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donnay
06-27-2013, 06:37 AM
Never Give Stores Your ZIP Code. Here's Why

Why do merchants sometimes ask us for our ZIP code when we buy something?

I recently visited the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, an interesting addition to Sin City’s attractions. I paid my admission with a credit card, prompting the museum ticket seller to ask me: “What’s your ZIP code?”

When I paused for a moment, she added: “It’s for marketing purposes.”

As much as I had heard good things about the museum, I was unlikely to return soon as I live far from Las Vegas, so I was not anxious to receive subsequent marketing. She said it was okay not to give the ZIP code, and then addressed me by name in wishing me a good visit.

Jo Anna Davis remembers one ZIP code request that did not end well. A California victim of domestic violence who works at a group to help other victims, she guards her privacy carefully. Over the years she became a loyal customer of Ulta, the beauty care company. On one occasion she purchased a skin care kit which caused an unpleasant reaction. She brought the kit back to the store for a refund, and the clerk asked for Davis’ ZIP code to process the transaction.

Concerned about her privacy, she declined to provide the information, prompting the clerk to remark that no one had ever refused before. The clerk called the manager, who showed irritation. Davis asked for her receipt back, the manager refused, so she took it herself. An argument ensued. The manager locked the store’s door and demanded it back. “It was absolutely insane. I’m sure I looked rather crazy myself,” Davis says.

The whole scene emerged only because Davis did not want to share her ZIP code. Why make such a big deal over five digits that only records that someone lives in the same area as many thousands of others? Because along with other information, the ZIP code may provide the final clue to figuring out your address, phone number and past purchasing details, if a sales clerk sees your name while swiping your credit card.

How does this work? In one of their brochures, direct marketing services company Harte-Hanks describes the GeoCapture service they offer retail businesses as follows: “Users simply capture name from the credit card swipe and request a customer’s ZIP code during the transaction. GeoCapture matches the collected information to a comprehensive consumer database to return an address.” In a promotional brochure, they claim accuracy rates as high as 100%.

Fair Isaac Corp., a company best known for its FICO credit scores, also offers a similar service which they say can boost direct marketing efforts by as much as 400%. “FICO Contact Builder helps you overcome the common challenges of gathering contact information from shoppers—such as complicating or jeopardizing the sales process by asking for an address or phone number, or complying with regulations,” it says. “It requires minimal customer information captured at point-of-sale, just customer name or telephone number and the customer or store ZIP code.”

Because customers are usually not told that stores are building a marketing database from the transactions, some object.

In one high-profile case, the home furnishings and cookware chain Williams-Sonoma matched names from its credit card sales and ZIP codes with a database to obtain addresses and other information for future marketing. One woman sued, saying she provided her ZIP code thinking it was necessary to complete the credit card transaction. In the resulting case the Direct Marketing Association and privacy groups showed sharply different outlooks on the practice. The case eventually made its way up to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in 2011 that stores cannot require patrons to furnish their ZIP code. California later confirmed the ruling in a law that bars firms from collecting personally identifying information during credit card transaction. Courts in other states such as Massachusetts earlier this year have reviewed the issue.

As for Ulta, I contacted Cynthia Payne, the company’s senior vice president of store operations, to ask about Jo Anna Davis’s experience. “It is extremely disappointing for me to know that we have lost a valuable customer and that the service in any one of my stores was less than stellar,” Payne said. She added the company seeks to provide an exceptional guest experience and she offered to contact Davis to undo the damage from that visit.

Just because businesses ask for a ZIP code does not necessarily mean that they will append data to their files to know where you live, your phone number, email and other information. The process costs money, and unless they have a way to market off the data, there would be no reason to do it.

Ashley Misko, the Mob Museum’s director of marketing, did not observe to the code of omerta when I asked what the year-and-a-half old museum does with its customer ZIP codes. She said they do not cross reference names and ZIP codes with other data, but just try to understand where their visitors are coming from.

“Ultimately, understanding how our patrons are finding out about us, which marketing/advertising efforts are affecting them, will give us the ability to make important decisions about our advertising resources and ZIP codes play a huge role in identifying that source,” she said. “We strictly utilize the information we receive to better understand the demographics of the market of those specific ZIP codes.”

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/06/19/theres-a-billion-reasons-not-to-give-stores-your-zip-code-ever/

KEEF
06-27-2013, 06:43 AM
WOW! ...and all this time I thought it was to help prevent identify threat if someone were to steal my credit card. Since the credit card company already has that info from me, the incorrect zip would send up a read flag to the credit card company. But then I guess a bunch of red flags would fly when you consider how many people move.

fisharmor
06-27-2013, 07:05 AM
Yeah, I think the reason people get so pissed is because they're basically not doing anything constructive with the info.
Here's something I read by Orson Scott Card (who is a state cheerleader in addition to a SciFi author, but still makes some salient points once in a while):
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-04-15-1.html


Neighborhood Stores
Mixed-use neighborhoods need grocery stores or they will not work.

The trouble is, with cars ruling our lives, the giant supergroceries make us drive farther and farther because they offer a better selection at a competitive price. Nobody wants to return to the tiny corner grocery.

We don't have to. We already have all the pieces in place for a new retail model that will affect, not just grocery stores, but most retail outlets.
Computers make it possible.

At the moment, grocery stores are doing almost nothing with the data they collect using their frequent shopper cards. They know which stores we shop at and what we buy. But they still don't use that information to tailor their grocery stores to fit the neighborhood and the shoppers.

Idiotically, they still make decisions about what to stock based on the big numbers, as if they were still doing their figures on paper with quill pens. They could develop just-enough stocking practices that would allow small neighborhood stores to stock only what they actually sell to regular customers, plus a little more of the most popular items for walk-in trade.

They could make special-ordering quick and easy, using the internet, so that customers can get extra quantities for special occasions. The profitable corner grocery is easily within our reach.

In fact, we could have grocery stores every few blocks -- competing on quality of tailored service as well as price and selection. Those regular-customer cards could become memberships or subscriptions that bring the privilege of having the things you buy regularly always in stock for you.
Regular customers could easily be rewarded for letting the store know when they'll be out of town so they won't be making their regular purchases. They would come to think of it as their grocery store, with far higher loyalty.

Grocery stores are the foundation of neighborhood retail. Once they're in place, you have a neighborhood; until then, you don't. But the corner grocery model, with just-enough stock management, would quickly be adopted by other stores.

What we have to remember is that the superstores that kill neighborhood retail are actually subsidized to a shocking degree because we build roads for them. They don't have to build into the prices of their goods the tax money we spend building and maintaining the roads that lead to those stores. Just one more way government action encourages counterproductive retail.

If we figured into the price of what we buy from them the cost of gas and the value of the time we spend driving there, they could not compete with chains that maintain small, walkable local stores with just-enough stock.

With sidewalks, it would be easy to design carts that we could take home; with membership in the local grocery store, we could have the right to take a mini-cart home and bring it back.

I know, you're thinking, "No way can I fit all my groceries into a cart to take home." But remember, that's because you hate driving to the grocery so much that you buy vast quantities of everything all at once so you can avoid taking more trips (though you still go right back for the stuff you forgot, don't you?)

Neighborhood groceries would be so easy to get to that we would make more visits and buy less each time.

Besides, neighborhood stores make delivery practical again. It would be a great job for some of those teenagers who aren't getting killed in cars anymore; their wages would be paid for out of the money saved by not having to overstock all the most popular items, and out of the lower cost of operating a smaller store compared to the amount of stock flowing through it.

Even stores like Home Depot and WalMart can adopt a neighborhood model. Well-designed online catalogues that allow you to place orders that are delivered to your local store are a step in the right direction. Large items would be delivered directly to your home, but not from some faraway location. Because as the neighborhood shops take away traffic from the big box stores, they will evolve into the shipping points for local deliveries.

Meanwhile, with small stores taking up little street frontage (and banks completely banned from taking up street space), the groceries and mini-WalMarts and mini-Macy's, with their just-enough computerized stock management, will still serve as "anchors" to draw people out onto the retail streets where tiny shops will have a chance to thrive without paying the ridiculous, unfair premiums that they currently pay to get space at the mall.
You did know about that, right? The little shops in the mall pay far higher rent, per square foot, than the big anchors. That's because, presumably, the big anchor stores draw the customers that also feed the small shops.

So right now the little guy is paying the big guy's bills. In our mini-downtowns, though, the big stores won't need subsidies to attract them. They'll locate their small stores in every neighborhood retail center because that's where the customers are.

<< statist garbage removed >>

In addition, all those little shops will have commercial space one flight up -- offices and so on -- and residential on the two floors above that. People will live downtown in housing that ranges from inexpensive to luxurious. It's the retail that makes it desirable and affordable; and it's the residents right there who make the shops, especially the small-footprint grocery stores, viable.


THIS is why people hate getting their info collected - because they're not getting anything from it other than a sales pitch.
If they told us that they were collecting data to be able to better stock the walk-in store which is two blocks from your house, would any of you balk at the idea of their collecting info?

But no, instead they're taking the Orwellian approach, and locking people in the building whenever they refuse.
People hate this because deep down, they know that these places could be offering a better service at a low price, but they're choosing to treat us like sheep instead.

Warlord
06-27-2013, 07:07 AM
TELL THEM NOTHING!

AFPVet
06-27-2013, 07:08 AM
WOW! ...and all this time I thought it was to help prevent identify threat if someone were to steal my credit card. Since the credit card company already has that info from me, the incorrect zip would send up a read flag to the credit card company. But then I guess a bunch of red flags would fly when you consider how many people move.

As a victim of identity theft (three times), yeah, I agree. They use other information anyways. If you shop online, guess what, they sell certain private information that pop up on those ad tabs on different websites you visit. There was a movie a few years ago that showed a guy walking into a mall and advertisements were jumping out at him based on his spending pattern. This kind of marketing isn't going away—nor is it really a big deal. If businesses can offer product advertisements geared to a specific demographic, it really does help them out. Oh, and by the way, your credit card company already has your spending habits on file (they used this as a part of fraud monitoring).

CPUd
06-27-2013, 07:08 AM
Zip submits don't pay like they used to. 3 or 4 yrs ago, you could get well over $1, you can't even get half that nowadays.

randpaul2016
06-27-2013, 09:30 AM
one reason why I wont major in business MARKETING

administration/management for me idk how I could deal with marketing knowing what I am actually doing

BAllen
06-27-2013, 09:43 AM
Never pay for a pc printer with a card. Some of them can trace down anything you print from it. Always pay cash.

Zippyjuan
06-27-2013, 02:12 PM
Just because businesses ask for a ZIP code does not necessarily mean that they will append data to their files to know where you live, your phone number, email and other information. The process costs money, and unless they have a way to market off the data, there would be no reason to do it.

Ashley Misko, the Mob Museum’s director of marketing, did not observe to the code of omerta when I asked what the year-and-a-half old museum does with its customer ZIP codes. She said they do not cross reference names and ZIP codes with other data, but just try to understand where their visitors are coming from.

Has anybody ever been contacted or received advertising from a store where they gave a zipcode number to?


With sidewalks, it would be easy to design carts that we could take home; with membership in the local grocery store, we could have the right to take a mini-cart home and bring it back.

I used to work in a grocery store- we wouild lose lots of carts- especially on holidays. They cost us over $200 apiece to replace- hard to believe but true. On such a plan, many, even if members would "forget" to bring their cart back and want to "borrow" another one which costs the store even more money.

KEEF
06-27-2013, 02:18 PM
As a victim of identity theft (three times), yeah, I agree. They use other information anyways. If you shop online, guess what, they sell certain private information that pop up on those ad tabs on different websites you visit. There was a movie a few years ago that showed a guy walking into a mall and advertisements were jumping out at him based on his spending pattern. This kind of marketing isn't going away—nor is it really a big deal. If businesses can offer product advertisements geared to a specific demographic, it really does help them out. Oh, and by the way, your credit card company already has your spending habits on file (they used this as a part of fraud monitoring).

Thanks for the lesson, and to quote the old G.I.Joe cartoon from the 1980's "Now I know... and knowing is half the battle."