-Caveat Lector- Bend over America, and just say baaah: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source: http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2001/October/spending/boiling.html Kiplinger's Personal Finance October 2001 | SPENDING | BOILING POINT Loyalty Has Its Price By Kristen Davis What you really pay by knuckling under to those bonus-card bullies. Tommy made me cringe even before I realized he wanted to know so much about me. Tommy is the geeky kid with the toothy grin who, as spokesperson for Giant Food in my area, has been relentlessly cheerleading on local TV for the grocer's BonusCard. Hooray! Get your BonusCard so you can enjoy savings on thousands of products! All you have to do is give us your name, rank and serial number -- and attach a little plastic tag to your key ring that the cashier will swipe at the checkout. Never mind that BonusCard "savings" used to be called sales and were hassle-free -- and free of electronic snooping about where you shop, when you shop and how many Froot Loops you buy. Tommy has lots of annoying friends who demand your card-carrying loyalty in exchange for sale prices. Major supermarket chains such as Food Lion, Kroger, Safeway and Vons, drugstore chains such as CVS and Rite Aid, and even local hardware and pet-supply stores want to know just who you are, Shopper, and how often you stock up on toilet paper or dog food or hair dye. I hate feeling coerced, so I valiantly resisted signing up the first half-dozen or so times a Giant cashier pushed the BonusCard. "The badgering by sales personnel can be unbearable," says Sharon Concannon, who shops at a Shaw's in Leominster, Mass. "I feel like a freak each time I say 'no, thank you' to the astonished clerk." You'll feel even more pressure to sign up if you collect grocery receipts to earn computers for a local school--those purchases are also now tallied via shoppers' cards. But what finally wore me down were the little taunts on the receipt: "Today you could have saved $2!" Hah! I can't be bought for that. "Today you could have saved $3!" Jeez, all I bought was diapers. "Today you could have saved $4!" All right, already. You win, Tommy. And so it was that a Giant tag joined two others on my key ring. I feel like a chump each time I pick up my keys. What savings? But I'm saving money, right? That's what the grocery receipt says, right? Actually, sharp-eyed shoppers have noticed that in many cases the special price their cards entitle them to is the same as the old, precard price. Their "savings" is calculated from the new, higher noncard price (which can be a challenge to find on the shelf, if my Giant is any indication). Ohio shopper Tate Antrim reports (on a Web site devoted to grocery-card complaints) that his local Kroger raised the base price of milk by more than a dollar after launching its Plus card. "It was $3.29 without the card and $2.29 with the card," he writes. "Funny, it was $2.29 before the card. Some savings!" "We have not inflated prices to compensate for the card," says Gary Rhodes, a spokesman for Kroger. He says customers may "perceive" a new, higher price because they're used to buying milk on sale. Perpetually? "Sometimes we run promotions for a long time," he says. However you couch it, the retail trend is toward "two-tiered" or "differential" pricing. In this case, there's a price for registered shoppers and a "privacy price" for those who don't want to be monitored and tracked. You'll also have to pay the privacy price if you grocery shop while traveling and don't want to sign up for another chain's card. Out of control Tommy and his fellow data hounds now know which brand of bathroom cleanser I use and that I have a weakness for Cadbury bars. They don't have insidious plans for the information, and they say they won't share it with anyone else. All they want to do is add to my daily cascade of junk mail, maybe with some coupons for kitty litter if I appear to be a cat owner, or to let me know salmon is on sale if I'm a frequent fish buyer. That sounds pretty harmless. But privacy advocates don't see it that way. Data can be stored in perpetuity, and you really have no control over how it's used, says Katherine Albrecht, founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN). "What happens when your insurance company or your employer buys your supermarket?" Albrecht asks. Or your drugstore? Or if a record of your purchases gets subpoenaed in a lawsuit? Is there no one who might be interested in whether you eat healthfully, smoke or take prescription meds? Even those scenarios don't really give me the shivers. It's more the principle of the thing -- feeling bullied by the likes of Tommy into carrying around a silly card. As Albrecht puts it, "I don't like having to <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
