Stores that track your purchases.
From SusoSight
| Number: | 59 |
| Date created: | 2002-07-03 17:02:43 |
| Previous Thought: | Where are these spammers? |
| Next Thought: | How to avoid tickets. |
| Voting results: | Yes: 15 |
More and more stores are starting to track their customer's purchases through those cards that you sign up for. They have catchy names like "Kroger Plus Card", "Marsh Fresh Idea Card", "CVS Extra Care" or "Mr. D's Customer Advantage". The intension of the stores giving out these little cards with bar codes on them is that they hope you will give them your name and address and then they will build a database of the purchases that you make. The reward for the customer is that you get better deals on common products if you have one of those cards.
I think most people don't want to bother with signing up for the card or giving out their personal information for fear that it will be misused. Most of these stores will ask you if you have a "insert clever name here" card. A lot of times I would say no just because it was a store that I don't shop at a lot or I was in another state where they have different stores. But more recently I've discovered that a lot of these stores have a spare card up at the registers for people who forget their cards and that if you just say, I forgot my card, they will scan the spare card that they have up front so that you don't lose out on any great deals for your purchases. You can also expand on this idea a bit and just tell them that you'd like to sign up for a card. Usually when you sign up for a card, they give you the card and then you are supposed to mail away your information from home. Well, just take the card and don't mail away the information. You'll still be able to use the card.