Wow! I thought I might be the only one who still hasn’t forgiven them for that. I haven’t bought gas from Exxon/Mobil since I was a teenager, except for two occasions when I ran dry in remote areas with no other fueling options. I don’t miss 'em either; Mobil in particular is comically overpriced. (At the Mobil station nearest my house, the grade of gas I buy is, at last check, a full 37 cents per gallon more expensive than the same grade of gas at the Arco directly across the street!)
That said, I don’t buy Arco gas either, but not only because of the BP gulf spill. It’s just bad gasoline. A modern car in good tune won’t notice much of a difference except in long-term fuel economy and fuel injector maintenance. But I’ve driven cars on the bare edge of drivability that ran okay on Texaco, Unocal, or Shell gasoline, but wouldn’t even idle on Arco.
Wait - they have a stated purpose? I assumed the main (and only) purpose was to generate more revenue from the datamining and the sales of your data. All in return for making you think you’re in a special club that gets sale prices.
I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed to let anyone pay full price which is why they use a store card for you with little or no prompting.
I’ve also noticed in many cases, at least around here, they’re pretty much only used by the least affordable grocery stores.
The part I find odd is when it discusses a company using the cards to track individual people’s buying habits and send them extra coupons when they were buying less. People use their real names and addresses when signing up for these things?
No, they’re allowed. I usually shop at Ralphs, and I use my card (I never have it with me, so I type in my wife’s phone number). On rare occasions, I have to go to Vons (like if I want to rent a Rug Doctor or something, and I end up buying more stuff while I’m there), and since I don’t have a Vons or Pavilions card, I end up paying full price. Not once has a Vons cashier offered to swipe a store card for me.
The Tom Thumb grocery chain in the DFW metroplex was one of the first to go with cards in the early 90s. Their push at the time was that with the card you could pay with check that much faster. It moved their lines quicker & caused them to have fewer bad check writers. Just about all grocery store chains of any merit seemed to have been doing it at the time.
Moved to a state with a Wegman’s & was pleasantly surprised when I got a robocall from them about a product recall.
Oh, and when you pay with credit cards you’re being tracked whether you have a loyalty card or not. When asking for your zip code the store is actually bundling your CC information to you.
It’s crazy to spend $30 for a B&N membership card to save on books you could get a better deal with from Amazon. But it does bring down the cost at the in-store Starbucks. My family has one card that the “entire” family uses, in-laws included.
Good heavens - I usually save around 25-30% using my Safeway card. And I don’t even earn frequent flyer miles any more, but I got at least one free ticket on United back when miles were still available. You need a better loyalty card.
Yeah, I can’t seem to get a froth worked up over grocery stores tracking what kind of beer I prefer or that I tend to buy ramen towards the end of the month. If we were talking about Guns R Us or the Fertilizer Depot it would be a different story, but srsly, who gives a shit about your spaghetti?
Also, Whole Foods does have a “loyalty card,” for their house-brand vitamins. I don’t think it tracks you, it’s just one of those deals where you get a free thing after it’s punched twelve times.
Stop N Shop is one of the cards I do carry because the gas points does help but MAINLY because in our area they have these self scanners you can use to check yourself out as you shop - and then you scan a code at the register, swipe your card across the scanner, and boom it retrieves your order. Pay, walk out. If you do it right, you can bag as you go and just be out of there. I LOVE this feature. Love it. Especially great when shopping with a kid who thinks the scanner is the coolest toy ever or when the store is crazy busy and the lines are long at the register. For some reason only a certain percentage of people have bothered to learn to use the thing and it is the strangest thing to see all the long lines some days that anyone can hop with the scanner dealybob.
I do not do store credit cards and a couple of the places I go to hawk them incessantly. It is freaking annoying. Sometimes when I make a large purchase they are all like, “You could save $15 percent today if you get the store credit card,” and then when I decline I get the, “You crazy bitch,” look - how could I give up ALL THAT MONEY. Hard to explain that the companies would not be pushing these cards down my throat if it was a big loss for the company. What mysterious reason could they have to try to hook me on their credit card?
Ditch the Loyalty Cards? Jeepers, I’d have to have one in the first place. (Actually, I lie, I only have one - and it’s not Air Miles.)
I point out to anybody that wants to listen that there’s no way in heck that you can save money on loyalty cards - because they cost so much money to administer.
LOL @ all the people who really seem to believe that they are being given actual discounts in exchange for providing a unique identifier at each transaction.
“We’ve gone to the expense of setting up and administering this system because we just want to save you money!”
I’ve explained, and I haven’t found the right explanation that will shut them up instead of getting into an extended discussion, when all I want is to leave. Maybe I’ll try “I find being stalked by corporations kind of creepy” next time.
Folks here are using two different definitions for “loyalty card”. The definition used in the article is that of rewards given in proportion to the amount and frequency of things bought at a particular store. This encourages the consumer to shop more at that store to get the rewards. The other definition, which seems to be used by most of the posters, is to give the purchaser discounts on particular items in return for the purchaser allowing his identity to be tracked. This doesn’t encourage a consumer to favor a particular store but does encourage him to share his identity with the store.
What’s funny is that they’ll make the pitch no matter what (I guess they have to do it). The total order might be only $4.00 and they’ll still ask, “would you like to save 20 percent today…?”
The former definition is extremely rare for grocery stores. I’ve never seen it, while the latter is ubiquitous. The former is more for restaurants where you buy 10 sandwiches and get the 11th free, or bakeries that do the same thing with loaves of bread.
Yeah, I found the best is to say something like, “I do not do credit cards,” but it’s awkward when I’m handing over my debit card which looks an awful lot like a credit card.
I love that I can just wander into Khol’s during a slow time, load up on discounted plain tshirts that sell for less than $5, do their stupid card sign up WHICH NEVER APPROVES ME for the extra 20% off and then they give me more coupons to make up for it. I would shop there more if they actually had more interesting things, otherwise it’s just polos after stupid polos.
