What do you think of loyalty cards?

[tailfins]

New England has a pharmacy chain called Rite-Aid. They are card NAZIs. If you don't give up your personal information, you pay what I call the "fantasy price" (non-card price). They militantly refuse to provide a register copy of the card. If the choice is to provide the card price or lose a sale of a shopping cart full of stuff, they choose the latter. After escalating this substantially, I discovered the management stance is that if you don't like loyalty cards, you should take your business elsewhere. Hello Wal-mart! Even CVS and Walgreens offer register copies of the their loyalty card.

[mundame]

New England has a pharmacy chain called Rite-Aid. They are card NAZIs. If you don't give up your personal information, you pay what I call the "fantasy price" (non-card price). They militantly refuse to provide a register copy of the card. If the choice is to provide the card price or lose a sale of a shopping cart full of stuff, they choose the latter. After escalating this substantially, I discovered the management stance is that if you don't like loyalty cards, you should take your business elsewhere. Hello Wal-mart! Even CVS and Walgreens offer register copies of the their loyalty card.

Huh! I never heard of register cards, but do you mean where I go into Pet Smart and they harangue me about signing up and I say I am trying to simplify my life and they type in a number and give me a lower price anyway?

Probably.

I won't do any of that. And the Nazi business is true. I got in huge fights with my decades-long supermarket when it came in there, they positively harassed everyone. It was like a political argument every time I checked out groceries. I left. I shop now at a non-loyalty-card grocery.

And those bazillion clip-cards for a free pizza if you get 10, or a free car wash after 15, etc.? Life is just too short. I made an executive decision: I don't do ANY of that.

[Thunderknuckles]

They have them at a few groceries stores in my neck of the woods but they hardly enforce anything about them. They ask if I have a card, I say no, then they ask if I have a number to give them, so I give them a number from someone who does have a loyalty card and they are happy enough with that. Honestly, they should just forget the whole idea by that point.

[gabosaurus]

The only "big box" store I go into is Target. Specifically because I don't want to be asked about a "discount card" or some other type thing.

I have never been into a Kroger grocery story, but my friend in Texas tells me they harass everyone about their card. To the point of printing how much you didn't save.
We won't even go into the Best Buy robot cashiers who read you a whole list of things you should buy or have.

[Kathianne]

One has a right to join or not. The store has a right to extend 'specials and sales' to those that join. If you choose not to, you forgo the sale or specials. Choices.

[gabosaurus]

Ralphs grocery market here has a "loyalty card," but the cashiers are very lax about it. If they know you, they give you the card price anyway. A cashier told me they have to key in non-card purchases differently and note them, so they rarely bother.

My sister always gets good deals in the market near her home in East Los Angeles. My daughter told me she gets the "cute Anglo" discount. :laugh: