I went in giant eagle today,forgot my giant eagle card,the lady took my tops(competing store)card and it worked! Wait a minute,asre they interchangeable? Do"they" have us all on record for all we buy,and they’re not separate stores,just big brother??Late-night-paranoid rant!
Anyone know about this??hmmm…
Are these “club” cards, which get you a discount, and not credit cards? If so, which store the card is from is immaterial. It’s only an ID card. I’d expect a card from Tops before long. They’re just trying to get your business. Most of these stores will give you the discount even without any card, but want you to get one of theirs.
Actually, it’s a big scam to gather personal data on you. Really.
Peace,
mangeorge
Work like you don’t need the money…
Love like you’ve never been hurt…
Dance like nobody’s watching! …(Paraphrased)
And no, your not being paranoid. Go to an ATM and pay cash in the store if you don’t want them tracking your every purchase.
Peace,
mangeorge
Work like you don’t need the money…
Love like you’ve never been hurt…
Dance like nobody’s watching! …(Paraphrased)
When you’re talking groceries, you’re talking about one of the most researched areas around. Most grocery stores make about 1% profit. They depend on volume. So they want to know as much about you as possible (and about all their other customers, too) to make every inch of shelf space as profitable as possible. A lot of this research spills over into privacy issues. As well it should. A big question is…who else shares in this information about you?
Every time I go grocery shopping, I tell the clerk “I forgot my card,” so they always enter a “store code” and I get my discount. Then I pay with a credit card, so they know every single thing I’ve ever bought at their stupid store for the last 10 years or so anyway. Y’know what? I don’t care. They probably think I have a cat because I bought kitty litter once to put on my garage floor (to soak up fluid from a tranny leak, hush you deves) and have an extremely irregular menstrual period. What is it with women and pontoons they always forget to bring them with and then make you buy them and then they leave them in your vanity? That’s how they mark their territory, I think. Tampons and wallpaper. Tampons are survivable, but if a woman wallpapers your bathroom you’re in deep shit.
I refuse wall paper jobs anymore. Just paint, even pink, I don’t care.
If I forget mine, the clerk gives me a new application & I get a new card. But then two of these stores locally, Raleys & Luckys are not going to use them anymore anyway.
Haven’t you heard. Luckys and Albertsons got “married”. 
Astounding.
Peace,
mangeorge
They know everything I’ve ever bought there? ‘They’ being the same incompetents who I catch having miscoded a price of something I’m buying fully half the times I shop? They may collect and/or sell information about me to other businesses but it sure as heck ain’t accurate.
I often wonder about those cards, I use mine at King Soopers religiously…King Soopers is part of the Kroger Corp.
Sheesh, they must think I am weird. I buy a lot of frozen dinners, they know I was recently sick (cough meds) they know I am a smoker…that would be an interesting job to figure out people with their buying habits.
I used to live in Denver now in the Springs, I think that’s how the IRS found me, through my grocery card < hehe >
I’ve mentioned this on a thread before, but you can reach a point in marketing where you’ve over researched and your information is useless. This point of uselessness even has a name: “Hairball Theory.”
It recalls an extensive study of spaghetti sauces that concluded that people who bought Prego were slightly more likely to own a cat.
I belong to Shopper’s Hotline. My friends thought I was nuts to join because of the privacy issues. But I don’t care. I help to determine what sells and what doesn’t. I am, technically, a Neilsen family. I have power! If I don’t like a product, out it goes! :::evil laugh:::
MaryAnn
Is there a chair here that I could speak to?
But how do they gain any useful knowledge just from being able to stick my particular name opposite so many units of a particular food item? They don’t do it just to be able to sell their list, do they?
In Berkeley-Albany, CA-US, Safeway is a monopoly, except for Andronico’s, an upscale outfit and Whole Foods, even further over-priced. I have refused to get one of their Club Cards. Only once did they ever give me a discount regardless. But then, I use an ATM card for the groceries and some cash back, and their register thereby prints my name out in huge letters on my receipt, so that the clerk can say, “Thank you, Mr. [Nanobyte].” (Why don’t they just have a voice-response unit.) I understand that in July next California law limits some of what they presently do with such tied-in information.
The nearest Lucky, now Albertson’s and minus its Reward Card, is in El Cerrito. How do I get Albertson’s to put one of their stores in the north side of Berkeley? There once was a Lucky here, but I guess it wasn’t so lucky, because it didn’t last.
Ray (waiting for that genetically altered food to become completely digitized and avilable at 56Kbs)
I was reading some scare article about the data they gather and this article implied that they will sell it to insurance companies and they’ll be able to turn you down for health insurance (or charge you a more exhorbitant rate) by pointing out that you once bought a box of Twinkies and therefore lead an unhealthy lifestyle. Yeah, right! Like everything you buy at the store is consumed by you and no one else. I use my Safeway card with relish (and other condiments, har har) and because I’ve trained myself to not buy anything until I can use the card and get it “buy one, get one free” I make out like a bandit. For some strange reason when my card was processed my name data wasn’t recorded right, so the card still keeps track of my points toward my “savings reward” certificate, but no name is printed on the receipt. Heh heh, the perfect crime!
Geesh, Ray, you don’t want to buy all your food at some co-op where nothing but organically grown vegetables which aren’t harvested but just jump into the basket are sold? <lol>
I would guess that Berkeley and major grocery companies would be pretty incompatible. But too bad it is Safeway that survived… WAY overpriced.
Call and see if Nob Hill Foods is willing to start… oh, wait, Raley’s got them… Oh well.
I work for a company that administers these card programs for a lot of different grocery stores. Its really all about targeting certain promotions to certain shoppers. Its called “Customer Specific Marketing” and there’s nothing really ominous about it. My company doesn’t do anything with the information we gather, although the stores are free to do with it as they please. But usually they just use it to deliver the best rewards to their best customers in an attempt to keep them as loyal shoppers.
Having worked in retail information technology for many years, I can tell you that they do occasionally sell the data to manufacturers, but at a macro level. The “individual” transactions are lost in the aggregate view of the data. Yes, grocers do target individuals with coupons and such for specific products that they buy, but this is done by the computer programs married to mailing programs. Given how lean most retail organizations are when it comes to staffing (especially grocers!), they cannot afford to spend time looking at individuals’ buying habits on a case by case basis—it is lost inside the data of billions of transactions. Yes, theoretically some programmer somewhere that knows you could find out what you buy…but most people don’t have the time or the interest to do that kind of snooping.
Maybe, but I get letters saying wouldn’t I like to try this or that medication for my allergies???
Drug companies do have big>/u> money and in this area all the food stores (that I know of) have drug stores right in them.
There is a great IBM commercial - the consumers end up saying something like, “You need to know more about us.” Yikes.
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
I think having to use those cards in grocery stores is stupid. I kindof resent the fact that they’re willing to sell certain items at certain prices, but only to certain people (cardholders). Isn’t that some form of discrimination? Can we sue? Just Kidding!
Certainly they can gather the exact same information about the buying habits of their customers, simply by using the UPC code info entered into their computers as they ring you out - card or no card. And wouldn’t they want to know the buying habits of ALL shoppers, not just those with cards?
“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” – Lily Tomlin
{Whistling innocently}
True. To an extent. If I felt like violating my confidentiality agreement, I could gather quite a large mailing list based on what type of products consumers are buying and sell it on my own. Of course, I wouldn’t do such a thing. But it IS valuable information, so some people would have the time and the interest to do it.