That's cool

I don't use Somerfield very often. There's one close to my aunt's house and
I pop in there once in a while. The differential pricing annoyed me too.
The thing was dropped some time last year.

I haven't seen any form of loyalty card scheme in a US Walmart or Asda,
BTW.

 

"Tescopoly" is a decent read for stuff about this.

 

You have _no_ idea. Trying to match by name only would be _incredibly_
difficult, especially given different forms of names on different
cards. And just how many John Smith's are there in the UK, do you
think? No, it's such an obviously unworkable approach that they
wouldn't even think about it.

I've worked on Tesco's loyalty card system (albeit some years back)
which, as I said, is mainly used to try and identify spending habits
of population groups, which in turn helps to drive regional and
store-specific stocking policy, based on their customers' profiles.
There is, of course, some individual marketing done, but it's by far
the secondary benefit of the system.

At the other end of things, some companies do attempt the sort of
individual profiling you're alluding to, based on CC spend, but they
can only do so if, like a certain airline I used to work for, they use
their own-branded Card, which gives them access to all the data
therefrom. Even then, trying to match up bookings made on their card
with Flight segments booked, and then changes to said bookings and
indeed use of other cards by the same customer presented me with one
or two interesting challenges. I got their in the end, of course, but
it wasn't the simplest of tasks.

Where 'targetted' = sent to a mailing list just like any other spam.

Well, yes, cos 2+2 normally makes 4. But YMMV.

They would, if they tried it.

See above.

See above for their main benefits.
--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/ DS#8 BOTAFOT#3 SbS#2 UKRMMA#13 DFV#8 SKA#2 IBB#10
`\\ | //'
`\|/`
`

 

Me too, with darsy, sweller and others. We'd just gone in to a pub at
Spitalfields market so E (for that was her initial) could have a piss
and someone in the group got the wrong idea and ordered a round. She
came back from the bogs before the last pint had been poured so we all
did a runner to the slightly-less-wanky pub across the road where
sweller promptly started throwing beer all over the floor (iirc).

"Free random drinks" ?

 

Well, I baled out because of problems I discovered with the service after
I'd placed my beer order. You seem to have sloped in for a crafty piss,
inadvertently ordered beer you didn't want,and then did a runner to avoid
paying for your mistake. Not the same thing at all IMO.

 

And there's me wishing Tesco would track my purchases so that I don't
have to keep hunting for things when I use their online Shopping
Experience.

I (We) have 3 cards between us - all linked. Only thing is that the
main (initial) card has long gone, I suspect it was my Ex's, but he has
his own new one. They only seem to link to purchases from that card
though. The other two accrue the points but never add to the favourites
list.

They keep telling me that is not the case.

 

Safeway in San Francisco (so I assume they all) do it.

I now have a US Safeway loyalty card, registered to me in London just so
that I got a couple of bottles of wine at the loyalty price. It was
only after I filled out the form that they told me it was for US
customers only so the address was no use to them. I still have the card
- you never know when you'll need it.