Cllrs voice concern overretailers’ ‘discriminatory’ use of loyalty club cards

The system in which supermarkets and pharmacies offering rewards or club cards in loyalty schemes is a “coercive practice that unfairly discriminates” between one kind of consumer and another, an independent councillor has told Meath Co Council.

Loyalty cards or tokens have been in use since the 1920s when coupons were printed on the boxes or packaging of products. Customers would cut out the coupons, collect them and later redeem them for rewards. Today, many of us have the “convenience” of having loyalty cards on our phones.

However, Cllr Golden, supported by another independent councillor Gillian Toole, claims that the reward cards place an “extra rigidity” on a sale of goods. He said he compared the price of a number of items including a bottle of water, washing powder, cereal, coffee and MiWadi and the club card price was €22.95 while the non-club card price was €36.89, almost €14 difference in the price. “That is not fair. It is exploiting people. It is forcing people to adopt these systems”.

The real purpose of these systems was the collection of data on the consumer, data that can be sold on. It was not right that people could be coerced in this way, he said. “And I was shocked to hear that a pharmacy is now doing this. It’s a poor practice and it needs to stop”.

Cllr Toole, who is a pharmacist, said she would take the matter up with the Irish Pharmaceutical Union.

Labour Cllr Elaine McGinty said what the supermarkets in particular were doing was “mining data”. She believed that data protection legislation should be used to control the practice. Every purchase a person made was being logged and this was wrong.

Cllr Golden’s notice of motion that the Government and regulators should ban the practice of “dual discriminatory” pricing of goods by means of a membership system such as rewards clubs or cards.