"Tor is only used for illegal purposes" is as valid as saying "only criminals use cash so they can buy things without a digital trail." I pay cash -- and refuse to use affinity/shopper cards because I would rather pay for my privacy which is worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.
> worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.
The stores are getting wiser about this. My local Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand now) has a fuel rewards program -- for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your next fillup. Given how expensive groceries are, a lot of people are saving more like 50 cents per gallon, not 4.
They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase.
If it really were just 4 cents a gallon, I expect less people would bother. But it's not. The stores are steadily increasing the penalty for shopping without a loyalty card.
> They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase.
It's a shitty psychological trick that Fred Meyer pulled off.
People think shopper cards save money, and while it's technically true, it's the wrong framing of what's happening. What's really happening is that the store requires the card to get sale prices.
In other words, Fred Meyer creating the shopper card did not create additional savings. It just started gatekeeping sales behind data collection.
But they'll always give you a new card. You can sign up for a new loyalty program id every time you checkout. But then again... If you don't pay by cash it won't matter as they'll link the sales by your payment method and bridge the multiple loyalties.
Also if they were thinking they could have bluetooth beacons at the registers to track cash users that have bluetooth enabled.
Also they have cameras looking at every checkout line. They implemented them originally to observe when lines got too backed up so they could automate sending out more cashiers. They could move to facial recognition of they really wanted. Not sure if they do that now.
Yeah. Or here's another way to frame that: stores started punishing you for not providing your information by giving you higher prices.
Or another one: when you use a savings card, you trade some of your data for a couple bucks off.
(While on that note: in many countries – pretty much everywhere I've been, actually – you can just get a new savings card every couple months, or get a few and round-robin them and replace every couple months etc. Just fill out the sign up form with some garbage data and you're good to go.)
I've yet to see an actual detailed argument on how the data collected helps them; the only thing I've ever seen was the creepy "target knows you're pregnant" - but most grocery store chains send me the exact same ads as everyone else, and nothing is personalized or targeted.
So what are they doing with the loyalty card data? Nothing? Is it all just a mental trick to get me not to go elsewhere?
I was just in Safeway (a former Albertson's if it matters) yesterday. I bought a couple of items but bypassed the scanning of a shopper card/entering a phone number. The self-checkout knocked the prices down to the reward card level anyway. I can only assume they've linked my payment method to a reward card in the past. That or they are no longer requiring rewards cards to get the discounts.
Since the register already priced my bill higher at the time I swiped my card and then dropped the price, I have to assume it's the former.
When you make less than $15 an hour like a lot of Americans that can be quite a bit of money. Especially since a lot of older cars that they would be more likely to drive are probably less fuel efficient and have larger tanks.
Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out. Personally I think it's great, and just like you do much of my shopping in cash because I don't want my bank knowing everything about my diet etc.
> Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out.
I love it. I drove to Germany to have the maintenance done, change the tires and renew the extended manufacturer warranty for two years on my german car (extended warranty which I need to pay for) and it was a hefty bill. I pulled a bit more than 3 000 EUR in cash and they were just used to it. As in: a totally normal occurrence.
I did it basically to test if it was true that cash was king in Germany: I had credit and debit cards in backup just in case. But cash just worked.
Cash is fighting back in the USA, lots of restaurants and even shops (including mechanics, etc) have a surcharge for credit cards now, but if you pay cash or debit (or even check at some of them) - no surcharge.
The concert venue I went to last weekend is cards only now. There seems to be a bifurcation in the market where some vendors take cards grudgingly and others want nothing to do with cash.
There certainly is - the smaller vendors are trying to avoid raising prices as best they can whilst the big ones are trying to reduce cash handling costs.
I was there a few weeks ago and cash-only places were still very common, I'd say at least 10x as common as Germany at the end of COVID. (Though granted, some places might only take EC-Karte)
We were hitting cash only places all the time there, whereas in Germany I found that cash only became rare during the pandemic.
Hell, even recharging the IC cards in Japan had to be done using cash at a machine. Why can't you use a debit card? Who knows.
Could you unpack it? Of course if I steal your cash I would be guilty etc, how does that make OK not accepting currency that is legal tender in country?
Various laws may exist elsewhere enforcing a requirement to accept cash (or not, depending on the jurisdiction). But an appeal to "legal tender" isn't going to cut it. Legal tender for what? For debt.
You may be misinterpreting a technical term. "Debt" is everything in economy. You make me a coffee, I am in debt to you for $1, take my note if you accept legal tender. Which I assumed you must if you are a legal business.
That only applies if you've already entered into a contract at that point – that's certainly true anywhere you'll only have to pay after having already been furnished with the desired goods and/or services [1], like in restaurants and cafés with table service, gas stations (depending on local traditions), etc. etc.
In most other regular shops on the other hand, you'll only enter into the actual contract the moment you pay for the goods, so unless your jurisdiction has a specific law mandating the acceptance of cash in that kind of situation (like e.g. New York city I think?), the merchant is perfectly free to simply refuse entering into a contract with you.
[1] With the caveat that depending on the jurisdiction the shop owner may fully legally put up a sign along the lines of "No cash payment" and in that case it's you who are in breach of contract in the first point. Maybe if you then get sued for non-payment you can pay cash through the court system, but that certainly wouldn't be a pleasant way of paying by cash.
What you write is exactly what baffles me. You think I'm baffled because I don't understand how it works but it seems that I do, and that you don't seem to realize that it works in baffling ways makes it more depressing. There's debt being created by service or product changing hands but you just put up a sign and refuse accepting legal tender to pay that debt? What?
> There's debt being created by service or product changing hands but you just put up a sign and refuse accepting legal tender to pay that debt?
Yes, but the interpretation is that you picking up a bottle of milk or whatever in a supermarket or elsewhere doesn't yet make a contract and that the goods haven't actually legally changed hands at that point.
It's only when you're presenting your chosen goods at the register that you're legally making an offer to buy those goods, and unless there's a law specifically mandating cash acceptance for shops, the merchant (as represented by the cashier or a self-service checkout machine) is free to simply refuse your contract offer. And because in that case no contract was ever successfully made, there's no debt, either, and the concept of legal tender doesn't even enter into it…
I find it odd to phrase it as "move on" given the direction much of the rest of the world is headed. Anytime things become digitized, the centuries of civil and social rights, rights which people fought and died for, end up getting completely thrown to the wayside. The exact same would happen to money.
In some ways we're already seeing the foreshadowing of this in some of the previously most liberal places on Earth, like Canada. Even if one may not agree with what the truckers were protesting about, it seems unconscionable to freeze people's bank accounts as punishment for engaging in, or supporting, a completely and genuinely peaceful protest. [1]
People got their bank accounts frozen because they contributed to fundraisers for the trucker protest. If they could contribute to the protesters using a more private method of payment, they wouldn't be subject to these authoritarian retributions from the government.
In the 1930s, "Progress" was the replacement of a relatively free society with Nazi authoritarianism. In the 1940s, "Progress" (for half of the country) was the replacement of Nazi authoritarianism, where the secret police mostly targeted ethnic/political/sexual minorities, with Soviet authoritarianism, where the secret police targeted literally everyone and everything. So perhaps that is an object lesson in the value of not "moving on" from a relatively good situation
