There are few things in life I dislike as much as loyalty cards. I am not saying that there should be no loyalty cards, or that people shouldn’t use them, but just that I don’t want to use them. Surprisingly very few people actually understand this point of view, so I decided to outline my views and make them public for comment.
I don’t like loyalty cards for a number of reasons:
1 - I want to go shopping with the knowledge that if I shop in Tesco I will get 55 super points. I don’t care and I don’t want them. They mean nothing to me. I think it would be better if Texco / Superquinn etc etc discounted their prices instead.
2 - It is reasonably e to think that things are actually more expensive on a whole because of loyalty cards. People have to be paid to enter data etc etc…
3 - I want to be able to make logical judgements on where I shop and not have my decisions affected by the fact that shop a will give me club points or whatever.
4 - I don’t want information on my shopping / purchasing habits to be data used by other people to determine what offers I should get in my next coupons. For those of you who say the coupons are not targeted specifically to you, I leave you with this from the tesco.ie website: “We also use your details to send you offers and information on things which might interest you.”
5 - I don’t want coupons or any post/mail from the places I choose to bring my business.
6 - In Ireland today, different chains of retail outlets are sharing in the one loyalty card schemes so it isn’t just what you buy at your supermarkets that is being monitored. Now instead of a privacy policy protecting you from your information being shared, you have a policy that says your information will not be shared beyond x, y, and z companies.
If you talk to most people who use loyalty cards, they usually say it doesn’t influence judgement, but the fact is it does, otherwise these companies wouldn’t offer them in the first place. For those of you who say I don’t really care what information is collected about me when I go shopping, I say fair enough, I feel differently. My privacy is important to me.