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I've never liked Target for its intrusive tracking of customer spending through their branded credit cards and other loyalty card schemes, because those never add any value for me.

They give you 5% off your purchase when you use the card. I consider it a fair trade in value given how much I spend there.

That "intrusive" tracking...I don't know if I feel the same. You're in their store. If they choose to watch how you shop there, you can stay or you're free to walk. They can't forcibly drop items into my basket...yet. If I choose to buy something personal that I feel Target shouldn't remember or relay to others, I'll pay cash.

This reminds of a story that ran in the news last year.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...

It is not ok for a retail company to profile your underage daughter, find out that she is probably pregnant (before you do!) and then do targeted advertisement. That is wrong and more than a little creepy.

In fairness, they probably didn't know she was underage. They just knew someone in the house was likely pregnant.

They've since stopped sending pure "baby" coupons and instead mix those in with other coupons to avoid the creepy factor.

And this has never happened in small towns where merchants know everyone's business and gossip. There's always a backchannel of data when you are out in public.

The pregnant teenager outlier certainly made for an interesting and headline-worthy story. Hopefully future big data projects like this put a bit more thought into the human side of the equation, but never count on it I suppose.

Yeah... But we used to gossip about regulars and what they were buying (and why) all the time when I worked retail. We weren't as efficient as an algorithm of course, but we did use that knowledge (hunch) to recommend things as well. It's just weirder when a computer does it, rather than a person -- which is fair enough, and kinda interesting to think about!

You make some good points, hence my upvote to your reply to my comment. Replying to you here, let me respond to some of those points. I am aware that companies track my consumer behavior when I buy from their store. Amazon, of course, is very conspicuous about doing that. ("Customers who bought X also bought Y.") But Amazon's way of tracking my purchases provides a lot of added value. Some of my favorite books and other products were things I had never heard of until Amazon recommended them to me.

At an in-person store, I expect to develop a reputation with people who work there if I shop there often enough to recognize the customer service staff by sight (as I formerly did at our local Super Target). I didn't establish this context up above in my original comment, but I actually began shopping at the local Super Target three days before its official grand opening. (The grand opening was on a Sunday, but the store was open for business the Thursday before.) I bought a TV set (we had just returned to the United States from overseas, and didn't yet have a TV) and some other items from a newly hired cashier. During my conversation with the cashier (partly in Chinese, as I could see she was Chinese) the cashier was distracted, and DIDN'T RING UP the TV. So I got home, and my wife looked at the receipt and said, "How did you spend so little when you just got a TV?" We realized the TV wasn't listed on the receipt. So the next day I took the TV box with its store barcodes and my receipt to the customer service desk, and apologized for walking out of the store without paying for the TV, and asked the customer service staff to ring up the TV so that I could pay for it. The customer service staff were amazed (even here in the honest upper Midwest) that I came back to the store to incur that bill. But I wouldn't think of doing otherwise. I was a little worried that the new cashier would get in trouble for that mistake, but in fact she continued to work at that Target store for at least a year afterward, so the company evidently just treated that as a human-error mistake.

After that we shopped at our local Super Target ALL THE TIME. It's a comfortable walking distance from our house, and our children learn to navigate our neighborhood in large part by taking that walk. But a few years later, new management at Target became more responsive to outside shareholders and a bean-counter mentality took over, and customer service degraded badly. That's when I chanced to purchase the "oven bakeware" that shatters if you put it in an oven to bake something. We never did get our money back on that defective product, and the hassle we received at the same customer service desk, with people we knew by sight looking on, made us feel like thieves while we were asking for legitimate customer recourse under the Uniform Commercial Code. You see, I was demonstrably NOT a thief--I was the guy who had brought the TV box back to the store specifically so that I would be billed for it. If I can't develop a reputation for honesty by being honest at the local store where I shop the most, then their corporate policies can go take a flying leap while I take my business elsewhere. Anyone in the retail business has to provide good customer service as Job One. That's how retail is done. (My sister, if I may be allowed to repeat myself, knows that from when she worked at Target.) So if the company tracking doesn't work to my benefit, I'm out of there.

I've never liked Target for its intrusive tracking of customer spending ... We have shifted THOUSANDS of dollars a year from Target, my home-town store I grew up with, to Sam's, the store everyone is inclined to decry...

I thought an important part of the "members only" business model was that they pioneered exactly the sort of tracking you mention. My understanding was that at Costco and BJ's and Sam's Club, you're required to present your membership card even if you're paying cash. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

I've always been pleasantly surprised what good luck I've had returning things at all the big-box stores: Wal-Mart (which I mostly avoid these days), Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. I wonder if it's a regional thing. It may help that I generally pay with a credit card, so I'm just asking for credit, not cash.

Of course, today, it sounds like that habit is biting me in the ass.

You actually hit the nail on the head with the regional comment. My experience in Mississippi at Home Depot and Walmart was a complete 180 from my experience in Texas. There seems to be less trust in MS.

>one of my wife's students had just given us a gift certificate for Sam's Club, and we discovered that the much-maligned Sam's Club is better about returns and about customer service in general than Target

I just want to mention something about Sam's Club here. I've asked for a Sam's Club membership for the past two Christmases, and it's been so helpful. I get boneless, skinless chicken breast for $2/lb there (!), which is about half as much as my local Publixes. Just about everything is absurdly cheap and still the same brand/quality as anywhere else, you just have to buy more of it.

Since shopping at Sam's Club, I eat way healthier than I ever have in my life - I eat a ton of vegetables for instance, just because I like them - and I still manage to hit my high caloric and macronutrient requirements for my diet/training program (which are pretty strict, can be crazy expensive), all for about $5/day.

I can't recommend them enough.

Costco is like Sam's Club but socially responsible. If you have the option, they are a much better choice.

Boneless headless chicken!