As for not using the card, that would result in my paying higher prices. That might be a reasonable tradeoff, although “pay extra and we won’t annoy you at the checkout” doesn’t strike me as winning customer service strategy. In practice, it doesn’t work that way, because the cashier will say, “Would you like to use your QFC card?” and if you decline, you’ll be asked if you want to sign up for a QFC card. This is almost as annoying as carrying/using the card.

There may be a wallet/purse issue here. I am territorial about what gets into my wallet. If I carried a larger purse, I might not care about a couple of club cards. In no way do I mean this as a value judgment about the relative merits of wallets and purses. :)

Also because it is definitely an optional step, I don’t really think its worth a second thought if you don’t like them. Just don’t use them.

Sarah, if you think about it for a minute, club cards don’t help with inventory management at all. To manage inventory, the store just needs to know what’s going out and at what rate; that’s what PLU codes are for. At best, they might be able to look across stores and see that customers who buy X also tend to buy Y, and if a particular store is stocking X but not Y they should add Y.

I am not opposed to the store tracking my purchases. What I’m opposed to is their doing it in a way that annoys me by forcing me to carry an extra card or punch in an ID number every time I check out. If they installed an iris scanner or some other way of identifying the customer passively, I would have no objection to that. (Iris might object to being dragged across the scanner, however.)

Stores that don’t use club cards offer a better checkout experience to customers. It’s as simple as that. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t be opposed to the store mucking up the checkout experience with extra steps. How is that customer service?