So the other night, I went to the Grocery store and ended up spending about $10 more than I was supposed to because of these gawd awful Club Cards. — I don’t understand why these things exist.
(#rantalert)
It’s like joining an imaginary ‘club’ that anybody can get into. Why do ‘they’ even call it a ‘club?’ It doesn’t require anything from you, and you don’t really get anything exclusive for being in the ‘club.’ Yes, they have their ‘Club Card’/reduces prices, but if anyone can get the Club Card, and there aren’t any real requirements for getting a card, then the reduced prices should just be the regular prices for everybody, right!? I say there’s no ‘real’ requirements because every time a store asks me to to fill out an ‘application’ for their ‘Club,’ I put in a fake address and a fake phone number — I’m sure other people do the same thing to avoid unwanted sales pitches. It’s really a club full of fraudulent cheap-skates who have no problem telling lies(white) to save a buck or two — what a horrible club. I get that they want your mailing address so they can mail you promotions, ads and other non-environmental-friendly stuff. I have a good feeling that they mail you the same ads that they already have available in the entrances of every store. On top of that, the sales in the ads are useless if you don’t have a Club Card anyway — what a complete waste.
Actually, let’s look at how much gets wasted just to give us a ‘deal’ that we should already be getting.
- Plastic Non-Biodegradable Plastic Card (and don’t forget about the knock-out plastic that’s left behind when you get one of these.
- Paper Application form (sometimes printed in color too).
- Paper Snail-Mail Advertisements.
- Time is wasted when people are filling out the form in line while other folks are waiting behind them.
Solutions:
- 1st, fire the guy/gal who came up with idea in the first place. 2nd, get rid of the ‘Club Card’ system all together & recycle the plastic.
- Consolidate. As a last resort, companies who use these things should combine powers and issue 1 card that works in all stores.
Of course there are bigger fish to fry on this issue:
- Who has access to the database of addresses and phone numbers?
- Are they monitoring what folks are buying at Pharmacies, Grocery Stores etc?
But the cards themselves really bother me. They’re completely inconvenient! I only have one wallet, but I’m supposed to walk around with all of those cards crammed in there just to make a quick grocery store run? Makes me think of that Seinfeld episode with George Costanza’s exploding wallet. Even the mini key-chain cards are inconvenient. Who has room on their key-chain for 10 little annoying pieces of plastic? — Not I.
Again, why do these things exist? Am I missing something?
Comments?
Comments
they want us to stay regular customers!
Yeah, I get that too, but this is a useless way to go about it. Good customer service and consistent good prices/deals make customers want to come back. Junk mail and cheap plastic cards are annoying. LOL…
:D safeway just lets you enter in your phone number in the credit card machine to pull up your account and apply the discount.
it is all fairly unnecessary tho. then again, marketers are annoying weirdo stalkers that know way too much more than most customers realize. but that’s not me or anything =/
But I give them a fake number, cuz I don’t want them calling me. Obviously, I forget that fake number, cuz I make it up each time LOL, but its really a waste.
Yeah marketers on that level are creepazoids.
Lol! I just got around to reading this. You sound hella crazy right now, A. I cannot believe you fill out the form with a fake address and number. Too funny.
Anyway, yes I agree that they are a waste of time and they take up a great deal of space in your wallet. My guess as to the rationale for them is that these companies keep track of your purchase frequency and product consumption and keep this data in order to determine which products generate the greatest lift. These products will then be put into rotation for future discounts in order to maintain sales volume. The information gathered on you will be shared with other marketers so that they’re able to target you with products similar to those that you purchase.
Regardless of whether or not you give them fake information on the store application they can still track you if you use your credit cards when buying.
I see what your saying. I guess it makes sense. I’m not a marketer or a product placer(or?) so when I hear they have a tactic to take the simple process of going to the pharmacy to buy soap and turn it into a numbers game, it makes me cringe.
I guess I just don’t understand what they expect to find by tracking purchases. I probably use 15-20 bars of soap in a year. That isn’t gonna change whether there’s a soap sale or not. I’m still only gonna need 15-20 bars a year. Obviously, this can’t apply to everything you buy in a pharmacy, but for the basic stuff that’s generally on sale, I don’t get what change they expect to see.
The tracking doesn’t bother as much as the sheer uselessness bothers me.
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/aboutwalletzero
There’s an iPhone app called wallet zero that you can add in all the barcodes and not have to carry any of them around.
-bk
OH SNAP! Thanks for the linkage, but it looks like the App is dead. :-/
Their URL is dead and iTunes says the App isn’t available in the US.