Big Brother at the Supermarket

* When supermarket “club cards� appeared last year, the privacy concerns were immediately obvious to me [“What Price Loyalty?� Feb. 7].

I too came up with the analogy of the neighborhood grocery of my youth, where buying patterns were known and catering to them was considered good service. (I have the impression that many of the people who worry so much about privacy are very young and have certainly never lived in a small town.) We decided that since we had nothing to hide about our groceries, we would participate.

The only flaw in this modern, computerized version of customer service is that while it reveals to a grocer what we are buying, it does not tell him what we are buying from somebody else, and why.

We have cards from two supermarkets. It would be more convenient to shop at only one store rather than two each weekend, but when Supermarket A does not carry a product that we want, we get it at Supermarket B. We do the same when one has a product of better quality than the other. The result is that the database at one company says we never buy such-and-such a product while the other thinks that we are one of their best customers for it.

While there is doubtless some useful data obtained from this tracking, it shows only what the customers like. It cannot replace surveying them and also finding out what they dislike.

CHARLES H. SAMPSON

San Diego

*

The first time a checker at Vons wouldn’t sell me grapes for 99 cents a pound without getting my Social Security number was the last time I shopped there. Ralphs is no better. Hughes is gone. Now I shop exclusively at Trader Joe’s.

Ironically, my quest to maintain my privacy has an upside. At TJ’s, the people recognize me and are friendly, whereas only the big chains’ computers had any idea who I was.

I told a store manager at Ralphs that I wouldn’t shop there if they kept inflating prices to nonmembers to try to force them to join. He admitted he didn’t like it either and that he shopped at Albertsons himself. ‘Nuff said.

LARRY HERBST

Pasadena