News:
CASPIAN Activists Update:
Tools You Can Use:
"Shares of Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. tumbled in Tuesday trading after Standard & Poor's said it would drop the grocery store chain from its S&P 500 index..."
While many things influence a company's stock price, customer satisfaction is a crucial factor. Customers "vote" with their dollars -- if they don't like a company's practices, they'll take their money to a competitor. Since 2/3 of shoppers dislike grocery cards, it's not surprising that Winn-Dixie's woes accelerated shortly after the chain introduced its "Bonus" card. (We know you left in droves, because you wrote to tell us about it.)
Your persistence is having a dramatic effect, thanks to all of you who've switched from Winn-Dixie stores to privacy-friendly, card-free grocers like Publix. Meanwhile, Publix is doing GREAT and laughing all the way to the bank. Hooray!
Tell Winn Dixie
what they're doing wrong:
Web form: http://www.winn-dixie.com/comments/main.asp
Postal mail: Frank Lazaran President & CEO, Winn
Dixie,
5050 Edgewood Court, Jacksonville, FL 32254-3699
Thank Publix for being card-free:
http://www.publix.com/contact/SendUsAMessage.do
Publix Super Markets Corporate Office
ATTN: Consumer Relations, PO Box 407
Lakeland, FL 33802-0407
To smile over Publix' Success:
http://www.publix.com/about/newsroom/NewsReleaseItem.do?newsReleaseItemPK=975
To read about
Winn Dixie's troubles:
AP via Forbes, 11/30/04
http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/feeds/ap/2004/11/30/ap1682007.html
The same week Winn Dixie went into freefall, one of our other favorite card-free chains, HEB supermarkets, got a great writeup in the Wall Street Journal. HEB is a privately-owned, 300-store chain in Texas that listens to its customers and doesn't have a surveillance card either. Funny how customer-friendly, card-free chains like HEB (and Publix, above) are thriving, while the bloated, data-grabbing card store dinosaurs are struggling to compete. Keep up the smart shopping, Texans!
Source: WSJ & Morning News Beat
http://www.morningnewsbeat.com/archives/2004/12/01.html#MNB1
Stop by and thank HEB: http://www.heb.com/welcome/contactUs.jsp
Thanksgiving to Christmas sales make up almost one-fourth of Wal-Mart's annual retail sales. But this year Wal-Mart has had to lower its forecasts after a poor Thanksgiving-week showing. Spokeswoman Sharon Weber said:
"We have learned from this and will move quickly to respond to what our customer has told us during the rest of the holiday season."
With the Winn-Dixie example as inspiration, now would be a good time to remind Wal-Mart that keeping customers happy isn't only about prices. (Remember, Wal-Mart is almost single-handedly driving the RFID spychips agenda.)
Write: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611
Call: 1-800-WAL-MART (Remember, your phone number is visible when you dial an
800 number.)
For privacy, call: 479-273-4000
Source: PlanetRetail
http://www.planetretail.net/administration/emailcenter/Ref.asp?ID=8084&How=11121
With so much personal information being stored corporate and government web sites, sold to businesses and database-compilers, and "protected" with inadequate security, it's little wonder we have a problem with identity theft. Of course, the key is not to give out your private information in the first place. But for friends and family members who need a basic primer, Forbes has a crash course on personal data security practices:
Forbes.com, 11/22/04
http://www.forbes.com/home/personalfinance/2004/11/22/cx_sr_1122idprevention.html
(One tip is to review your credit report periodically.
This week's "Tools You Can Use" section below tells how to do that
for free.)
California and Oregon hope to track cars to extract every possible penny of tax from drivers. A California lawmaker who opposes the scheme explains:
"The bureaucrats are thinking about charging us a tax on each mile we drive, and they are thinking about sticking a GPS tracker in our cars to find out how many miles we drive and on which roads we drive them. Let's forget about the problem with the government knowing everywhere we drive (a big privacy problem), think about how stupid this idea is..."
This is all about MONEY. And does anyone really believe the information gathered will be used only for taxation purposes, or that it will be discarded after the tax is paid? The scariest part is that when a state as big as California mandates something, it often spreads to the rest of the country.
Source: The Village News Network, 12/03/04
http://www.thevillagenewsnetwork.com/?template=00200&si=3269&displaytype=0
Loading survey questions to bias the results toward a particular position is nothing new. British Home Secretary David Blunkett seems to take it to a new low, though, asking this question about the proposed British national ID card:
"Do you welcome plans to tackle organised crime, illegal immigration, benefit fraud and national security through the introduction of ID cards?"
As The Register put it, "If that isn't stacking the decks, we don't know what is." This is an excellent reminder to be very careful interpreting poll results, particularly when the original questions aren't reported.
Source: The Register, 12/1/04
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/01/id_survey/
"Stored value" cards can be reloaded, but not cashed in for any remaining balance after a purchase. That can translate into easy profit for the company, as the president of a company called Back Yard Burgers admits:
"President Michael Myers says he likes them because 64 percent of those who get a gift card will spend above the amount on the card."
Companies testing or selling such cards include Dunkin' Donuts, Chili's, McDonald's, Panera Bread, and, of course, Starbucks.
"... the success of the Starbucks Card...accounted for 11 percent of Starbucks' North American revenue in fiscal 2004....In a new, likely to be lucrative holiday twist, Starbucks started a program that lets parents reload kids' Starbucks cards monthly, tied to a bank card."
So now Starbucks can keep a record of someone's purchases, link it with someone else's bank account information, and pound yet another nail into the coffin of cash -- all through one little card. How convenient for the Food Police to someday enforce anti-obesity laws. (And will regulation of caffeine be far behind?)
By the way, if you missed last week's newsletter, our holiday gift-giving advice was to give cash, not gift cards. We oppose gift cards because they lock the recipient into a single store, encourage overspending to get full value from the card, reveal personal information, and link individuals to each other in databases. Cash is a far more considerate and anonymous gift.
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times, 11/30/04
http://www.citizen-times.com/cache/article/food/71585.shtml
Despite the huge push from retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco, and Metro, it seems high costs and skepticism around the technology (not to mention overwhelming consumer opposition) are limiting RFID deployment -- for now at least. But if it's true we've got only ten years of freedom and privacy left, let's use them wisely.
Sources: eWeek, 12/1/04
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1734391,00.asp
Here's a Christmas gift you won't see under our tree this year. Little Tikes is targeting children with RFID technology through the "MagiCook Kitchen," a toy featuring RFID tags embedded in plastic food to trigger sound effects. Since the RFID industry can't get item-level RFID into our toothpaste, they must have decided to kill two birds with one chi--er, stone, and go straight for the toys. Not only are toys a vast, untapped market, but by making RFID look innocuous, toymakers can condition the next generation to accept tags that can track, monitor, and report on their activities.
The MagiCook Kitchen is made by Newell/Rubbermaid. (Yes, that Rubbermaid.) This company deserves a flood of letters, as well as a boycott of all their products. If any of you creative types want to make an anti-Little Tikes website, we'll publicize it here.
http://www.popgadget.net/2004/11/little-tikes-rfid-kitchens.html
http://www.littletikes.com/toys/Toys-List.aspx?Page=1&Keyword=RFID
Contact Little Tikes:
Little Tikes, 2180 Barlow Road, Hudson, OH 44236
(330) 650-3000
The latest trend in anti-customer retailing is refusing to accept returned merchandise from customers deemed to have already returned too many items. Imagine standing in a store with faulty merchandise, holding a receipt, and being told, "Sorry, you've made too many returns already, Mrs. Smith, we won't take this item back."
This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. The long term plan is to charge different prices for different customers depending on their purchase history, and ultimately, to screen shoppers at the door to keep the "low profit" ones out altogether. This is what we get for over a decade of identifying ourselves and our shopping histories to retailers. It's time to put a stop to it.
The Washington Post, 11/07/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30908-2004Nov6.html
Founder Katherine Albrecht spent a busy week doing radio interviews and fielding reporter queries. Journalists covered the RFID-in-passports debacle, were shocked at our revelation that Mexican government chipping numbers had been vastly inflated, and took a closer look at the VeriChip. For a sampling, see these articles from The Register, EE Times, St. Petersburg Times and Internet News:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/30/mexican_verichip_hype/
http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=54200463
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/11/28/Business/Scannable_humans_comp.shtml
http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3441721
Applied Digital Solutions, the company that makes the VeriChip human RFID implant, has a very shady past. For an expose (in which CASPIAN played a key role), see:
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2004-11-25/news/news.html
"Thanks for this wonderful information. I'm happy to pass it on every time to friends here in the US and also to a friend in Europe. I appreciate your efforts and take your suggestions seriously. My three nephews will not be getting Best Buy gift cards for Christmas, I'll give them the cash."
- CASPIAN member Laura
"I certainly hope your clear-sighted action with regard to eliminating 'loyalty' cards spreads....I feel under siege in our local 'savers club' store and have not shopped there in the five years they have had the program."
- J, Illinois
"I write to top management of all stores who switch to cards telling them I will no longer shop there. I also write to top management of all stores that I hear of who are considering going to cards telling them that I will no longer shop there if they do. Card stores can't give me a genuine bargain without compromising my privacy."
- New CASPIAN member, Bette, in Washington
"An article in...New Scientist magazine (Nov27-Dec3, Vol 184, No 2475) entitled 'The phone that knows you better than you do' discusses research being done at MIT. They are using Bluetooth equipped phones and a central database to track and predict not only your location but also your activities and who you are with..... I find this type of spying on people's activities much more frightening the RFID chips. Having a private database that knows where I am, who I'm with and what I am supposedly doing is about as Orwellian as it gets."
- New CASPIAN member in Oregon
See: http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/phones/phones.jsp?id=23862700
"I have been installing locks, alarms, etc for many years to protect people's privacy and property. Electronic intrusion is a very big threat to our democracy, because it inhibits people from thinking and acting according to their conscience."
- New CASPIAN member William, in Wyoming
CASPIAN member Jeff, in California, writes:
"... you wrote that PW Markets has dropped their loyalty card program. Did you study their site, visit their store(s), or just read their press release? I think you've been had."
CASPIAN Associate Director John Vanderlippe responds:
Like a lot of stores, PW appears to be continuing the card program if you want to donate a portion of your purchase to a school through "escrip.com." But I see no indication that a card is REQUIRED in any way to get a discount or otherwise. Here's what it says on PW's page:
"We have listened to you! We've made saving at PW Markets easier than ever! Since we opened our doors in 1943 we've prided ourselves in listening to our customers. So when you told us that you didn't want the extra hassle of a club card we heard you loud and clear. Now you can take advantage of the PW special savings every day without the fuss of a card. Life shouldn't be complicated, so save time and save money at PW today!
Continue to use your PW Value Card to maintain your support
for eScrip and your purchases will support the non-profit
organization of your choice"
"Depending upon the state the card was purchased, there is another entity that profits from unredeemed gift cards: the state. In New Jersey, an "escheat" (state acquisition of dormant accounts after a set period of time) was recently extended to store gift cards. Although the store might pocket the interest from the money held on the unredeemed cards, the state gets the face value of the card eventually. In any case, the recipient doesn't get anything. (There is a provision for reclaiming the money later on but most people won't know how to do it or have the necessary documents, such as the sales receipt for the card, to file a claim with the state.)"
- CASPIAN staff member J.D.
The latest trend in anti-customer retailing is refusing
to accept returned merchandise from customers deemed to have returned too many
items in the past. Have you had a recent experience where a store refused to
process a return? Tell us about it!
GET YOUR PRIVACY PROJECT
ANNOUNCED HERE!
We'd like to feature things CASPIAN members are doing to help increase awareness
of important consumer privacy issues. Recently, we featured Australian member
Shaun Saunders' excellent book, "Mallcity 14" (available at http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=6169).
If you have a web site with a page or section related to consumer privacy; if
you're planning a protest or some other activism; or if you're working on a
project and want to get help or announce it -- let us know and we'll help spread
the word. Email your contributions to Sunni, at sunni -at- nocards -dot- org,
preferably with "activist update" as the subject so your message won't
be filtered as junk.
A federally-mandated program to give eligible individuals free annual credit reports has begun. In usual government fashion, though, it isn't available to all individuals yet -- just those who live in the western U.S. To request your report, or find out when your state will begin participating in the program, please see:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/
CASPIAN: Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion
and Numbering
Opposing supermarket "loyalty" cards and other retail surveillance
schemes since 1999
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