The stores are getting wiser about this. My local Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand now) has a fuel rewards program -- for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your next fillup. Given how expensive groceries are, a lot of people are saving more like 50 cents per gallon, not 4.
They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase.
If it really were just 4 cents a gallon, I expect less people would bother. But it's not. The stores are steadily increasing the penalty for shopping without a loyalty card.
It's a shitty psychological trick that Fred Meyer pulled off.
People think shopper cards save money, and while it's technically true, it's the wrong framing of what's happening. What's really happening is that the store requires the card to get sale prices.
In other words, Fred Meyer creating the shopper card did not create additional savings. It just started gatekeeping sales behind data collection.
Or another one: when you use a savings card, you trade some of your data for a couple bucks off.
(While on that note: in many countries – pretty much everywhere I've been, actually – you can just get a new savings card every couple months, or get a few and round-robin them and replace every couple months etc. Just fill out the sign up form with some garbage data and you're good to go.)
So what are they doing with the loyalty card data? Nothing? Is it all just a mental trick to get me not to go elsewhere?
Also if they were thinking they could have bluetooth beacons at the registers to track cash users that have bluetooth enabled.
Also they have cameras looking at every checkout line. They implemented them originally to observe when lines got too backed up so they could automate sending out more cashiers. They could move to facial recognition of they really wanted. Not sure if they do that now.
Since the register already priced my bill higher at the time I swiped my card and then dropped the price, I have to assume it's the former.
That said ... paying electronically is so convenient, damn it.
(haven't been to Germany)
For debts. Steal it, get caught, be ordered to pay restitution. Then your legal tender argument will make sense.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_tender
Various laws may exist elsewhere enforcing a requirement to accept cash (or not, depending on the jurisdiction). But an appeal to "legal tender" isn't going to cut it. Legal tender for what? For debt.
In most other regular shops on the other hand, you'll only enter into the actual contract the moment you pay for the goods, so unless your jurisdiction has a specific law mandating the acceptance of cash in that kind of situation (like e.g. New York city I think?), the merchant is perfectly free to simply refuse entering into a contract with you.
[1] With the caveat that depending on the jurisdiction the shop owner may fully legally put up a sign along the lines of "No cash payment" and in that case it's you who are in breach of contract in the first point. Maybe if you then get sued for non-payment you can pay cash through the court system, but that certainly wouldn't be a pleasant way of paying by cash.
Yes, but the interpretation is that you picking up a bottle of milk or whatever in a supermarket or elsewhere doesn't yet make a contract and that the goods haven't actually legally changed hands at that point.
It's only when you're presenting your chosen goods at the register that you're legally making an offer to buy those goods, and unless there's a law specifically mandating cash acceptance for shops, the merchant (as represented by the cashier or a self-service checkout machine) is free to simply refuse your contract offer. And because in that case no contract was ever successfully made, there's no debt, either, and the concept of legal tender doesn't even enter into it…
Germans have a certain paranoia. I understand where it comes from but how are you ever going to move on if you hold these beliefs so tightly?
In some ways we're already seeing the foreshadowing of this in some of the previously most liberal places on Earth, like Canada. Even if one may not agree with what the truckers were protesting about, it seems unconscionable to freeze people's bank accounts as punishment for engaging in, or supporting, a completely and genuinely peaceful protest. [1]
[1] - https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy...
Japan though, now there's a place where cash only shops are still prevalent.
We were hitting cash only places all the time there, whereas in Germany I found that cash only became rare during the pandemic.
Hell, even recharging the IC cards in Japan had to be done using cash at a machine. Why can't you use a debit card? Who knows.
I love it. I drove to Germany to have the maintenance done, change the tires and renew the extended manufacturer warranty for two years on my german car (extended warranty which I need to pay for) and it was a hefty bill. I pulled a bit more than 3 000 EUR in cash and they were just used to it. As in: a totally normal occurrence.
I did it basically to test if it was true that cash was king in Germany: I had credit and debit cards in backup just in case. But cash just worked.