"Loyalty cards"

[fiestaforevertilnow]

Today DH and I called in to an independent farm shop on our way back from holiday. You know the kind, v. posh and expensive but lovely stuff.

We pick up some bits and bobs and I saw a basket of yummy looking cakes, but no prices. I asked and a lady dug out a price label on a stand and stood it by the cakes.

£2.29.
Loyalty card members £1.99

AIBU to think this is a piss take? Tescos do it to harvest information about you so I can totally understand the logic, but a posh place in the (almost) middle of nowhere? What on earth would they gain from me having a loyalty card? I live about 100 miles away! They actually did themselves out of a sale because had they not have had that sign I probably would have paid the £2.29 but didn't on principle!

Anyone else agree?

Wouldn't have bothered me tbh. Either price seems cheap for cake!

If it's a tourist area they probably do it to encourage locals to be loyal.
I lived in a tourist town for a few years. There were shops I sometimes avoided because they were always really busy and you had to queue behind a bucket load of people who didn't speak much English and didn't understand British £s.
But that was a bit annoying because often they were to closest shop for fairly basic products.
A local only loyalty card might have encouraged me a bit more.

So a real loyalty card to reward regular customer, not a backdoor attempt to gather private information about you and sell it to third parties. But you are happy with the latter and not the former. I don’t follow your logic.

Well, that was cutting your nose off to spite your face! It's obviously to encourage return visits and incentivise customers to return.

I know! They missed out to make a point over 30p!

I wish our farmshop had loyalty schemes like that, since it's priced for tourists and we use it weekly!

This, over and over again

Or just.., join the loyalty programme?

i couldn’t find it in myself to get worked up about this. A system to incentivise people to become return customers to an independent business isn’t something I would disagree with.
Not buying cake on principle despite wanting cake… that I disagree with 😂

can't say any better

I think you just did yourself out of some cake for no good reason. Most visitors to the farm shop will be like you - people on holiday or on a trip. They wint be repeat visitors. The farm shop needs to eep business flowing, and incentivise repeat visitors, so creates the loyalty card. It's not high-level economics, it's just cheap cake for locals.

What sort of cake was it?

That's quite clever of them as it's effectively going to give people who live nearby and could become regular/semi regular customers a bit of a discount and hopefully they'll also shop there all year round when there's no/fewer tourists during quieter times of year.

Then most tourists won't bother signing up for a loyalty card, and if it's only a one off visit, it's only going to cost them a small amount more anyway.

I agree - it doesn't make sense.

Why didn’t you ask them about signing up to their loyalty card scheme if it’d bothered you that much? Where I live, such schemes are free to sign up to, and you may well be passing that way in the future!

I also need to know what cake it was

Just me then!

TBH not buying was probably better for my (non existent) waistline. I just think that if all stores start doing this I will be overwhelmed with bloody cards!