What Do You Buy At The Grocery ... Punk?

fifths writes: "I'm not sure how many of you saw this story from the Scripps Howard Washington bureau -- as reported in the 'Washington Calling' column in the 10-07-2001 edition of the Knoxville(TN) News-Sentinel: 'Federal agents are tracking suspects tied to the Sept. 11 strikes through supermarket club cards that may give a hint of ethnic tastes. "Time was, this data was so disorganized nobody could make sense of it, but not anymore. They're looking for people based on their supermarket tastes," says consultant Larry Ponemon, head of the Privacy Council business consortium.' Anyone else bothered by this? Burn your supermarket cards." Better yet, trade your supermarket cards, frequently. (Perhaps with friends or relatives in the furthest city with the same chain?) Maybe Larry Ellison would like to have a few.

Comments

Card Trading

[waldoj]

I have no idea of where my supermarket cards came from. You know how when you sign up, they give you a few? I've gotten friends to give me all of my cards. Whenever, in conversation, topic turns to shopping, I explain why these are Bad Things(tm), and suggest that card-swapping would help. We always swap cards, and they're always eager to do so with others. It's not just me -- my whole family actually does this, and many of my friends now. And some people that I tell about this say that they already know about it, which makes me feel a bit like going to a strange town and finding out that there's already a fight club.

Anyhow, yes, trade away! Destroy their databases and go buy some ethnic food. It'll be fun.

-Waldo

Re:Don't play the game

[camusflage]

It's sleazy to break your half of the bargain by deliberately contaminating their data while expecting them to keep to their side by continuing to provide discounts.

It's even sleazier to jack up the prices on items and offer "discounts" for people who use the cards when the discounted price is what the retail price should be. One rather nasty example of this that I saw recently was where a commodity item (a tube of toothpaste) was marked "Buy One Get One Free" with the card, where the price for the single unit was twice what comparable brands were selling for.

Re:Find a local grocery that *doesn't* use cards

[Technician]

I found there is a cost to the database, which is of course passed along to consumers. (Serious now, who do you think pays for it?) I have found out long ago that most stores that do not have the program have lower average prices all the time. It just isn't worth the trip to the high priced store just to see what the K-mart style special item is this week. I save lots more elsewhere without the cost of the database program added to the cost of the products. I quit shopping Safeway because the noticable differance in the bottom line. A 3.50 item with a savings of .75 is still more than the same item at 2.50 elsewhere.