Kroger has felt especially intrusive for a couple of decades; it's almost as though they're going out of their way to be manipulative and creepy, right from the store layout where Pepsi is $87.00 at your feet and Coke is $0.75 at eye level, down to the personalized coupons they send you in the mail. But the big stores that don't have loyalty cards are still slurping up data; they just get it from your credit card and their cameras. I don't know what the answer is, beyond just trying to frequent farmers' markets.
I hate the idea of facial recognition tech being used like this but I really don’t mind loyalty cards/using credit cards to track spending as long as the data is only used by the stores themselves (and not also sold wholesale to the highest bidders, which I bet it is).
I think it’s fair for them to gather analytics on spending habits and use it to make decisions on how to stock their store, run promotions, etc. Same for personalized coupons. Feels weird, but is pretty harmless, and I’m pretty sure they’re just trying to get you to try new things (like for me, beyond meat) so you start regularly purchasing it.
No it's not really fair. Until I start seeing Kroger going out of their way to support data provacy initiatives and consumer protections, correctly assume they have ill intent with your data.
What is the worst that could happen if Kroger learns that I use my rewards card to purchase a loaf of wonderbread and other assorted groceries every week?
You buy a pregnancy test and pre-natal vitamins. This information is sold and put together as part of a “profile”. Your employer buys these profiles, sees you’re pregnant and fires you because who wants to deal with maternity or paternity leave. You never told them you were pregnant, they can claim they didn’t know.
Home Depot lost over 50 million debit and credit cards. Linking your first and last name with your payment method / methods and submitting it to companies not known for their security may not be in your best (long-term) interest. Doubly so considering many company account forms have address as well - meaning anyone with access is very close to having everything required to open a bank account in your name.
You're not wrong though; arguments against loyalty cards are seemingly random chains of chance, and the information is being sold by Visa as well anyways. So I'm not surprised by the free market, laissez-faire ideals on display. I don't have my eyes on perfection, just on minimizing how many times I give out potentially damaging information. And if some other people start to push back as well? Well, the more the merrier.
Selling it off to a data aggrigator that sells the information to the FBI so you get investigated for buying too much hummus after the next terrorist attack.
I wonder if there's a Winco or local equivalent for you? They don't accept credit cards, only debit cards, checks, and cash. No loyalty programs. And you have to bag your own groceries. I switched from using a debit card to cash just because I like the idea that I'm not being tracked at all.
WinCo Foods, Inc. is a privately held, majority employee-owned[5][6][7] American supermarket chain based in Boise, Idaho, with retail stores in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas,[8] Utah, and Washington. It was founded in 1967 as a no-frills warehouse-style store with low prices.
I read Little Brother when I was only 12, it's why I originally installed linux :p
His books are awesome, I really love the blend of plot and technical bits he drops in. I read almost all his books right after reading Little Brother and enjoyed every single one.
Use the scooters they provide for mobility-impaired people.
Note you shouldn't actually do this because you're taking away a scarce resource that might actually be needed by other people who can't walk, but it would defeat gait recognition. You can always bring your own scooter, but you'd have to bring a different one every time or you could be identified by the scooter. Since that would get quite expensive, you might need to pool resources with other privacy-minded individuals to maintain a shared group of scooters.
I opted out of the 'must register your vehicle to a mailing address' a few years ago. The toll firms and meter maid cities send stacks of scary looking penalty assessment letters, which I forward to the landfill. No consequences to me, and the captured CO2 in the paper is sequestered in the dump.
I know this isn’t a privilege available to everyone, but I just shop at a locally owned city grocery that isn’t part of a national conglomerate. I don’t think Good Life Grocery and Rainbow are scanning my face…or maybe I’m one of the oblivious shoppers from the article?
Well, I'm in Cincinnati, roughly the 25th largest metro area in the US. When I grew up, there were IGAs, but I think they're all gone now. We have various farmers' markets, and a couple of one-off independent grocers, and then there's Jungle Jim's, which is sort of a combination grocery-store/amusement-park. I don't know if they're scanning my face or not, but if they are, it's so they know what kind of hot-sauce wall to build.
I don't really understand the loyalty card thing anyways.
When I lived in the midwest, I'd just get a card from Kroger but never fill out the paperwork. I thought I was being clever, but as pointed out, they still track you by your payment method. With that being the case, why do loyalty cards still exist? For cash buyers?
In Canada, 'price discrimination' is a criminal offence. Cuz you know, if something is anti-consumer and impacts rich people, strong laws will be written against it.
It needn't even be price discrimination; for example, they can also just specifically highlight discounts for you for products that you usually combine with expensive/high-margin products that you otherwise wouldn't buy.
They lower prices how you get free email from Google, seemingly a good deal. When in reality email costs as low as 1 EUR/mo to be a long-term viable business.
Would it work if the computer I have is not always turned on? I think the other MTAs would give up delivery after a few retries, so you need at least one always-on computer, so a server. And then we're not really in the "free" territory anymore, it's much more worth it to just pay professionals for hosting.
Exactly. It doesn't lower prices. What it really does is increases profits, which allows them to grow faster than local markets and they can expand and wipe out even more groceries and ends up as a big fat bonus for the executives and shareholders.
If fewer people shoplift, the shrinkage rate lowers and grocery stores have more room to play with the price because their margin is wider. This is why inner city stores with higher shrinkage rates charge higher prices and why memberships stores like Costco which have almost no shoplifting losses at all can be so competitive.
If facial recognition is able to reduce theft, prices will likely be competed downwards over time.
I feel like this misunderstands sales and discounting systems. Because it's a snappy line which is technically true but the long answer is way weirder.
I'm just gonna use Kroger as an example because they use "club pricing", rotating club pricing, actual sales, "manager specials", and closeout sales.
- Everything by default is priced at MSRP, that's the price on the white price tags or the yellow price tags that don't have a corresponding white price.
- Then they use club pricing which is the price on the "yellow" tags that aren't formatted like number/$dollars like 3/$5 or 2/$4. This is the price you would compare to Walmart.
- Then there is rolling club pricing which is like 2/$5 but always unit priced to your benefit. So they will mark 2/$4 but the unit price is $2.
These aren't actually sales in any meaningful sense. But the next ones are.
- The actual sales require a minimum unit purchase. You probably see these when buying soda or vitamins. If you compare prices to other stores this is only time you'll see the unit price actually smaller than other stores. The "buy n get $n" deals are also in this category but are way more gameified.
- Then there are "manager specials" i.e. "woohoo!" deals which are priced with stickers and also actually discounts.
- Finally there are closeout deals which are white tags usually steeply discounted and don't require a card to get.
I really hate that all this garbage works. I really appreciate stores that just post a price.
