Monday, December 01, 2008

Remember Me

I am not a big shopper. I don't have many store cards. In fact, now I have one less. I used to have one with a clothing store, name begins with B, you know them.

So I was going past the other day and they had an offer on of 20% off for all card holders. Well that had to be worth a look. The only problem was that when I found something and took it to the desk, the card wasn't recognised. Yes, it's all paid off, not missed a payment.

Phoned up. (Call centre in India, possibly. Certainly no-one who could do anything, of course, been there with npower yada-yada and others.) It had been cancelled 3 weeks before. (Nobody bothered to tell me, warn me.) Hadn't used it enough.

OK, I know it's a loyalty card. It's supposed to encourage "repeat business" in the jargon. But if it gets cancelled - no warning, remember, no "if you want to keep your card active, let us know", no offers "as a valued card member, we'd like to suggest ..", nothing, not even a note "it's 20% off next Thursday" (I happened across it, recall), you know that might have produced a sale, I think, then what is it?

It's the second time it's happened (I went back once and filled all the forms in again for a new one - but you don't want to keep doing that) and therefore what I have now is a disloyalty card. Which is surely no good to anyone?

(And all this in the middle of the worst recession for ages - do they want to sell?) Really.