Where I live, we don’t yet have those cards. I despise the idea of them and hate getting caught out by them (I’m looking at you Tesco and Lidl).
Normal price for something - 0.49 (in stores without these cards) But in their store it’s only that price with their ‘club card’ or ‘plus membership’.
Otherwise it’s 1.59
There are loads of other items with high markups.
BUT - the marked price is the normal store price to the inexperienced shopper of these data collecting stores, with the blind spot being the need to have a store card to get the ‘discount’. My full shop was an extra 103.46 altogether between the two stores (51.22 in one 52.24 in the other) rushing to get christmas dinner and dining and extras. Should be banned. /rant
The government doing a sick job of protecting consumers. /s
Pro tip: use Jenny’s number (867-5309) with your local area code anywhere you don’t have a loyalty card. Works every time
I use this for gas. Why yes, I am Jeff D at this particular moment. Thanks for the 5¢ off/ gallon, Jeff!
This does work, I have been doing this and registering it around the country for 23 years. I used to travel a lot in the early 2000’s and have used it in at least 40 states.
Not available here unfortunately.
or, if you’re not 70yo (and you need to give 10 digits) you can use mike jones number - 281 330 8004
Who?
mike jonnnes
Missed the part where they said “with your local area code” huh.
naw, just makin a houston-based rap joke.
(area code) 867-5309
Use Jenny’s phone number and your area code.
8-6-7-5-3-oh-niiiieeeeiiiiine
Australian media regulator publishes a list of numbers used only for fictional purposes like TV shows or whatever:
https://www.acma.gov.au/phone-numbers-use-tv-shows-films-and-creative-works
I’ve always used the first one. Every store seems to have it registered a billion times. They sometimes say “woah there’s 100s of people on this number” and I just tell them to pick one. They never care.
I will try to see if something like that is available.
I’d appreciate it if you could let us know if you find anything
I didn’t find anything in the UK, but I found in Ireland cardnado.ie I don’t know if UK cards work in Ireland or vice versa.
I refused to carry the plastic cards for years, but google wallet allows you to add the barcode/qr code from a friend/stranger/family’s card or phone screen, for any shop. You then get the instant discount at the checkout but won’t accumulate the later ‘points’- but your accomplice will! There are webpages online containing the barcodes if you are really privacy-conscious. I have b&q, sainsburys, morrisons, tesco and co-op stored this way. Some shops are introducing apps too - still a line i won’t cross yet.
My whole extended family has been using my aunt’s stop and shop card for decades, ever since she asked us one xmas to help her accrue gas points. The home phone number its tied to has been defunct for at least 20 years now, and my aunt died 15 years ago. Even the address thats tied to the account afaik (I suppose one of my cousins could have updated it) no longer exists, as her dirt road, origibally known as ‘old country rd #2’ was long ago consumed by suburbs and the farms around it parceled out.
One of the main grocery chains here makes you clip coupons in their app to get the price shown in the store.
The digital coupons are a pain in the ass. Sometimes the app properly clips them, other times it doesn’t. There’s like 3 different ways to enter the item, and it is inconsistent on which way will work.
I hate needing an app to get a sales price advertised in the store, which has become the new version of this BS. 😮💨
That is a problem we regularly encounter in the UK. When we visit there, we also shop for unique British food, and boy, is this expensive without the cards.
Luckily, we’ve got smart friends who have basically made a wallet card for about every UK chain. Saves about 20-40% when we go shopping.
This really sounds like it would be illegal in many countries. Where are you?
But wherever you are, imho LIDL sucks ass. Around here they were the first discounter to hit the country, and forced established chains to lower prices, and so people like LIDL and believe in their slogan. But the truth is that they just package the cheapest option nicer than other supermarkets, and apparently that is still enough to make people think it’s quality stuff.
Ireland. Shitty Government lets everything slide. They are about to take over the EU presidency, they are heavily lobbied by the US Big-Techs - Watch what they try to pass in regards to privacy (removing it) over the next 6 months.
Its probably evidence of excess market power and abuse of consumers. In the UK that’s “enforced” by the competition and markets authority.
The way it works is cma does a lame investigation, the regulated parties lawyers all ‘prove’ their clients did nothing wrong. cma goes away.
cma did a review of supermarkets about 15 years ago, let them off scott free. Now they’re pushing it even further.
TBH for fresh fruit and veg and stuff there are still proper markets in most towns - so people going to supermarket are just lazy. SO I do partly blame the consumers here for not supporting a diverse economy.
That’s essentially their defence to the CMA, the consumers do have options so it can’t be abuse - they choose to give us market power because the consumers can’t be bothered to shop around. And there is something to be said for their arguments - they were given the market power by consumers - so the consumers are at least partly to blame for this situation. Consumers are benefiting from reduced shoeleather costs that may exceed the losses due to this.
CMA doesn’t do sophisticated local market and transaction costs analysis though. I’m sure there are areas where price differentials exceed transport costs - meaning there is significant lack of local consumer choice. But it takes a lot of number crunching and fine-grain geographic data to prove. I personally think they shoudl take cars out of the equation and use public transport costs+time only to figure local market size - but that’d be easy for them to argue out of court. All they have to do is allow say a 30 minute drive, and generally that will mean there is no local market power concentration.
Oh, Lidl does this too?
Apparently it’s not done in Lidl everywhere. It’s called “Lidl Plus”.
Yeah, not allowed here.
Lidl isn’t too bad for it, at least not around here.
Sainsburys is probably the worst for it around here. A lot of the most popular items are routinely marked up 40%. The supermarket I work for, which shall remain green and nameless, is getting worse for it too.
Aldi is doing it right IMHO. Doesn’t have an app, doesn’t accept coupons, just tries to get people through the door as fast as possible and pass some of the savings on.
I’m really annoyed by this as well, but why do you jump from that to concluding that the government should ban it? I don’t see any reason why the stores should not in principle be allowed to do it.
It’s tantamount to being required to provide personal details in order to purchase something.
On principle, I shouldn’t be required to provide my personal details to purchase.
“But that’s your choice”
Not really… selling me an item at half price in exchange for my details is really just extortion. “We’ll charge you double if you don’t provide us your contact number”
Historically, the whole point to the loyalty card coupons was because then they could track your purchases and sell that data on you.
It used to be incredibly valuable, and it techncially still is. But your big box retail stores are going to insane lengths, including tracking you from the moment you pull into their parking lot (including knowing what kind of car you drive,) and how many times you circle, lets say, the lego aisle, or the cookies. They know how long you spend looking at stuff and are selling all of that. (as well as using for marketing to sell you more shit you don’t need.)
I don’t for a moment doubt that this is true.
The thing that amazes me is… how terribly poorly targeted ads are?
As in, I purchased a washing machine last week, so as an avid purchaser of washing machines I certainly need to see ads for washing machines?
This always irks me, like if you’re going to harvest my data, could you at least use some of your immense repository of data insights to improve your product? No? You’re just going to enclose the data commons in your ridiculous quest to make the line go up, without giving any value back to the people who facilitated your growth? Yeah, I thought that’d be the case. Disappointed, but not surprised that this is the case.
The context in which this most often annoys me is that nearly every Tuesday, I go to a philosophy discussion group at a nearby pub. I usually get the route up on Google maps through Android Auto because the optimal route depends a lot on traffic, and each time, I have to manually type in the name of the pub.
It especially annoys me when sometimes, on a day that isn’t Tuesday, the pub will be listed near the top of the suggested destinations when I first launch Google maps. I literally never go to that pub for any reason other than the philosophy group.
It’s such a trivial thing to be annoyed by, but equally, it appears to me that actually giving useful suggestions in straightforward cases such as this is equally trivial. It reveals that they truly don’t give a fuck about improving products (and indeed, when it comes to Google’s offerings, so much of it has gotten worse. Google assistant and its voice recognition used to be way more reliable and powerful in the past. I first started using Android 10 years ago and I had so much fun tinkering with automation on my Nexus 6; there are things that I could do before that I no longer can, and it annoys me to no end)
I guess it boils down to marketing etc. So. Maybe the government shouldn’t outright ban it, but it should definitely have stricter rules. The ‘discount’ price shouldn’t be allowed to be advertised as though it is the main price - with the original price being smaller and easier to go unnoticed. But also the reason why the cards exist should be more transparent. Data collecting. The people that do not have the cards are being charged more. But the people that do have them are being monitored more easily.
Now, I’m not one of those “muh free market” morons, but I also think that not every potentially-abusable business practice immediately deserves government regulation against it. By and large it seems that most customers really don’t care that much about this (myself included). The ability for customers to choose where they shop has regulatory power which I think a lot of people fail to recognise. If a behaviour is really repulsive, then customers will just not shop there, which provides a strong negative incentive against the behaviour in question, without any state intervention or enforcement resources required.
An example of this working in practice is the practice of restaurants attempting to introduce tipping in Australia (where it is not customary to tip). Whenever a restaurant frequented by locals tries to force them to tip or makes it awkward to not tip, there is an immediate and strong negative reaction to it from the customers which usually causes the restaurant to give up on the idea.
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The card means my shop is cheaper than it otherwise would be and I’m gaining points each time I use it.
Card means that the price is what it could be anyway, but they decide to give it only to the customers who have the card.
Points are also just mark up in general prices that they could have given you anyway, but hide it as a “reward for points”
Well there’s some truth in that it’s not entirely it, the price is reduced because the data they get from tracking your spending habits has a value
They’re not pushing people to these cards for fun
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And what do those things cost somewhere that isn’t using the dumb member card system?
You’re not getting a deal, non-catdholders are getting shafted while you pat yourself on the back and the store sells shockingly detailed data about you.
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And the shockingly detailed data is in no way shockingly detailed. It’s my name, email, and some food I buy.
It is very much so. This article only barely scratches the surface and with AI it is going to get a lot worse
I feel aggrieved to not get the deal by not having a card.
If the card didn’t exist everyone would get the benefit.
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These companies charge people extra if they refuse to provide personal details and buying habits.
If you can’t see a problem with that then I can’t help you.
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Thats pretty much what I mean - if you dont care then thats your problem. However, im trying to explain why other people dont like these cards and why its unethical for shops to offer them.
Its not merely your name and email. They would know your address, age, family situation, and which common maladies you suffer from like high cholesterol, headaches, diabetes, and so on. But thats just the information they collect directly at colesworth. They can exchange thus data with everyone else, and match up your visa card. So anything you buy anywhere really becomes part of the extensive profile they have.
You might not care about all that, after all… what difference does it make to you what ads you get shown or what a shop might think you might want to buy.
However, I just feel like thats none of their business. I shouldn’t have to provide this wealth of information in addition to fair price for the goods I wish to purchase.
That you couldn’t give a hoot etc. shows that you don’t really understand what is happening or are very naive. Nothing wrong with that, it’s normal, but it is worth looking into a little deeper, especially stores like Tesco. When prices are already artificially higher than they should be, and they are trebling the price of some items to get people to get their cards, you should be wondering why. They are not only making money from selling the items to you, but from selling your data to others. They also use the data in many ways, probably many unethical. With that much power and money and what is going on around the world currently with lobbying etc. it is definitely something that should be looked at. You should look up personalised pricing as well as here and you might start to notice that you have paid for those trips to Alton Towers and Blackpool (probably twice over). With a few companies trialing software as we speak. New York introduced a law too.
As for the imaginary markup
ALDI (No discount card)
SuperValu ‘sale’ price but applicable to everyone not cardholders.
Dunnes Stores Same as above
Centra €0.59 same as above and Centra are known for being more expensive
They are also €0.49 in Londis, Gala, Daybreak and Costcutter (no online listings) and €0.59 in Mace and EuroSpar (also known for being expensive)
The list of products that it happens with is huge, you could check the same wherever you are.
They do this because it allowed them to track how often you shop and what you normally buy. This helps them to manage their stock, keeping popular items that regular shoppers buy in stock etc.
The way it normally works though is that the item is $1.99 but if you have their club card or member card the item is $1.50.
This means you save money in exchange for allowing them to track your shopping habits.
Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of … We’ll call them questionable reasons why business want to track your shopping habits, and that tracking doesn’t necessarily stop as just tracking what you buy.
But it was never meant to be item is less expensive but you only get the less expensive price if you have their card. It was supposed to be, we’ll give you a deal on said item if you let us track you in exchange.
This helps them to manage their stock, keeping popular items that regular shoppers buy in stock etc.
Nope. Normal stock management works without tracking individual users habits.
These cards have the benefit of binding customers to your chain (and to sell ads).
They can track what people are buying just as well without needing to know who is buying what. If all they cared about was making sure they are stocking items that are popular with customers, they could just monitor how many of the item were scanned at the checkout counters.
When you give your phone number to the store, it serves three functions:
- The rewards scheme encourages loyalty. Once you have spent hundreds at the store, they give you a minor discount on something small, which saves you only a little bit of money. You only need to decide to patronise this store one time over their competitors for this bribe to be worth it.
- By learning your shopping habits, they can offer you personalised advertisements to encourage you to buy certain products. For example, a grocery store chain which has a location near where I live has learned that I always buy a certain brand of cheese, and so occasionally they will try to tempt me with something like a 50 cent discount on that cheese, or they will send me a message saying “Hey do you still want (the cheese brand)? We have it in stock!”
- Some people, when putting things into their basket or shopping cart, will see the large, advertised discounted price and think “this item is reasonably priced”, but then they forget to put their phone number in when checking out and are thus charged the inflated price. The store pockets the difference as customers are unlikely to notice or complain about it. Most people do not closely monitor the price of items as they are being scanned. They only look at the total price at the end before tapping their card.
