Those supermarket loyalty programmes cause you to spend more money, don't they. Like even if it's my regular supermarket I suspect I'm not going to save any money by getting their app?
Depends. I save money with my Tesco Clubcard, because I tend to only buy products when they're discounted. It's very rare I see something I didn't plan to get and make an impulse purchase just because it's on offer.
But if you chase the deals and get impulse buy extra stuff because you're "saving" money, you can end up spending more.
I would have saved a good 4 or 5 quid today in Tesco, had I a clubcard to take advantage of their 'clubcard price'. Should be illegal, that, expecting me to trade my personal details for a cheaper shopping basket.
>>9921 The thing about the clubcard is that it’s only a cheaper basket compared to the price that Tesco set for non-clubcard members. The clubcard price is actually just the regular, normal, non-loyalty card price in other shops. So what’s really happening is you’re handing your data over for the illusion of saving money.
> So what’s really happening is you’re handing your data over for the illusion of saving money.
And that data then gets sold on. Especially as the UK will gradually replace the EU's GDPR with its own framework, which will potentially offer less protection and more ways for companies to do what they want with your data. So the supermarket chains will be making money at both ends.
>>9922 Surely they can aggregate your spending by payment card and sooner or later by facial recognition. Having a shop know what it is you're buying from them is hardly what I'd call "your data".
This is a strangely lax view to take. According to the GDPR, any data that is about you is by definition your data: https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/
I am aware that the UK is no longer subject to the GDPR, as far but as I know our version of it from the 2018 Data Protection Act is still in place.
>>9932 I don't want my service usage monitored and analysed in such a way that is intended to influence my behaviours. Doing so personally to anyone else would be considered a breach of privacy (relationship permitting).
The stick up my arse is so great I even resent being treated as a regular in shops that I frequent.
>>9923 That's a bit of a minefield. We have UK GDPR and it would be extremely painful if we didn't have equivalence status so it's just that we call it a framework under review. But then US tech companies tend to ignore European regulation anyway so there's that I guess.
>>9932 You need to think more about what you can infer from someone's shopping habits.
The principle lever of a supermarket is in the deals it offers you - engaging in price discrimination by never giving deals on things you buy but then offering you deals on things it can arm-twist you into buying to establish a habit. Over the long-term a supermarket can also start to infer when you're more stressed in order to sell ice cream - I'm not sure how birds work but I imagine knowing when they're on the blob would be gold dust, assuming they don't have a period tracker already doing that. For a fat twat like me Lidl will usually give me a free doughnut on my birthday to get me to come in and establish a warm feeling that they remembered.
Then there's how the anonymised data can be combined with other data to de-anonymise and make a profile about you. Which the supermarket might not even know about. Say that you keep buying pizza near a protest and then your phone blows up because they think you're a terrorist mastermind.
>>9936 >Over the long-term a supermarket can also start to infer when you're more stressed in order to sell ice cream - I'm not sure how birds work but I imagine knowing when they're on the blob would be gold dust
I remember hearing about something like this that came out of America, Wall-mart managed to guess that a woman was pregnant before her parents even knew. Something like that. I have no idea if it actually happened or if it's just something someone made up but it sounds plausible and I can't be bothered to look into it.
I wonder how far the average person makes it through life, if they even think about this kind of stuff at all, before they realise that something being illegal is absolutely no reason to expect businesses don't do it.
Most companies try to avoid breaching most laws most of the time, because paying out millions of pounds in fines and civil settlements is rarely in the interests of shareholders. Obviously some companies do breach some laws sometimes. The point is that a lot of the stuff that US companies openly brag about doing would cause most UK or EU companies to panic if they realised they were doing it accidentally.
I'm a data scientist and I know people who currently work in data analytics for major supermarkets. We all spend a lot of time sat in meetings saying "no, we can't do that because it's a breach of GDPR", to which the response is invariably "oh, that's a shame". Maybe there are rogue operators out there who don't give a fuck about the law, but all of the data protection breaches I've encountered have been cock-up rather than conspiracy.
>>9936 "Deals" or coupons are not an intrinsic part of the ClubCard system of data collection. I receive no such marketing because I didn't sign up for it.
Being more cynical, but having worked in roles where resolving complaints required me to be fairly familiar with various bits of consumer protection legislation, I'm tempted to say it's a bit more like, companies will push it as far as they can get away with. It's harder to breach "big" laws like that where they might get a big lawsuit and a massive fine, but things like energy companies or phone contracts breaking the terms of the consumer credit act or whatever, where they know they can rip somebody off and then plead incompetence rather than negligence in the relatively small number of cases where somebody both knows their rights and is enough of a stubborn cunt to take it to the regulator, seem to be fairly common.
I guess you could say a lot of the time there are loopholes and companies will do things that are against the spirit of the law but not technically illegal, which is why we have all this shit in the "gig economy" where people are technically self employed and have no rights but in practice they are just working for that company and they are using that as a loophole to avoid giving paid holidays and whatnot. But to me that's mens rea and indicates that there's probably more they are getting away with just because nobody has picked them up on it.
A minor example, I used to work for Maplin, before they went bust. For about ten years they'd been getting away with playing music in their shops without paying the PRS license. In their case that almost certainly was incompetence, it was probably somebody's job in the legal department to think about things like that, they simply didn't. But it goes to show.
>>9944 They are a part of the consideration granted to you in exchange for your data. Someone who is signed up to a loyalty card and not getting the deals is effectively handing over their valuable shopping data for free.
A giant Tesco used to be where I shopped. Decent veg and food, fresh engough, decent price.
I moved, Aldi was closer so I adapted, but when I tried Tesco again: "CARD! GIVE CARD!". Fuck that, if they could get the same data from payment cards they wouldn't bother, I'd rather starver than spend in any place thast demands this kind of bullshit compliance.
>>9946 No, I'm getting the ClubCard pricing regardless of how genuine of a discount that is. A minute ago you were cautioning how a supermarket can manipulate me and my spending and capture my attention but now I'm apparently daft for declining a few quid of coupons to opt out.
And it's not valuable data. Not to me. Nobody else has or will offer to pay for it.
It's like "points" on a credit card. It's thw lot that does nothing, barely even works, just skims off the top. Just pennies? Just a Pfennig? Just a groszy? Just a cent?
There is no "card" that helps you, best case they turn you into a data point while you shove your gob.
>>9948 Fuck off. Fuck right the fuck off, you useless cunt. Hey, I've got a fancy horse to sell you, wins every race but just needs the right card to bite on. £1500, bargain mate.
"Loyalty" cards, the farce of it. They are not your friends! None of it saves you money.
If the only shop that's open at 10 o'clock when I need milk (and a pack of Tunnocks Teacakes) is the Tesco Express, and I would have to pay 4 quid for my milk (and teacakes) without a clubcard, but only 3 quid with one, it is saving me money.
It's not saving me money versus another cheaper shop, but it's saving me money versus paying over the odds just because I don't want Tesco to know how many Tunnocks I go through in a year. At all other times I would choose somewhere else to shop, but in the situations where I must go to the overpriced Tesco, I would only be wasting money not to have one.
It's a con of course, but I don't think it's quite worth getting this angry about.
