how many loyalty cards do you carry?
RavennaSeattle1911
Posts: 478
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RavennaSeattle1911
Posts: 478
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...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
because ? you refuse to? or you shop at hippie type stores where they dont have them?
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
well i don't really know what they are. but if they are in anyway associated with trying to get me to buy more shit simply by trying to get me to think they are doing me a favour when i buy shit i don't really need, then forget about it.
i save money by not buying shit in the first place.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
i just explainded in one sentence what they are
where the hell are you?
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
Some like savings at grocers, others see 'Big Brother'
Saturday, May 11, 2002
By JANE HADLEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER CONSUMER AFFAIRS REPORTER
You are rejected for health care coverage, your insurance company tells you, because you have a heart condition and your grocery store records show that you have been filling your cart with potato chips and rich desserts.
ON A RELATED NOTE
Candy Hatcher: Puget Sound Journal: I won't be a card-carrying columnist
If you persist in your lawsuit over your injury in the parking lot, you are told, your record of excessive alcohol purchases will be introduced as evidence that you are basically a drunk, with nobody but yourself to blame for your fall.
Chatting with your neighbor in the grocery checkout line, you learn that she has been offered a sale price for her peanut butter, whereas you will be charged full price. The reason? Your purchase records show that you regularly buy peanut butter regardless of the price, while your neighbor buys it only when on sale.
Science fiction?
Not at all, says Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or C.A.S.P.I.A.N., a nationwide group that opposes use of "loyalty cards" by supermarkets because they record individual customer purchases. One of the above scenarios -- a lawsuit involving a grocery store -- has already happened, and the other two are in the plans of some supermarket chains for their so-called "loyalty cards," she says. (Editor's Note: This article has been altered since original publication to remove a reference to a specific grocery chain.)
POLL
What do you think of grocery discount cards, such as those offered by Safeway and now QFC?
22.0%
Like them
60.8%
Don't like them
10.1%
Neutral
2.5%
Not sure
4.6%
Don't care
Total Votes: 4347
The cards -- also known by such names as club cards, discount cards, preferred cards or value cards -- are a hot topic locally because QFC recently introduced its "Advantage Card," to the chagrin of some customers.
Wendy John, a Green Lake graphic designer, says she will no longer shop at the Roosevelt QFC, which she patronized for the past 21 years.
When she saw QFC's newspaper ad announcing the new Advantage Cards, "My stomach just clenched," she said. "When QFC did this, it was just like, I can't do it. I won't do it. It's disgusting. They're just tracking my purchases. It has nothing to do with 'value.'"
QFC spokesman Dean Olson declined to comment about the new cards.
Loyalty cards promise shoppers that they'll get savings if they use the card to make their purchases. The difference in prices at QFC this week was substantial. A box of strawberries, for example, was $3.99 with the card and $9.99 without it.
The cards allow stores to keep track of what shoppers purchase, when they shop and where they shop. Most stores say they won't share the information with outside companies, but critics question that.
Ekhard Preikschat, a Yarrow Bay physicist who was born in Russia, and another man have leafleted 500 Yarrow Bay and Hunts Point homes, urging residents to boycott QFC until the store gets rid of the new card.
"It's amazing to me how people are just willing to forego all of their personal information," Preikschat said. "They ask these questions and I say, 'You're out of your mind. I'm not going to give you that!'"
Preikschat says he believes Europeans have a much stronger sense of privacy than many Americans.
"Nobody here has gone through the kind of upheavals that people in Europe have. I just keep saying, 'This is 1938.' Everybody just falls in line. Everybody is just accepting what somebody's selling them here."
Some QFC customers, such as Melanie Renecker, a production worker for The Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, signed up with few qualms.
"I never remember to carry coupons," said Renecker, who said she welcomed the cards as a handy way to get savings.
Jeannette Duwe, an Albertson's spokeswoman, says there's nothing sinister about what the store does with its card information. The Boise-based chain introduced the cards last year in Dallas-Fort Worth, the last grocer there to do it, but has not introduced them anywhere else.
According to Duwe, Albertson's is adamant about not sharing customer information with anybody else and says only one person within Albertson's sees the information. The purpose of the cards, she says, is to use the customer information to cut deals with vendors for lower prices.
"The only thing we ask for from people is their name and their address," said Duwe. "What that enables us to do is offer people special additional savings -- coupons -- via mail."
If the store identifies that you buy a lot of baby products, for example, the vendor of baby products gives the store a coupon to send you, Duwe said. That results in lower prices for those products, she said.
When Safeway introduced its club cards in 1998, promising savings by not requiring coupons, QFC said it would not follow suit.
In the Seattle area, several grocers are not using loyalty cards, including Thriftway, Fred Meyer, Albertson's, Larry's Markets, Trader Joe's and natural foods cooperatives, such as the Madison Market on Capitol Hill, and other niche stores. Some other types of stores, such as drug and pet chains, use the cards.
"We're getting customers coming to us because they don't like the (QFC) card," said Paul Kapioski, owner of the West Seattle Thriftway. "We don't want those. That's not our marketing philosophy that you need a card to get the best prices. We don't want to know that information about our customers as to what they're buying and when and where."
Kapioski's store recently introduced a finger-scan system to tie consumers to their credit cards, electronic benefit cards and checking accounts. The system manufacturer said it won't sell, rent, license or share personal data it collects with third parties.
QFC customers vary widely in their reactions to the Advantage Cards. Some, like Northgate financial analyst Thad McArthur, are furious.
"I really don't think it's QFC's business how often I buy spaghetti sauce or what (price) will get me to buy two instead of one," he said. McArthur fired off a single-spaced two-page letter to QFC telling the company he would take his $600 in monthly expenditures to another store.
"What I object to is (the implication that) 'You will give us your data or you will pay more,'" said McArthur. "I find that just coercive and basically unfair."
McArthur says he feels especially let down that it is QFC adopting the cards.
"I always thought it was an institution that really improved life," he said, adding that the store has changed for the worse since its purchase by Cincinnati-based Kroger several years ago. Kroger also owns Fred Meyer. Rob Boley, a Fred Meyer spokesman, declined to say whether that store plans to introduce the cards.
Corey Darr, a tow truck driver shopping Thursday at a QFC at Broadway and Pike Street on Capitol Hill, said he has friends who refuse to get the cards or who give phony names and addresses. But he chooses to overlook privacy issues.
"I have worse things to dwell upon -- just making ends meet," he said. "I'd rather take the savings and worry about the repercussions later."
Albrecht, the New Hampshire teacher who runs the C.A.S.P.I.A.N. group mainly through her Internet site (http://www.nocards.org), has been encouraging Seattle-area people who have signed up at the site to organize a protest. So far, 1,300 nationwide have signed up.
She maintains the reason Albertson's has not introduced the cards outside Dallas-Fort Worth is that a successful protest there slashed the chain's market share by 3 percent.
Duwe denies it, saying the market share study cited by Albrecht was for a different period.
"The support of the card has been much greater than we had anticipated," the Albertson's spokeswoman said. But Duwe could not say whether Albertson's will introduce its card in Seattle.
Albrecht says she doesn't believe in lobbying the government for new regulations, but rather in mobilizing consumers to make their feelings known in the marketplace by boycotting stores. Her Web site publishes a large list of stores with ratings ranging from the worst (stores that use cards and require an ID or Social Security number to shop) to the best (stores that promise they won't initiate a card program in the future).
Albrecht cites studies comparing the prices advertised before one major grocery chain's card started with advertised prices after the card's inception. It found that prices on 24 items were higher than before the card was introduced, prices on 13 items were lower, and prices on 52 were equal.
"There are no savings with these cards," Albrecht said.
But she worries most about the privacy issue. A former privacy auditor who conducted 300 audits for a major accounting firm found that fewer than 20 percent of the companies complied with their own privacy policies, she said.
Company employees can release private information either through mistakes or corruption, Albrecht said, and companies have shown themselves eager to turn over the information they've collected to law enforcement agencies -- sometimes without court orders.
Safeway spokesman Brian Dowling said earlier this year that the store's records have been subpoenaed in the past, but "it isn't something that happens very often. We are careful to check that there is the force of the court behind the request."
Once a store has shoppers' identifying information, it can easily get detailed intelligence on other aspects of their lives, Albrecht said.
One Florida company markets "penetration profiles" to grocers that augment the grocery purchase data with a wealth of additional information about customers from outside databases. The company recommends that supermarkets attach the profiles to customer data files so they can better analyze the "geodemographic, psychographic and purchasing characteristics" of the customers.
Albrecht maintains that ordinary inventory management software provides stores all the information they need to effectively market their products without seeking data on individual consumers.
P-I reporter Jane Hadley can be reached at 206-448-8362 or janehadley@seattlepi.com
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/70072_loyal11.asp
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
where the hell am i?
australia.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
Customer is checking out, my dad asks if she has her savings card, she starts looking through all of her things trying to find it, but can only come up with a Safeway card. My dad says in his crotchety old man way, “Awe, give it here & I’ll see if it works!” It did and the customer was on her merry way.
My dad hates these things because of the Big Brother aspects. He swears by a story of where shopping habits were used against a father in a custody battle. I don’t know if it’s true, but I could see it happening.
***********************
"We've laid the groundwork. It's like planting the seeds. And next year, it's spring." - Nader
***********************
Prepare for tending to your garden, America.
So they collect data on shopping habits? Great. That way I know they'll keep stocking things I keep buying. Sounds good to me. And they can see that 89% of people who buy X also buy Y. Well, that helps promotions, and helps them stock and display things for easier access. Sounds good to me.
As the enticement for using the cards they offer cardholder discounts. I save multiple dollars every visit. Sounds good to me.
When to smile and just what to say
They say have your own fun...
Need vinyl, doggs.
Those cards are a rip-off by and large.
-Enoch Powell
Sometimes if you want to get the sale price just leave the card at home, and when they ask for it, say you have one but its not with you - frequently they'll give you the sale price using a manager's card, and you don't have to give your name.
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
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they want an address? what if youre homeless--its just the damn idea of it-the bastards!!
i used to shop at lake city qfc-lived out there around time elvis died
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
not all the time, places like Whole Foods Market and Earth Fare don't require cards, if it's on sale it's on sale for everybody
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
I can see saying that you don't have a phone, but if you give a fake phone number, its probably someone else's no? I know someone who whenever they didn't want to give out their social security number for something but they had to, they'd transpose a couple numbers, but then its probably someone else's which isn't really fair to whoever that person is.
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
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in usa there mainly seems to be cards for groceries
why do they do that as opposed to "you have to have a card to save on a pair of sneakers"?
http://groups.msn.com/PearlJamNirvana/messages.msnw
Why are you so worried about this? Jesus, do you have buying habits that would raise eyebrows? Nobody is forcing anyone to use these things. People who do use them get discounts. Big fucking deal.
plus, I just re-read 1984, and the use of 'loyality cards' really does not compare to the shit that went down in Oceania.
wait a minute... I also have a CVS card... now THEY know what kind of cold medicine I use!! :eek:
You will only have to worry if you buy too much cold medicine. If you do they will think you are operating a meth lab in your basement.