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‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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You don't need an app to use a loyalty card...
But yes I am against supermarkets that only provide discounts if you use their loyalty program, which in turn allows them to track your purchases. Especially since many items are priced with the discount as the "fair" price and the full price is really just a money grab.
If you do the calculation, the discount you get in the end is often just 1%. I don't really care about that 1%. You can get more, but the time you have to invest to get a better deal makes less money than just work an extra hour.
And some of those loyalty programs have expiring points, that happen to expire just before you get to the tier when things get interesting. And when you do save up to the food stuff you find out the app is a lot better at collecting loyalty points and doesn't work so great at exchanging them.
The main thing this article is talking about is supermarkets in the UK that lock all their sale offers behind the loyalty card. Until about a year or two ago, you could go in and buy things on sale or buy one get one free or whatever offer, and then use (or don't use) your loyalty card on top (to collect/spend points), but now you don't get any discounts if you don't have a loyalty card.
The article/campaigners are spinning this up into something about smartphones, because that's how most people use these loyalty schemes now, but they still have the old style cards so that's a bit of a red herring. The real issue is the way they're tying their standard offers to the loyalty program, and making it more difficult for consumers not to get caught out paying full price.