Re: Loyalty cards again

In article <Dklyj.16368$XI.6304@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Jette  <bosslady@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <C0lyj.16350$XI.15844@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>> Jette  <bosslady@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> Konrad Gaertner wrote:
>>>> David Friedman wrote:
>>>>> Earlier posters, discussing loyalty cards, repeatedly asserted that
the
>>>>> price with a loyalty card at a supermarket that uses them
corresponds to
>>>>> what the price would be if there were no card, the price without to
a
>>>>> higher price.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dorothy, if I correctly interpret the above, is claiming the
>>>>> opposite--that if a supermarket doesn't have a loyalty card, its
price
>>>>> corresponds to the higher price that customers would have paid
without a
>>>>> loyalty card.  I don't remember if she was one of he posters who
made
>>>>> the opposite assertion earlier.
>>>> Getting a loyalty card means you get the best price offered by that 
>>>> chain, which may or may not be better than the price offered at 
>>>> another chain (which may or may not use loyalty cards).  And next
week 
>>>> all the prices will be different.
>>>>
>>> Why not get a loyalty card for all the chains that offer them, 
>>> comparison shop, and buy whatever is lowest priced at each of them?
>> 
>> Because what's cheaper at store X than at store Y this week won't
>> be next week; and because if you prowl around from store to store
>> finding the best prices on everything you'll expend all the money
>> you saved thereby (and more) on gas, just getting there.  I have
>> in fact seen people prowling the aisles talking to their S.O.s or
>> somebody, "It's ninety-five cents here, you better get it over
>> there," but since they are thereby putting gas in TWO vehicles to
>> do their comparison shopping, I doubt they save any money either.
>> 
>
>???  Why not check the store's prices online before you go?  All the 
>big supermarket chains in the UK have websites and their instore 
>prices are listed.  There are even "comparison websites" that directly 
>compare stores for you.

Hm.  I wonder if there are any around here.  
>
>I do about 50% of my weekly shop in Asda (Walmart), then head to Lidl 
>(about 1/2 mile away) for the rest - and top up with odds and ends 
>during the week from Sainsburys or Morrisons, both of which I pass on 
>my way home from work.

You live in Scotland.  Scotland is a beautiful place; I've been
there.  It's beautiful, and it's small.

I live in the US.  The US is approximately the size of Europe,
give or take, since if you laid a scale map of the one over the
other we'd reach from Ireland and Spain at one end to the Aral
Sea at the other.

Further, I live in California, a place that was hardly settled at
all until railroads moved in (this is pretty much true of the
western half of the US), and in which ever since World War II ended
everyone has assumed that everyone has a car.

We just moved from one part of the Bay Area to another.  Before,
we did once-a-week shopping, part of it in Richmond, about five
miles away (by freeway), the remainder in Berkeley about one mile
away).  Hal works in San Ramon (about fifty miles away).  For him
to pick up something on the way home from work, he'd have to get
off the freeway (during rush hour), find a shopping center, find
a grocery store, pick up whatever he wanted, go through the
checkout line (also experiencing the rush hour, as a multitude of
commuters try to do the same thing he's trying to do on *their*
way home), and then get back onto the freeway (still in the rush
hour) and come home.  If I really needed something basic and
simple, like milk, I could go about five blocks down to the
hippie-trippie natural grocery and get it ... if I were feeling
up to a five-block walk.  Frequently I'm not ... and unlike most
of the population of the US over sixteen, I don't drive.  Indeed,
if I'd been capable of walking a mile and a half, I could've gone
to Monterey Market, which has all the world's vegetables and a
nifty Asian section.

We've just moved to another part of the Bay Area.  I know there's
a Safeway several miles from here (because my son-in-law has
driven me there).  I've been told there's a farmer's market a few
blocks down the hill in the other direction, and I hope to find
out its schedule and location and maybe get there occasionally.

And sometimes I fantasize about living in a beautiful small place
like Scotland and being able to do my shopping in my own
immediate neighborhood.   It must be very convenient.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]