I just went to Vons (one of our local supermarkets) and bought a few incidentals. The bill came to a little over $24. The checker asked me for my Vons card. Since I don’t like to carry all these bulky cards around with me when I only use them very occasionally, I keep them in the ashtray – yes, the ashtray – of my car. What else is an ashtray good for? But I always forget to bring the card into the store.
I told her I had forgotten it in my car. She asked me to type in my phone number instead. I told her that I didn’t remember what phone number I had long ago when I got that card. So she wrote on my receipt the amount of the refund, four dollars, signed it, and asked me to bring it back the next time I came to shop.
Two things occurred to me:
1. If I can’t remember to bring the darn card into the store, how am I going to remember that I have a receipt with a $4 bonus on it?
2. I paid $4 too much for my stuff.
I resolved I should go to stores that don’t play this silly game, and let me have a fair price in the first place. All that happened in that store is that I got shafted for an extra $4 because I can’t stand carrying around with me a fat wad of loyalty cards for every business I sometimes patronize.
Ou are forgetting the entire purpose of the exercise, which is to track your purchases.
Of course, but that does nothing for me, the customer. Makes me wonder how tracking my $24 of miscellaneous items is worth $4 to them.
You forget that they can sell your preferences to any number of advert targeting companies.