Hey I’m sure you all know how sketchy club cards are for collecting your data. But I do begrudge paying slightly higher prices just for valuing my privacy. I was wondering if there was any way to sign up to these things whilst limiting the data they have access to. Would it be enough to sign up with fake details and never use their apps? Or should I just give up on this all together? Thanks!
At my old group’s monthly meetings we’d all chuck our cards into a hat, stir them around to randomize them, and take them out again.
If they let you give them a phone number, I always use (in the USA) my area code plus 867-5309. So far it has always work. Younger checkout people don’t see anything unusual and older ones get a laugh out of it.
What happens if someone else beats you to that and uses your fuel points?
That’s part of the fun. Sometimes you get someone else’s fuel points too. It’s kind of like gambling whenever you fuel up. Over the long term it probably evens out, or at least I feel like I get a fuel discount pretty often with it so I don’t worry about it. Worse case I’m helping someone else save a few bucks, it doesn’t feel like a problem.
Yes that’s largely the joke, although I did once get $13 off in a single fill-up. It was the early days of the pandemic so between medicine refills and stocking up on groceries we’d maxed it out to $1/off per gallon. Combined with the plunge in gas prices it was the first time I’d paid under $1/gallon since the turn of the millennium.
standard is treat them the same way you used to treat Netflix logins – one club card number gets shared among family and friends
EDIT: no one ever used their own Netflix login and no one ever uses their own club card number
The whole point of giving you the discount is how they pay for the data. It wouldn’t make sense for them to give you a discount without getting the data.
If you know anyone that has a card, ask them can you use it or ask in local groups. On reddit people used to share pictures of their clubcards so other people could scan it when they shop. The card holders get loads of extra points and the people that use the cards get the discount and privacy, win-win
