(joelogon)
Just about anyone who has been into a chain grocery store in the last decade is familiar with loyalty programs — and the little barcode cards that can quickly clog up your wallet and/or key chain. But one Consumerist reader thinks it’s time for supermarkets to rethink these programs and just pass the savings on to everyone.
“My wife now has loyalty keyfobs on her keyring outnumbering keys almost 2:1,” writes H., who dreads those times when he forgets to bring the stash of cards with him when he makes a grocery run. And since they have so many of these cards, not all of them are correctly tied to his or his wife’s phone number, meaning the cashier can’t look up the cards using that info.
“When I find myself in that state I simply want to pay my ‘just dues’ and buy my stuff and get on with life,” says H.
But he finds that cashiers are not always willing to let him get away without joining the loyalty program.
“The other day as I was checking out at Vons I failed to provide my card,” he writes. “The cashier asked if I had a Vons card. I lied and said ‘No’ (because I simply wanted to go home before the butter melted). She didn’t seem satisfied so she asked ‘Are you on vacation?’ I looked at her and said ‘No.’ She pointed out that she wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some possibility to save a few extra cents.”
He asks, “Why not just give everyone the discount and dispense with tracking my every move with your card?”
And that’s exactly the point, as a good part of the value of these cards to supermarkets is the ability to track regular shoppers’ habits. They also can lock people into becoming perpetual customers through the use of rewards points. So it’s in a grocery store’s own interest to get these cards in as many customers’ hands as possible.
(On a side note: The CDC has used supermarket loyalty cards to track a salmonella outbreak, while the USPS used them to return someone’s lost keys.)
But the problem happens when every store offers the exact same kind of loyalty programs. It takes away any incentive to shop at any one store, and requires you to make extra room on your key chain.
“The fact that I can have an unlimited collection of ‘loyalty’ cards from every single grocery in this town indicates that it only serves to make sure I’m annoyed when I try to get out of the store without presenting the plastic key to leave,” writes H.
So who can win over these customers who want discounts but don’t want to be overwhelmed with plastic fobs?
“We have found a couple of local smaller chains that don’t bother with the card system,” says H. “I’m growing more fond of them by the day!”
Feel free to use the comments to talk up your favorite — and least favorite — rewards programs, and why they do or don’t work for you.
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There is an iphone app that will hold all your loyalty cards for you (not kidding).
Before you all get hyped up on this topic, please keep in mind that these corporations force cashiers to “not be satisfied with no.” As in… cashiers at my store are reviewed 75% on their enrollment status for these cards. EVERY customer that says no and a transaction goes without a card scanned results in a shorter future, less pay and possibly termination for that cashier. Just keep that in mind when you say “no” with an attitude next time, please. I and my fellow associates bother the shit out of you because we have to because if we don’t we are punished. Please don’t take it out on us.
I used to be in a similar situation, but not with loyalty cards. If the company i used to work for didn’t sell enough of product ‘X’ or service ‘Y’, the suits would let us know in no uncertain terms; we were just numbers to them, hired to push something, anything, just to make a sale. It was all just a numbers game and management never cared about what the customers wanted or really needed. We were never encouraged to give the customers a quality experience; just sell them something, the more the better, and get them on their way. As a result, customer satisfaction was in the toilet and our return/exchange rate was stratospheric. We lived in constant fear that the current month was going to be our last on the job if we didn’t meet some metric the district manager seemingly pulled out of her backside. The only way to be successful there was to act like a used-car salesman, with the viewpoint that the customer was merely a cash register…..just open it and take the money. I got to the point after a while that I really didn’t care whether or not I achieved the company’s ridiculous metrics and moved on.
Luckily I found employment with a company in the same industry that really cares about the customer experience (and their employees) and has a customer needs-based selling system, not merely a numbers-based one. Our returns/exchanges are far less than the other company’s and our customer loyalty and satisfaction are much higher too. We’re not “punished” for not meeting a particular arbitrary metric, either, and we don’t live in perpetual fear of losing our jobs. We don’t just keep “throwing” stuff at the customer, hoping they will buy something; we get to know our customers and sell them what they tell us they need or want, because of what matters to them. As long as we follow those guidelines, we’re doing our jobs in the eyes of management. According to a leading consumer publication, we rate the highest in customer satisfaction and quality in our field.
If one is ever in a position that what management wants comes at the expense of the customer experience, then they need a change of venue, if at all possible.
To quote The Steve’s tired cliche: There’s an app for that. It’s called Keyring. Come September 12 (or whenever our benevolent fruit masters grace us with iOS 6) [rolls eyes] iPhone’s will have Passbook built-in, which incorporates loyalty cards as well as gift cards, movie tickets, airline boarding passes and so on, with context-sensitive location-based functionality e.g. your CVS Extracare card pops up on the lock screen when you walk into the store, and your boarding pass appears when you get to the airport, etc…
As for the privacy angle (I don’t want Store X tracking what I buy!) give it up. You’re deluded if you think you have any privacy. Unless you’re a hermit living in a cave, you leave fingerprints, both literal and figurative, everywhere you go. A veritable mountain of data. Your only solace is that you’re too unimportant to actually go to the trouble to sift through all that data for anything other than trying to sell you stuff you might actually want to buy as opposed to random assortments of stuff you may or may not be interested in.
My advice is just find a phone number that works–even if it’s not yours. I have found funny numbers such as 822-2222, 555-1234, 567-0123, and 555-5555 have worked with my local area code.
Slightly related to this, I want to introduce a credit card that gives you a new card number and new card automatically every 2-3 months… I call it the “Privacy Card” and would make it a little harder for retailers to track your purchases based on your card number.
That would be great, but it would be seriously inconvenient to have to change all my recurring charges every 3 months. Plus, the banks wouldn’t go for issuing a new card that often; it costs them money.
I use the KeyRing app for my phone. Have not had a problem yet with a store not being able to read the bar code.
Exactly what I came here to say, KeyRing rocks! I always have my smart phone so I always have my cards.
I have a second wallet full of these types of cards. I wish I didnt have to buf I’m a bargain hunter and it has saved me a lot.
I keep my keys on a caribiner, so I can easily remove what I don’t need (work keys stay home on weekends, don’t carry keys to both cars – I only drive one at a time). All my loyalty cards are on a single ring that I grab on my way out the door to go shopping. If I forget it, of course as others say, I just use my phone number.
From my experience the cards are most important if you live in touristy areas…like Hawaii or Summit County, CO.
When I’ve been in those places, the price difference between having the card and not having the card is astounding…and before the cards, they just used your driver’s license for proof that you lived there and weren’t a tourist.
Tourists pay through the nose…local residents pay normal prices. That’s the situation in which you need to make sure you have those cards.
This is interesting, I live in Williamsburg, VA, which is a heavy tourist area and the prices at grocery stores, gas stations are about the same as other areas in VA. If I hit the local grocery store I’d pay the same for items that don’t have loyality card discounts than if I do.
Reading a sampling of the comments here I get the impression that some people think that having a card for every store is somehow mandatory if one is going to shop in that store. Or am I misreading?
I have a card at Kroger, the closest good grocery to where I live, and at Panera, the closest semi-healthy restaurant, but no others and somehow I manage to shop in scores of other stores and restaurants and not once has any employee at these locations ever suggested that a card was de rigueur — at most I was asked in passing if I had one and certainly nobody ever pushed one on me. Is my experience unusual?
I have, on more than one occasion, been held up at the check out while I answer questions about whether I’m on vacation (why else would I show up in their store without a card that is in their system?) or if in my town I have cards for [insert nearly unending list of partner programs here]. I’m willing to sacrifice the 17cents off on the coffee this week just to let me finish the transaction and go home 17 cents poorer, but able to get out of the store.
My original complaint was not (nor is it ever) that the savings aren’t worth something. But it would be nice if all the grocery stores, of which there are many within easy distance of my house, realized that I know (and they know) it isn’t really a “loyalty” program. They aren’t ensuring I shop at their store, because I can be on a loyalty program at the store equidistant from me in the other direction and it’s random chance that I went here instead of there, we all know they are merely ALL wanting to track my spending habits so they can more “effectively” advertise to me. And I’m already awash in a sea of advertising. After a while it’s white noise.
Except for those times when the voice of the cashier cuts through to ask me what excuse I could possibly have for being in the store without my card.
Add in all the non-supermarket loyalty cards — my neighborhood ice cream chain, local burrito chain, Panera, Starbucks, Subway, CVS, Rite Aid, high end burger chain, Godiva — and it gets ridiculous. I don’t necessarily go to all of these very often, but I hate to miss out on a good deal (or a freebie) when I don’t have them handy. It’s also tough to know which to carry because I drive, take the subway and walk to these at various times. I can’t duplicate these on my non-car keys and I don’t want to carry around my bulky car keys just to walk into the square.
ys but then they cannot track your purchases….
I happen to love my Ralphs card. I get discounts on gas at Shell stations up to 20 cents a gallon, plus they send me reward dollars as coupons I can spend on anything, and they send me discount coupons for the products I do buy…
If we ever get a loyalty card, it’s only ever for places we frequent.
“And since they have so many of these cards, not all of them are correctly tied to his or his wife’s phone number”
You make this sound like the store’s fault. Just enter your freakin’ phone number and be done with it. Jeeze. I haven’t carried a card in years but type in my phone number to a random store POS terminal and – voila! – savings.
P.S. I don’t get spammy calls from these people either. You’ll be just fine.
Mr. Craftman is the only one with the correct answer, I’m afraid.
Associate each loyalty card with a single phone number. Throw away all the cards. The End.
Kroger has started sending me coupons to use on things I actually buy. They come in the mail about once a month, are good for two or three months, and have been anything from free name-brand items, free store-brand items, or $$ off purchases I usually make each month. If it was coupons for things I wasn’t buying anyway, it wouldn’t be useful but it has really saved me cash!
Yes, this. I don’t mind them tracking what I buy, because the discounts and coupons are then tailored to me so I’ll get use out of them.
Also, you no don’t have to carry the card itself, thanks to the phone number option and things like the CardStar iPhone App.
As a cashier, the loyalty card helps immensely in the customer service department. Without being able to track what people purchase, we have no no idea if anyone’s return attempts are valid, and of course many people actually lose or forget their receipts. Just refusing returns to anyone without a receipt would ensure we were very much hated – not to mention many people who claim they don’t want a card because it will track their steps through the store…also expect us to magically determine somehow what they bought and how, and when, without anything that ties them to our system.
They need to make a better smartphone app for storing these cards. I used to have one but the machines would never read them due to the screen glare.
There are quite a few smartphone apps for this purpose. I use “Key Ring” for Android
Yes! Key Ring is awesome! Just eliminated 15 key fobs and 10 credit-card sized loyalty cards from my wallet. Now they’re on my iPhone and you also get additional coupons sent to the phone.
Ditto, The scanners can’t “see” the pixels on the display. It’s like the problem of old TV cameras trying to take a picture of an old TV. They ran at the same frequency, so you would either see a blank/partial screen, or a blank spot that moved down the screen.
That doesn’t depend of apps but of scanners in shops. More there will be users with that kind of mobile apps, more shops will quickly invest in apropriate equipements. So continue to use mobile aps
If you don’t want to be overwhelmed with plastic fobs, here it is another app to register loyalty cards in your mobile: http://www.fidme.com/en/home.html It’s free, without any add and it runs on all devices (iPhone, Android, Nokia Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Phone…). You can also register stamp cards with it.
I don’t mind them tracking my purchases. I set up a separate gmail account and use that for any loyality cards. Then I just go in and auto forwared the e-mails from those stores I want to see. This way I can figure out where the best place to shop is.
I purchase the bulk of my dry good purchases at Target – have a Red Card that acts as a debt card that gets me 5% off my total purchase. We also belong to their pharmacy rewards program that gets be a 5% shopping coupon for every 5 scrips we fill there, get one of those per month on average. The good thing is it can be stacked with the Red Card to get 10% total on purchase. My meats and produce are purchased at local grocery stores. Since I have loyality cards at several and there are 4 different chains within 10 minutes of my house I get all the online sales flyers. Since my shopping list for meat and produce is about the same every other week I can see who has the best deals on say value packs of chicken breasts and go to that store.
I only carry loyalty cards for the stores that I go to the most.
I do have loyalty cards for other stores but those are at home
and I only use them when I am specifically going to one of those
stores. For example, my city does not have an ACE Hardware,
but a very nearby city does, and I have a card because I buy a
few items online in bulk from them and pick them up. As a result,
here comes a $5 off any purchase coupon in the mail.
For the ones I carry, those would be CVS, Marsh Supermarket
Kmart/Sears, JC Penney, Target, Office Depot. By only going to CVS I usually get about
$30-$40 in “free money” to use on anything but prescriptions every
4 months.
Does Wal-Mart have a loyalty card? I don’t go there often, just wondering.
Target seems to track me just fine without a loyalty card.
I HATE these cards. My gym has one, cvs, stop and shop, papa ginos. Everywhere. It’s obnoxious.
I only have a few of these cards, and they have to give pretty good rewards for me to use them. My feeling is that if they want my data, they need to pay me for it. I really dislike the ones that rarely give any rewards or discounts.
But mostly, I don’t sign up for them because either they don’t have a significant benefit to me, or I don’t shop at the store often enough to feel that it is worth while. But man, I have seen more confused looks when I tell an employee I’m not interested in signing up for their card. “You don’t want to save $0.04 on this $300 purchase? Are you mad?” Or if I ask if I would save anything if I signed up, and the answer is no. Well then why would I sign up?
It does make me wonder though if as the consumer gets more savvy if we won’t see companies outright paying the consumer to get this data.