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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

> worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.

The stores are getting wiser about this. My local Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand now) has a fuel rewards program -- for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your next fillup. Given how expensive groceries are, a lot of people are saving more like 50 cents per gallon, not 4.

They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase.

If it really were just 4 cents a gallon, I expect less people would bother. But it's not. The stores are steadily increasing the penalty for shopping without a loyalty card.

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> They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase.

It's a shitty psychological trick that Fred Meyer pulled off.

People think shopper cards save money, and while it's technically true, it's the wrong framing of what's happening. What's really happening is that the store requires the card to get sale prices.

In other words, Fred Meyer creating the shopper card did not create additional savings. It just started gatekeeping sales behind data collection.

Yeah. Or here's another way to frame that: stores started punishing you for not providing your information by giving you higher prices.

Or another one: when you use a savings card, you trade some of your data for a couple bucks off.

(While on that note: in many countries – pretty much everywhere I've been, actually – you can just get a new savings card every couple months, or get a few and round-robin them and replace every couple months etc. Just fill out the sign up form with some garbage data and you're good to go.)

I've yet to see an actual detailed argument on how the data collected helps them; the only thing I've ever seen was the creepy "target knows you're pregnant" - but most grocery store chains send me the exact same ads as everyone else, and nothing is personalized or targeted.

So what are they doing with the loyalty card data? Nothing? Is it all just a mental trick to get me not to go elsewhere?

From my experience, some stores do personalize ads based on your profile. The main use however is sharing data back with brands: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158826058/what-kroger-is-doi...

But they'll always give you a new card. You can sign up for a new loyalty program id every time you checkout. But then again... If you don't pay by cash it won't matter as they'll link the sales by your payment method and bridge the multiple loyalties.

Also if they were thinking they could have bluetooth beacons at the registers to track cash users that have bluetooth enabled.

Also they have cameras looking at every checkout line. They implemented them originally to observe when lines got too backed up so they could automate sending out more cashiers. They could move to facial recognition of they really wanted. Not sure if they do that now.

I was just in Safeway (a former Albertson's if it matters) yesterday. I bought a couple of items but bypassed the scanning of a shopper card/entering a phone number. The self-checkout knocked the prices down to the reward card level anyway. I can only assume they've linked my payment method to a reward card in the past. That or they are no longer requiring rewards cards to get the discounts.

Since the register already priced my bill higher at the time I swiped my card and then dropped the price, I have to assume it's the former.

$0.50 per gallon is $5 if I fill my 12 gallon Corolla when it's low. That's still not a lot of money.

When you make less than $15 an hour like a lot of Americans that can be quite a bit of money. Especially since a lot of older cars that they would be more likely to drive are probably less fuel efficient and have larger tanks.

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