Mildly Infuriating

I use this for gas. Why yes, I am Jeff D at this particular moment. Thanks for the 5¢ off/ gallon, Jeff!

This does work, I have been doing this and registering it around the country for 23 years. I used to travel a lot in the early 2000's and have used it in at least 40 states.

or, if you’re not 70yo (and you need to give 10 digits) you can use mike jones number - 281 330 8004

Not available here unfortunately.

I will try to see if something like that is available.

Yeh I've alwahs appreciated how these loyalty cards and memberships etcetera don't insist of verifying or anything. Most just want an email so I just use a generator or make one up on the spot. It's good too because they often have cheap deals for signing up today.

My whole extended family has been using my aunt's stop and shop card for decades, ever since she asked us one xmas to help her accrue gas points. The home phone number its tied to has been defunct for at least 20 years now, and my aunt died 15 years ago. Even the address thats tied to the account afaik (I suppose one of my cousins could have updated it) no longer exists, as her dirt road, origibally known as 'old country rd #2' was long ago consumed by suburbs and the farms around it parceled out.

Ireland. Shitty Government lets everything slide. They are about to take over the EU presidency, they are heavily lobbied by the US Big-Techs - Watch what they try to pass in regards to privacy (removing it) over the next 6 months.

Its probably evidence of excess market power and abuse of consumers. In the UK that's "enforced" by the competition and markets authority.

The way it works is cma does a lame investigation, the regulated parties lawyers all 'prove' their clients did nothing wrong. cma goes away.

cma did a review of supermarkets about 15 years ago, let them off scott free. Now they're pushing it even further.

TBH for fresh fruit and veg and stuff there are still proper markets in most towns - so people going to supermarket are just lazy. SO I do partly blame the consumers here for not supporting a diverse economy.

That's essentially their defence to the CMA, the consumers do have options so it can't be abuse - they choose to give us market power because the consumers can't be bothered to shop around. And there is something to be said for their arguments - they were given the market power by consumers - so the consumers are at least partly to blame for this situation. Consumers are benefiting from reduced shoeleather costs that may exceed the losses due to this.

CMA doesn't do sophisticated local market and transaction costs analysis though. I'm sure there are areas where price differentials exceed transport costs - meaning there is significant lack of local consumer choice. But it takes a lot of number crunching and fine-grain geographic data to prove. I personally think they shoudl take cars out of the equation and use public transport costs+time only to figure local market size - but that'd be easy for them to argue out of court. All they have to do is allow say a 30 minute drive, and generally that will mean there is no local market power concentration.

Apparently it's not done in Lidl everywhere. It's called "Lidl Plus".

The digital coupons are a pain in the ass. Sometimes the app properly clips them, other times it doesn't. There's like 3 different ways to enter the item, and it is inconsistent on which way will work.

Historically, the whole point to the loyalty card coupons was because then they could track your purchases and sell that data on you.

It used to be incredibly valuable, and it techncially still is. But your big box retail stores are going to insane lengths, including tracking you from the moment you pull into their parking lot (including knowing what kind of car you drive,) and how many times you circle, lets say, the lego aisle, or the cookies. They know how long you spend looking at stuff and are selling all of that. (as well as using for marketing to sell you more shit you don't need.)

I guess it boils down to marketing etc. So. Maybe the government shouldn't outright ban it, but it should definitely have stricter rules. The 'discount' price shouldn't be allowed to be advertised as though it is the main price - with the original price being smaller and easier to go unnoticed. But also the reason why the cards exist should be more transparent. Data collecting. The people that do not have the cards are being charged more. But the people that do have them are being monitored more easily.

It's tantamount to being required to provide personal details in order to purchase something.

On principle, I shouldn't be required to provide my personal details to purchase.

"But that's your choice"

Not really... selling me an item at half price in exchange for my details is really just extortion. "We'll charge you double if you don't provide us your contact number"

They can track what people are buying just as well without needing to know who is buying what. If all they cared about was making sure they are stocking items that are popular with customers, they could just monitor how many of the item were scanned at the checkout counters.

When you give your phone number to the store, it serves three functions:

1. The rewards scheme encourages loyalty. Once you have spent hundreds at the store, they give you a minor discount on something small, which saves you only a little bit of money. You only need to decide to patronise this store one time over their competitors for this bribe to be worth it.
2. By learning your shopping habits, they can offer you personalised advertisements to encourage you to buy certain products. For example, a grocery store chain which has a location near where I live has learned that I always buy a certain brand of cheese, and so occasionally they will try to tempt me with something like a 50 cent discount on that cheese, or they will send me a message saying "Hey do you still want (the cheese brand)? We have it in stock!"
3. Some people, when putting things into their basket or shopping cart, will see the large, advertised discounted price and think "this item is reasonably priced", but then they forget to put their phone number in when checking out and are thus charged the inflated price. The store pockets the difference as customers are unlikely to notice or complain about it. Most people do not closely monitor the price of items as they are being scanned. They only look at the total price at the end before tapping their card.

This helps them to manage their stock, keeping popular items that regular shoppers buy in stock etc.

Nope. Normal stock management works without tracking individual users habits.

These cards have the benefit of binding customers to your chain (and to sell ads).