Monday, April 04, 2005

Pavilions is Robbing Me Blind

…and they’re stealing from you, too. Just like Ralph’s, Von’s and the rest of those grocery stores that require a special card.

Yesterday, my tab was $60, and I’d left my card at home. “You would have saved $7,” the clerk told me solemnly. Well, isn’t that a polite way of saying, “thanks for letting us pocket your seven bucks”? How do they get away with charging me one price and the next guy another? “Bring the receipt back with your card, and we’ll be happy to give you the refund,” he informs me. Yeah, right. Like I’m not gonna lose the receipt in the meantime.

Oh, I “get” it. In exchange for providing the nitty gritty on my shopping habits, they reward me with lower prices. Tit for tat. Quid pro quo. And, I even appreciate that by keeping track of how many boxes of Peanut Butter Flavored Ice Cream Cones I buy, the likelihood of keeping them in stock goes up.

But, geez. Do they have to personalize it? Isn’t collecting aggregate data enough? Do they have to know who is buying?

Somewhere out in cyberland, I picture myself on a database with a decade of purchases nicely sorted into food, beverage, and embarrassing feminine hygiene products. When did we decide it was okay for Big Brother to compile this info? Is it worth the privilege of buying five Lean Cuisines for $10?

Come on, people. Have you no shame? You’d sell your souls that cheaply?

From now on, I’m sticking to Gelson’s--screw the exorbitant prices. At least they don’t keep a record of how often I buy Preparation H.*

*Mind you, that example was for literary purposes only.







3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"literary purposes"...you mean it is used when you are "literary" mode?

John said...

I was going to say ointment or suppository, but someone had a quicker snide remark. So, I won't say anything.

I shop at Safeway. They can tell how many cans of dog food I buy each year. I expect the cashier to remind me to buy Propell if I forget it some week. It doesn't always work. I faithfully bought a package of Arches peanut butter cookies each week, and they still stopped selling them.

It isn't just groceries. When I took my BMW in to get serviced, they knew how many miles I had driven each month from reading the key. They knew what my lease called for and could estimate how many miles over I was going to drive.

Randy said...

Ooh! Scary!