Call me loyal

Okay, here’s a topic that’s not political. Well, not much, anyway.

Today I got a letter from a chemist chain I go to telling me they’re introducing a new loyalty scheme. I’ll be getting more information about that soon, along with a pretty new card with flowers on it. Add it to the list.

Loyalty schemes all work the same basic way, giving people points for money they spend in one or more participating stores. The more money people spend, the more points they get, points they can redeem for vouchers, products or services, depending on the plan. Essentially, the plans play on people’s low-level greed in which we all want to get a “good deal” or, even better, something for nothing.

There’s no such thing as “something for nothing”, of course, and the catch in these schemes is that to work they record every transaction you make: The dollar amount, what you buy, how often you buy, where you shop—it all gets stored in their computers.

The chemist is adding me to their scheme because I’m in their “Contact Lens Club”, where every time I make a purchase of solutions and stuff, it’s recorded. Once it hits $100, I get a $10 store voucher. Essentially, a 10% discount, which is not insignificant, considering the constant expense of contact lens supplies.

But I also have a multi-store loyalty card, one for a paint store, another for a book store, still another for a grocery store chain, and one for a record store. Plus, our credit card gives us points, too. I don’t use all these stores all the time (or even often, necessarily) and when I do I don’t always use the loyalty card. This isn’t because of the complexity of so many schemes to keep track of (though that doesn’t help), but also because I’m uneasy about someone keeping track of all my purchases.

Call me paranoid if you want, but I don’t like the idea of anyone knowing that much about me. Hell, it’s more than I know about me!

There are some perfectly respectable, non-hysterical people who argue that we should resist things like loyalty schemes, anti-crime cameras and leaving our mobile phones on all the time because collectively they’re turning us into a surveillance society.

Alarmist? Consider this: The United Kingdom has twenty percent of all closed-circuit TV cameras in use in the entire world, one for every 12 people. There, the average person is caught on CCTV 300 times a day. Now the UK is trialling loudspeakers with some cameras so they can tell off someone who’s dropped a wrapper or whatever.

Do we really need to be watched so closely? Do we really need anyone to know so much out us, where we go, what we do, what we buy and how often we do any of these things? I’m having real second thoughts about participating in any of these programmes anymore.

But first, I have a few points to redeem and, oh! I think I’m almost to my next $10 voucher at the chemist…