The human race never ceases to amaze me, people can take the simplest thing and, through the power of the human imagination coupled with paranoia, turn it into an imagined conspiracy worthy of another X-Files movie.
Case in point: the Safeway Card. I’ve heard all kinds of rumors surrounding it. Everything from a secret government plot to monitor how much money the American people spend on food for tax purposes to the FBI monitoring what people buy just in case they buy certain chemicals that could be used to create explosives.
Well, the fact is that any and all information obtained from the card is used by Safeway exclusively. It says right on the application that none of your personal information will be sold to any other company or distributed in any way. In fact, the only reason they even want you to put your name on the form is so the checkers can thank you by name when you shop. Other than that your name isn’t used in any way except to address any special promotions that could be mailed to you and to enter you in any contests Safeway might be holding. The only reason you are asked to give your address when you sign up is so that coupon books and other special promotions can be sent to your house. It is not used to track you as a person. As far as the card is concerned, you are nothing more than an age and a sex, and that information is combined with what you buy to be used as marketing research by the company.
So, to dispel another ugly rumor about the card, Safeway does not keep a record of what you personally buy. For example: Say that a 25-year-old man named John Smith buys a bag of peanuts. When this information is entered into Safeway’s marketing computer it doesn’t say “John Smith, age 25, Albany OR bought peanuts.” All that will go into the computer is that a 25-year-old man in Oregon bought a bag of peanuts, that’s it. So they are not monitoring what every person buys individually, they are monitoring what everyone buys as a whole.
If you still don’t want to give up your personal information to the company, that is not a problem with them. All you have to do is fill out an application and put “Safeway Shopper” as your name (or any other creative alias). A friend of mine who works there told me that some guy filled out an application and put “Stankho” as his name. Anyone fans of In Living Color should appreciate the meaning behind that alias.
I overheard one woman say to a checker that the card is just a form of discrimination, that you have to have the card to get any savings, otherwise you are just SOL. The checker carefully explained that anyone can sign up for the card. There is no age limit, no credit check, no eligibility requirements at all. Just the other day I myself saw two young girls that couldn’t have been older than 9 sign up.
But, in a way I guess it is discrimination. It’s discrimination against those people who cant take 30 seconds out of their busy schedule to fill out an application.
Another frequent complaint is that people don’t always plan when they are going to the store, so they might not always have their card with them. Safeway has figured a way around this dilemma also. If you put your phone number on your application, all you have to do is tell the checker and they can access your card that way (which, by the way, is the only reason they want your phone number). So, theoretically, you could sign up for a card, never take it to the store with you and still get all the savings.
The Safeway Card is proving to be a timesaver both for customers, who no longer have to take time to clip coupons, and for the checkers, who no longer have to take the time to scan coupons. It has also been proven to save customers extraordinary amounts of money, which is shown on the bottom of their receipt. “I’ve seen people save up to $50 on one order with the card, and savings of over $30 an order are not uncommon.” said longtime Safeway checker Leanna West. “With coupons that was a very, very rare occurrence.”
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