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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

This is why I like Caffè Nero's loyalty cards. They are little pieces of cardstock with nine coffee cups printed on them. You get a stamp every time you order. Once all nine cups are stamped, redeem the card for a free coffee. There's no PII on the card and your name isn't going through an additional computer (on top of the standard 17 a day, per Cereal Killer).

More places should do this.

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Your fingerprints are all over that card! All I have to do is wait for one of those cards to hit their trash, and I'll have a pretty good idea of how long it takes you to fill one up, and so how much coffee you drink.

This is the kebab shop business model in Europe, is it really that rare to find simple loyalty cards with stamps where you live (assuming USA)?

This is the USA we're talking about, where if an unethical way to wring out more dollars doesn't have a law explicitly forbidding it (and there are laughably few such laws here), it WILL be used against you.

I know of a few places that have simple stamp loyalty cards. Oftentimes they are mom and pop shops, or chains still finding their footing. Most cards are electronic and want a name and phone number associated with them.

App loyalty cards, while still having some information on you, are largely about large merchants (ie starbucks) avoiding credit card interchange fees by giving rewards for people who load money to the app and purchase from there.

So, all incentives are not against consumers. The merchants avoid the credit card oligopoly fee and pass on the rewards to consumers.

Avoiding a credit card processing fee could be done the same with with a punch card.

By having a punch card and forcing customers to use cash? While cash is making a come back in many places, there are still plenty of potential customers who would not buy if cash was required.

I wasn't aware a punch card was "cash-only".

At this point I think I am unaware what a punch card is. I was assuming a card that gets punched each time you visit a place, and after N punches you get an item for free. Is that right or totally off?

Lol! Yes. I think we're both confused. Let's just leave it.

Loyalty stamp cards are pretty common, but most chains (Starbucks etc.) have loyalty apps instead of loyalty cards.

Every pizza shop seems to have one in France. I've seen hairdressers with stamp cards in Germany.

Sounds super easy to make your own stamp then. ;)

Yeah, you'll probably be able to get away with that about once per location, give or take.

I've seen a ton of custom hole punches being used in this case more than stamps.

I put my Caffè Nero loyalty card in the same pocket as my phone (which runs the Facebook app).

I have no way of proving this but I'm pretty sure they used my camera to read the card because the next thing I knew I was seeing ads for Starbucks (a competing coffee chain). I have never said Starbucks out loud and suddenly I am seeing ads.

Highly unlikely. More likely they're using location tracking or a shared data source to know that you like that specific coffee place.

I don't buy it. There was nothing else in that pocket.

Your pocket is irrelevant. Location tracking and shared marketing databases have nothing to do with what was in your pocket.

So you think it was my pants?

"Location tracking and shared marketing databases"

“I haven’t checked but I don’t think I’m in too many databases.”

Neato. Well dude you got your answer, take it or leave it. I understand acting dumb and trolling is fun too though.

That's silly. That probably costs them $0.XX to make.

Loyalty apps/datasets literally print money in comparison.

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