Big Brother Is Watching You Grocery Shop

Star fruit distributed by Melissa’s Produce between April 21 and May 5 is being recalled due to chemical residues. Mmmm. I’m having a hard time finding coverage of the recall itself, but one grocery store’s handling of the situation got my attention.

Price Chopper is a grocery chain in the Northeastern U.S., based in Schenectady, NY. When the company learned about the star fruit recall, they used shoppers’ loyalty card records to make automated phone calls to customers who purchased the affected products. According to the Albany Times Union:

Price Chopper’s outreach system identifies customers with the chain’s AdvantEdge cards who purchased the recalled product recently and generates automated telephone calls to notify them.

Murphy said approximately 900 AdvantEdge-using customers purchased star fruit during the period of concern and are being called.

Loyalty cards do mean trading a certain amount of privacy for discounts, but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of stores robocalling me at home, even with safety notifications.

Star fruit makes Price Chopper’s recall list [Times Union]

Photo: liangjinjian

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