The Dark Truth of Loyalty Schemes 

Dual pricing must be made illegal

The irony of leaving a comment to "help the channel" which allows RU-vid to further profile me.

A lot of people think it's cool to have everything digital and they have no clue of the dangers, they just laugh at you if you say anything.

The concept of loyalty to a faceless corporation is laughable, if it ever suited them they would throw you under the bus no questions asked.

I worked for Tesco club card call centre. They employed the people who answered the phones for their club card helpline in a call centre in Dundee. We were all employed through an agency and paid very low wages and given no training. The workers were a mixture of the barely literate and graduates stuck in a city with no other employment for them. We could go into the system at that time and find out all kinds of data about customers.

My son told me if something is free YOUR THE PRODUCT!

What is more sinister is that we have been conditioned into handing over our personal info through our bank cards whilst paying for the privilege. Use cash wherever possible.

Nothing is free. People should know that.

If the Sub Post Masters scandal didn't give people a stark warning about the dangers of a purely digital economy I'm not sure what will.

I just shop elsewhere where the prices are the same for everybody.I also use cash whenever possible so we don’t lose it.

This is what I do, I shop with a relative who is not so well off, she has a rewards card, I get her to use her rewards card to get my items that are discounted , "supposedly", then I give her the full price for each item , I'm losing nothing, but my relative gets the price difference instead of the supermarket. If I'm going to give my money away , it may as well be to someone who needs it . 😂

I do not have any loyalty cards and generally buy the from cheapest. A lot of differential pricing has put me off from stores like Tesco and Sainsburys , which I rarely use and prefer stores that do not use them such as Aldi or the local Market. Therefore they have lost me as a customer.

They should ban all of them, customers are getting nothing they didn't have before and paying for the scheme. Offers are a scam, the product price is inflated before it is discounted. Supermarkets do not act in their customers best interests.

the sleepwalkers are sleepwalking into the dystopian nightmare dragging us all down.

In recent times, Sainsbury made a massive difference in common fruit price based on using a loyalty card. Fruit is fundamental and it surprised me that something people say is necessary for health could be put in a dual pricing scheme.

When I go into Aldi there’s one price on the shelf. Wonder if it’ll ever catch on?

Financial planning is like navigation. If you know where you are and where you want to go, navigation isn't such a great problem. It's when you don't know the two points that it's difficult

My son has a spare tesco card of mine but lives 400 miles away. I also use mine to help other people to get discounts if they're ahead of me in the queue. I think tesco is now confused as to what I buy and where I shop. Every little bit helps. Maybe if we gave the spare cards to neighbours and at the year end share out the points, it would make the data meaningless.

It's a shame this isn't broadcast on mainstream media

Every time I go into Tesco and see the yellow tag I think of the philosophical 'prisoners dilemma'. Almost everybody would choose to act in their own selfish interests. Realising that nobody understands the implications of their actions and would choose short term solutions is a black pill hiding in plain sight. It's our Gulag Archipelago.

Shopping in Tesco without a Club card is basically unaffordable... I forgot to scan mine one time and the price was nearly triple😳

I once went to Tesco but at the checkout, when asked for the Loyalty card I didn't have, and astonished at the extra price, I just left my shopping and never went back. Shop local.

Ha, half way through this video I got a Tesco advert.

I'm an old codger who's been saying this for years. Most people think I'm a crazy old coot. Good to see that I'm not the only one who is worried about big corporations getting a strangle hold on the great unwashed with their insidious and nefarious marketing strategies.

It's time for the regulators to step in. The point at which a decision to buy as not at the checkout, but at the shelf, there should be only one price per product. We're only a short step up to dynamic pricing; ohh you have lots of money, here have higher prices.... You're welcome.... Companies and the government hate us using cash, lets all start using cash...

And what's more, you can only get a bottle of beer for the real price if you buy 3 bottles. they are not saving you money, they are overcharging for buying less. And encouraging people to buy more then they need.

I threw away all supermarket loyalty cards. And about Tesco, who unjustifiably increased the price of many everyday item, I just don't shop there any longer...

Most people dont care. They don't have the capability of contemplating the consequences of this direction. Its depressing and scary. Orwell must be turning in his grave.

This sort of thing has been going on FAR longer than this makes it out to be. I worked in Grocery stores for a few Years- they regularly raise the regular prices in advance of a planned 'Sale', then drop the price down to the previous regular price and advertise it as a good deal, then when the fake sale is over the new base line is that higher price. That's just one of the shady tactics and this has been going on since at least the 50s, and probably before that. I just plain never even pay attention to sale prices, it's all the same.

I do not hold ANY loyalty cards, engage in dual pricing or use ANY apps and still use cash 😁

Cashless societies, tracking, surveillance, even bitcoin all take a tremendous amount of power because of the sheer volume of traffic. You can be certain that this has a very significant carbon footprint

People will only start caring about their data when it is too late and they will really start feeling the impact.

When I first encountered the Tesco's "club card" pricing vs regular pricing, some 2 years ago for the first time in my country, I knew that was the last ever time I'd shop there. No, thanks.

Now we see the result of not shopping at the independent retailer. In my town centre all independent suppliers of food products save a few fruit and veg shops have disappeared. It's the supermarket or starve.

In these days of inclusion and equality i find it hard to work out how the dual pricing scam is allowed to continue.

Keep cash, keep cash, keep cash!!!

Sainsburys did this about a year ago. Put lots of prices up drastically unless you had a nectar card. Its criminal imo.

There's a chain of grocery stores in my area that have an option to select "forgot my card" when using the self-checkout lane and still give all the discounted benefits. I always do this.

This has always been the problem, when individuals don't get together and stand up to people who will take advantage of them. We allow ourselves to be led, like lambs to the slaughter.

I think companies get away with it simply because noone will genuinely see “pay less for the same thing” as a bad thing until someone like you explains that noone is actually paying less, rather the price for a thing is higher for everyone and you get to choose whether you want to pay more money or to pay with your data. Videos like this are very valuable as these things are very obscure and hard to spot without crunching some numbers, so thank you for providing a valuable service to society.

Big brother is always watching

I folded my flybuys card in half and put it under the corner of fridge to stop it from wobbling.

These are the precursors of a digital ID that will connect all loyalty cards into one. The next step is that they want to hide prices and show them only when you scan them using your phone. So... prices will be adjusted to your buying power. They are doing it already with online stores. This is really wicked and it will drain all of our resources pretty soon

It’s incredibly frightening, I love my freedom so do my my kids and grandchildren it’s them I fear for

When it comes to large companies there is no money in loyalty and that goes for everything. Want to shop cheap, sales usually rotate around stores. So just shop at all of them getting the sale items you want. When a phone, internet etc contract comes to an end, go elsewhere. An entry offer is always better than a loyalty discount. And having another option gives you the teeth needed to get a better deal with the existing people.

For the moment at least, it is possible to use a Nectar card in Sainsburys without registering the card, i.e. without handing over one's details. The day this is no longer possible will be the day I start shopping elsewhere.

i live 5 minutes away from my local tesco and the way they force people into getting a clubcard via dual-pricing is borderline insane. i was there when they changed the standard £3 meal deal price to £3.40 with £3 being the clubcard price, to what it is today, £3.90 standard price with £3.40 clubcard price. i used to go and buy my meal deal every day for college. it was not “sneaky” it was clearly blatant. but hey, what can i do? i’m just a 19 year old unemployed guy who’s living with universal credit trying to save up as much money as possible while looking for a stable job. there’s no point of worrying about our data being breached when our cost of living is out of our control.

The scenario where money is deducted automatically by AI while you shop is an absolute nightmare! What happens if you change your mind before you leave the shop? How do you check or even raise a dispute resolution about it? The point of sale, has many functions, first is the last quality check before purchasing, the second is to price check items, third paying the bill so you can keep track of your financial situation. Furthermore, what happens if your child picks items up how is AI going to deal with that?

"They don't care" - is as you say - the real issue, the reason that they don't care, goes to the very heart of educational techniques utilised in schools.

These “loyalty” points also expire on a lot of these companies’ apps. So, if you don’t use them, you’ve joined for nothing. And since they expire this entices people to go back and use the points so they gain value from them. Further pushing you into their circle of control.

Nice one tom. Sleepwalking into a digital prison.

Amazon does this all the time, I have been watching a few items, and for a few hours the go up to stupid prices then later...they're 50% off, AKA same price as always.

I have zero time for these cards and apps. The less I sign up for. The less junk I receive, and the less shyte I have to keep track of.

Anything in a siupermarket with dual pricing I assume the regular price is higher than anywhere else, and so will buy it elsewhere ...

Clubcard absolutely boils my piss these days its horrible

What's particularly disappointing for me is being met with apathy when talking about big data. People tell me they already know and that it's "too late anyway". 😕

I don't use apps, don't have any loyalty cards, and always pay cash. They're not tracking *_me_*

Just watched this video. Well said young man, I'm glad not everyone these days are sheep. Keep up the good work, really enjoying your content.

This is why Heron Foods is my favourite supermarket: good prices without compromised data.

real 'wake up' education, appreciated

I don’t have those cards. And different prices are illegal here in Germany! (5he cashless society is just a small stepp if you look where we are now. Especially Britain is one of the most monitored countries in the world, with cameras everywhere in every big city (and many small ones, too). If someone wants to track you he already can see where you take your money even if it’s good old hard cash)

I wont shop at Tesco again, they listed a pizza for £3 when got to till they wanted £6. Criminal.

I did my uni dissertation on loyalty card schemes a couple years ago The premise was I would ask people’s perceptions of loyalty card schemes and I’d then tell them all the ways supermarkets use that data and asked participants if their perceptions changed… A very small percentage of people actually cared how their data was used and everyone said they wouldn’t stop using the cards as they like the discounts / points.

I'm a store use prisoner. An older, visually impaired and rural dwelling person, getting the 14 miles to the nearest town without public transport is hard enlightened I can no longer drive. We used to have decent, independent shops there, until Tesco moved in. They got a deal with the council that no other supermarket would be allowed to open up if they built a store, got that deal and then undercut everyone else, shutting most shops down. The next nearest town is 27 miles from home. Not only am I dependant on Tesco, they deliberately deliver less variety of food to the store, so we have few choices. The cheaper home delivery slots are, miraculously, unavailable before the new availability list goes up, so it takes £6.00+ out of my limited food budget to use it and the items went are often quite close to use by date, so not fresh and what little meat and bacon I can afford is fatty, presumably what they know in store shoppers would reject. I've grown to dislike Tesco so much, but have nowhere else I can get to to shop.

I went into Tesco one time. Didn't have "loyalty" card so didn't buy bottle of gin for £24 (£19 on "loyalty"). Went into Sainsbury's and same bottle of gin £19 normal price. That's when I ditched the loyalty scam. Shop around, it's a hustle. I'm buying a car soon and getting my boxing gloves on ffs.

The Tesco thing is definitely underhand but most people know there's no such thing as a free lunch and are happy to give their data for discounts or recommendations, for example RU-vid recommended this video to me because I watchted a video about consumer protections the other day, it's a trade-off

As a data analyst I have no problem with companies using my data to improve their services, what I have a problem with is them simply selling our data without us getting anything back

Never had one, never getting one. Same applies to credit cards....there is no such thing as a free lunch.

This was a great video and I feel like it highlights a very real issue we're facing as a society. There is one caution I would personally like to highlight though. Use of emotive terms like "people don't care" is I feel both antithetical to the message and possibly unfair to the majority of people who would feel it applies to them. For this I use myself as an example. I have a worsening and debilitating neurological condition. For me, a "cashless" system enables me to participate in and take advantage of many things that "regular" people take for granted and enrich my life significantly. So when I'm told I "don't care" about this, that isn't strictly true. I do care, but I care more about living and that quality of life being maintained as much as possible. To a lesser extent this applies to many people who (as you highlight) are struggling with a cost of living crisis and thus are very vulnerable to this sort of predatory marketing. So that's not to say you're wrong about anything you said in my view. You're very right. I think we just have to be cautious how we approach discussing this and (eventually) considering potential solutions as attacking, or more accurately making the victims of this FEEL like they're being attacked is counter productive in the long term. Thats not even to say that the way you approached this video was especially bad, but I can see some of the reactions to it taking that tone so I hope you don't take this as a slight against your work here - it was really good!

ive noticed a lot of shops starting putting them barriers at the doors does that mean theyre transitioning to a staffless app to enter type deal?

i remember when loyalty cards first came out in the 1990s a guy on the radio saying that the information they gather could be misused in the 'wrong hands' - his examples, for instance that a woman buying both alcohol and nappies could be labelled an alcoholic mother, were nothing like as sinister and dystopian as the reality. Whatever happened to common decency and self-regulation?

When all corporate entities dive into the science of getting people to pay more, and people love saying, "It's not that deep."

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The Tesco Clubcard price is not even invariably the cheapest price on a per-item or per unit mass basis. I am forever checking with a calculator to see if the Clubcard price is actually worse than the non-Clubcard price. Different packs of things need to be thoroughly checked. E.g. beer in 330ml tins, 6, 10, 24 pack, or beer in bottles 6 or 10 pack. Then when you check out, you work for the shop for 10 minutes doing their job for them.

It's funny that this video popped up for me as I was discussing basically the same thing hour's ago with a friend not because I watched or read something online it's just obvious when you step back and think about it something doesn't smell right offering two prices

My gut told me never to get a loyalty card and I wasn't 100% sure why. Now I know why thanks to this video. The exact same thing happened with the c*vid jab. Gut told me no. Now I know why.

I am trying to get my husband to ditch loyalty cards. I am loyal to no company.

I have a TESCO Clubcard not in my name/address that is used once every couple of months to buy two or three Pot Noodles, nothing else, I just hope this small effort screws up some database somewhere and messes with their data mining.

A cashless society has been impinging for a long time now. And consciously sought to enjoy the freedom now in paying cash where possible. But digital data on you is everywhere. If you read the small print T&C’s they’re all at it. To decline the terms, you end up denying your self the item or service you want, from : Microsoft, Amazon, iPhone, PlayStation, game developers, many purchases online. You end up having to choose what you want to share about yourself - almost to the point of seeking an alternate ego.

lidl near me lately introduced that 2 tier pricing model. I started to go out of my way to not buy these products if there was a "lidl app" discount on them even if they didn't increase in price beforehand and I'd have usually bought that product. It's just straight up stupid.

The issue is that people just don't understand what people mean by "data". Most people just think of search history and addresses, but it's way more than that. It's your passwords, banking info, credit card info, relationships, messages and so much more. We see it all the time in data breaches, where your banking info and everything is leaked so that someone with nefarious intentions can do whatever they want with it.

My Co Op loyalty card gives me nothing. Two pence off the total amount spent on Co op items. Pitiful is an understatement.

Tesco has 2 prices for the same product. I refuse loyalty cards so have to pay more, how is this allowed? And I always use cash why do I want my bank knowing where I'm spending my money?

We were talking about this 20 years ago in a university class, and now, it’s way beyond ‘Tesco know when you’re having a baby’. I never thought I’d become trapped in it, but it feels impossible now to shop without a loyalty card scanned at the end, unless I am happy to pay the inflated prices.

5:27 except Coop is owned and run by their members (we get to vote and even run if we so choose to for the board of members), and profits are shared in proportion to ones spend, it's a necessity because the Cooperative otherwise won't know how much you've spent to determine your allocation. The Cooperative doesn't have any private shareholders or investors, it belongs solely to the members, we harvest our own data for our own benefit. The other businesses have private owners and shareholders to whom they're accountable to.

So your latest video came up first on my recommendations list because RU-vids algorithm collects & aggregates data from my viewing history,& so by definition is tracking my viewing preferences,hardware devices used to access content & device location.A LOT of data. If I chose to express my appreciation of your content by paying for a super thanks I would have to do so electronically,that’s yet more data collected on what I chose to spend money on & which electronic payment systems I prefer….data data data.There’s always a trade off sadly when it comes to business & consumer choice.I buy you a coffee & enjoy your content,I shed data along the way all of which is far more identifiable to myself personally than an unregistered physical loyalty card used in person in store alongside cash.We do still have freedom of choice to make informed decisions about how we shop for our benefit & not solely that of big business profit. I’m a single 51 yr old male with a limited income so not a great consumer or reckless spender.I use my common sense,keep an eye out for a grocery bargain & avoid egregious blatant price gouging which is all too apparent in this age of inflationary shock. Words like “evil” is pure hyperbole & diminishes the use of the word Capitalism & corp. greed sucks & is killing this planet but we also benefit from it hugely. It’s a gift horse with an insatiable appetite but can be ridden with care. Wanna know what it’s truly like to be tracked & surveilled day in day out by omnipotent sinister forces-talk to a citizen of the former GDR, have a wander around Pyongyang or for the ultimate 21st C AI powered consumer policed deep state- The PRC……

The Tesco advert that interrupted this video: Priceless 😂

Keep Cash

Asda and Sainsbury's "Aldi price match" looks great but some of the products at Asda were actually CHEAPER than Aldi, and they have increased the price of that same product to PRICE MATCH Aldi. Needs to be more exposure of this

I think I will challenge this at the checkout duel pricing must be of dubious legality.

This should be shown on mainstream TV - so interesting.

With the supermarkets in my area, I just use a copy of someone else's loyalty card (who I know) and always pay with cash. Adds to someone's else's data who doesn't mind, and I still get the discount.

If I find at the checkout that I can't pay cash then the supermarket has to very quickly return the trolley full of very perishable goods I wished to purchase to their chilled sanctuary.

The clubcard price is the true regular price. The regular price is the privacy penalty price.

So refreshing and amazing to see one of the younger generation understand the insidious moves behind the scenes, well done! When you know, you know!

As someone who embraced the switch to practically everything digital, this video has certainly changed my mindset of it all! I'm definitely going to change a few things in my day to day life now 🤔

You ever get the feeling in Tesco's that the staff are really prison guards? I do.

I have no loyalty schemes. I will not participate in them.

"help me out as its a new channel" I thought this video came from a channel with 100s of thousands of subscribers, not less than 10k! Keep up the good work

Co-op membership is unique, making you shareholder of the company.