Tiered pricing is EVERYWHERE now. In supermarkets, if you don’t have their app/loyalty card you have to pay higher prices. They frame it as a “discount” or “savings” for having the app, but clearly it’s just a punishment for not giving them your info and allowing them to track/advertise at you.
In restaurants/fast food places, you get “discounts” (i.e. regular prices) via the app/email list, and if you don’t have the app or give them your email address you don’t get the discount (read: you have to pay higher prices). And of course they can “tailor” personalised “deals” directly at you based on your past behaviour to optimise how much money they get out of you.
I just looked at a hotel and they’re advertising a “discount” if you give them your email address (read: a higher price if you don’t allow them to advertise at you).
I absolutely hate this behaviour. I know exactly why it’s there: some people are willing to pay more for convenience/no ads, and some are willing to go to more effort / put up with ads for a lower price. Either way they get more money out of you: the logical conclusion of capitalism and chasing higher profits.
It feels like this should be illegal. It feels like a cousin of price gouging, which is already illegal. Ofc it never will be outlawed in america - idk how much this happens across the pond though - but I hope one day this could be outlawed in europe.
I just give them my old landline number that’s been disconnected for years since I just use my cell phone now
Every single time I’ve tried the local area code plus 876-5309 has worked… Been using it since the days you’d enter a phone number to print coupons from a kiosk (I didn’t have a phone at the time). Now I enter it as second nature anytime a pin pad prompts me for a number.
Then what do you do when the next step requires “verifying the number”?
I generate a new email address for each vendor that forces me to specify one, but there’s not much I can do about phone numbers. I suppose it’s good from a security perspective that they want an additional authentication factor even if it’s only SMS, and good from a usability perspective to verify a path to resetting a password, but I can’t generate a new 🆕 hone number for every vendor
they are satisfied that you identify yourself consistently with the same number.
they don’t want to call you, what they want is to track you
They do want to call me. I had a significant decrease in spam calls after I started doing this instead of my actual number, including calls from companies I’ve definitely never given my number to, as well as straight up scammers.
However, you have a good point about tracking.