The social media revolt against Canada’s largest supermarket chain continues. And it’s broken out from it’s ‘home’ on Reddit to pervade Canadian ‘X’ threads. A new ultra-dark anti-Loblaw’s rant claims, “Loblaw’s has zero respect for you. They hate you…”
Harsh words, indeed. And they’re directed specifically at the depth and pervasiveness of Loblaw’s intrusion in your life in return for you giving them your personal information. Plus the gross inequity of the chain’s efforts to sedeuce you into surrendering it…
All about ‘member pricing’
Remember when the now powerful r/loblawsisoutofcontrol consumer protest group was preparing for its ongoing boycott of Loblaw’s? Among the key demands for lifting the siege was an and to unfair and coercive ‘member only pricing’ benefiting Loblaw’s loyalty club members.
It’s no secret that all kinds of retail business are using deep discounts and other financial entice-ments to get folks to sign up for their ‘membership’ programs. And most folks know about the com-panies’ ulterior motives for wanting you to sign up. The companies can make big bucks selling the data on your buying habits and brand preferences to others. And if your name, age other specifics are attached to that data, its value soars even high.
Most scathing rant yet?
In what may be the single most scathing rant yet against Loblaw’s specificaly, X user David Moscrop points to a recent ‘member special’ on Hallowe’en candy.
The deal offers Loblaw’s Optimum points program members the product for just $12.99. But non-members must pay 21.99.
“This isn’t a discount for members,” Moscrop posted on Twitter. “It’s a tax [on] non-members because Loblaw’s wants to harvest your data.”
He goes on to make his point searingly clear: “This company has zero respect for you. They hate you.”
Just to be clear…
Moscrop is alleging the grocery giant hates non-Optimum members for ‘witholding’ their personal information. Now, that’s an extreme – and infinitely arguable – statement. But it unequivocally il-lustrates the depth of his ire over the situation.
And you have to admit, it’s an extreme enticement, to offer points club members what amounts to a 40 percent discount on the product. Such a price differential just makes one’s brain go *DING* “There has to be something not right here…”
What the stores say…
The corporate types insist they want to do you a favour by collecting and data-mining your personal information. They admit they want to track your buying habits. But the reason they offer is that they want to ‘get to know you better’, and be able to offer you custom specials deals that are more rele-vant to you.
“When they have data on you, they’ll send ads that are of interest to you,” David Soberman, a pro-fessor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, told Yahoo! Canada. “Good marketing is based on using good information that is used to create value for people. If you think of it that way, you can benefit from the data companies collect from you.”
What economists say…
But the deep-discounts tactic is not without risks. “When you can pay a lower price by becoming a member, that’s a good way of selling a program,” Soberman observes. “But if you tell people, ‘You have to pay more because you’re not a member’, that’s a [good] way to create a negative reaction.”
And there are other potential drawbacks to the most invasive of the ‘membership’ programs, asso-ciated with the smart phone apps on which they rely.
In 2022, official inquiries by Canadian federal and provincial privacy commissioners found that Tim Horton’s loyalty program app tracked and recorded customer’s movements, which the commissioners ruled was, “a mass invasion of Canadians’ privacy.”
It was found that the app tracked user’s smart phone geolocation data anytime the device was pow-ered up. An ‘event’ record was generated and reported back to Tim’s every time a user entered or exited a Tim Horton’s competitor, a major sports venue, their home or their workplace.
What I say…
If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the real-world equivalent of the Internet ‘cookie’ system. It’s harder to avoid having information about one’s online activities recorded and sent back to sites that place cookies on your computer. But you are usually given the option of saying ‘no’ to some or all cookies a website proposes to plant on you before you start using the site. And you can always ‘clear cash’ and dump all your accumulated cookies regularly, to minimize what’s going on behind the scenes in your browser.
Call me ‘old school’ – and who hasn’t already? But I try to evade all attempts to invade my fragile privacy. And I’ve never succumbed to attempt to bribe me into revealing any personal information using deals or other material enticements. I think the whole notion of AI systems keeping an ‘eye that never sleeps’ on my life is just totally creepy…
~Maggie J.