgotten mine. They tell me to go to customer service to get my card number looked up. I think not. If there was a supermarket in my area without cards, I’d shop there.
Yet another reason why I buy as much as practicable from Trader Joe’s.
If they did the price comparison at all the stores at approximately the same time, wouldn’t the prices be similar everywhere regardless of whether the grapes were in season or no? I know that when we’ve shopped at different stores the fruit prices are all pretty close at any given time of the year.
[Cecil voice on]Ah, trusting youth![Cecil voice off]
Ok, I’m just assuming you’re young and fashionable from your nickname.
The Internet marketing company our company bought would prefer that it was you buying the booze/alcohol/firearms whatever, but as far as statistics go (and you’re just a statistic to them), it doesn’t matter if the purchase was for you, your brother, or your SO. Using the card for that purchase, you are now a target for their advertising. Chances are 9 out of 10, they have the right person. That’s MORE than good enough for them.
You’re assuming that no one has ill-will for you. I’m reminded of a friendly guy they hired at my company – when I’d just finished college and was curious about people’s motivations in the workplace. He said, “I look at somebody with money, and the first thing I think is ‘How can I get some of that?’”
In the Omaha area, Kroger’s bought Baker’s.
Baker’s had a card program, but entered the generic code referred to in another post if you had no card. Kroger’s offers no such option. You must have the card or be overcharged.
We shop at either Bag N Save, No Frills, or WalMart , but cherry-pick the specials at “Bakroger’s”.
What gets me is the crap at the bottom of the receipt that says that I saved “X” dollars using the card. The last time I bought milk there, I paid 40 cents less than at No Frills, so I saved 40 cents.
Kroger’s thinks I’d be stupid enough to pay $4 per half-gallon for milk and therefore insists that I saved $3.
Another thing that annoys me about Kroger’s is that they’ve cut back on selection of most items. Their philosophy seems to be that if less than an overwhelming majority wants the item, nobody gets to have it. I’ve noticed that with the institution of mandatory carding, new items come and go a lot faster; often without adequate chance to slowly build a following. Grocery marketing via the Neilsen rating system, in other words.