Rip Off `loyalty card` schemes for major stores!

We use the loyalty card that our grocery provides because it earns us discounts on gas. We might as well. We shop there every week, and yes, they use the information on what we buy. But they use it in part to make sure they're stocking what the customers are buying ... so how do we lose in that equation? I'd rather have a store stocked with the things I buy regularly than have to drive to two other stores looking for a specific item.

And as someone mentioned above, the same grocery card also gets me coffee discounts. When I get my free coffee, I get the large instead of the medium I usually buy. Why not? It's free that day.

Here we have our Canadian Tire Money

"Canadian Tire Money is given out for purchases paid for by cash or debit, based on the pre-tax total, excluding labour and shop supplies costs. The coupon rate earned was initially 5% of the eligible purchase price but was subsequently lowered to 3%, then to 1.4%, and now is 0.4%. Customers can use Canadian Tire Money to buy anything in the store. (Older coupons state that they are redeemable at Canadian Tire stores and gas stations; however, coupons produced during at least the last 15 years lack this wording and are therefore redeemable in the stores only.)" from Wikipedia.

Many guys have stacks of this in their garage or workshop. I recently stumbled across a box I have been throwing CTC money into for several years. The stack is worth nearly $50. Now it's time to go find something I would not otherwise buy on sale so I save even more.

Let me see if I get this right..

1. You don't have to use , accept or agree to a loyalty card.
2. If you have one and you spend a certain amount you get something as a thank you
3. Of course Someone on this thread actually tried to equate a loyalty card to a privacy invasion. Got news for you, they know what you are eating much sooner than that.


I go back to item 1 if you find them so deceitful and horrible. Say no and move on.

a reply to: opethPA

There is nothing to equate. It IS a privacy invasion. Unless people are fully aware of just HOW MUCH those cards cross reference and produce about them in the computers, to then sell out to info brokers and marketers? Then it's a fraud, in my opinion. It doesn't have to be illegal, and I'm not suggesting it is. The data mining of citizens with their own help and happy cooperation seems to be perfectly legal, even if many have no CLUE how badly they are compromising everything about themselves.

Now as far as what they already knew? Well.. If I use a loyalty card in the grocery store? With that, they know product type, brand, rate of consumption, ability and frequency to replace, movement between brands and history of brand loyalty vs. being flighty about purchasing as well as overall income levels deduced by both brand choices and overall amount spent by method of payment.

There is a hell of a lot that little card tells all about someone. Got hemorrhoids? That's recorded... Got a fetish for teenage bands or a kid who likes them? Noted in Magazine interests..and that you never miss an issue too! What are your movie interests? Well..bargain basket impulse buys show that nicely. Also shows how impulsive you are as a general rule as well as analysis on your purchase habits to where the store knows it's different displays were in relation to check-out, and which you bought vs. which you didn't ...vs. what is a normal buying pattern for your family at the store.

See how FAST this becomes a nice addition to the "This is your life" dossier? We wonder how they can POSSIBLY get cradle to grave files on people? We think NSA must be poking in our records, past and private lives? Why should they have to? To save a nickle, we hand them EVERYTHING by choice and we're literally happy and anxious to do it.

We sell out at a price that is just....sad, and then we actually (believe it or not) bitch that they know too much about us.

originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
a reply to: opethPA
There is nothing to equate. It IS a privacy invasion.

The minute you purchased something at that store your information was given to that company and they can form a purchasing history from that.

If you want to opt out of that privacy invasion it is just as easy as doing so with a loyalty card..Don't shop at a store unless you can pay with cash. Even then you aren't secure because if you find that an invasion of personal security they could easily record you and tie that into a cash payment.

The good thing about loyalty cards, you can say no.

a reply to: opethPA

Well, first.. Your credit card or debit card is not cross referencing with UPC coding to the level a store can do on things like displays, sales, personal behavior and habitual actions or impulsive buying. None of that can be told by the plain record of a point of purchase machine.

However...that nice brand loyalty card, having both the full information and context the merchant can supply PLUS the purchase record generated without it, makes an end result far surpassing anything a simple debit or credit card swipe would ever have been capable of.

The stores don't LOSE money on these cards...but they'd appear to. The discounts are enormous if you play them right. Areas here have gas discounts attached to the store cards that can run up to $1 or more off a gallon up to 20. It's quite a boost....so nice, people don't even seem to wonder "Why for so would a store give away money"??

Well..they aren't giving away anything. They used to have to pay MUCH MUCH more to buy this information and much less of it. We're selling..they are buying.

originally posted by: trollz
Reminds of me coupons that entice you with something FREE*, free of course being only if you buy something else that basically negates the savings of the free thing in the first place.

"Woo-hoo, I got a free soda, even though I payed more to get it than I would have if I'd just bought it in the first place!"

Yeh like the chicken sandwich and fries for 1.99 offer
They KNOW you will want a drink
and guess how much a medium sized drink is
thats right 1.09

Takes it to over 3 quid, not much difference than the normal chicken sandwich and fries and drink standard meal