PC Optimum Terms And Conditions Changes Are A #Fail
If you are a member of the PC Optimum points program which is run by Loblaw, you likely recently got an email that looks in part like this:
The way this email reads, Loblaw is altering things so that account takeovers, and the resultant financial costs of said takeovers, is lessened. In their favour. While most of this email seems fine “ish”. Here’s the part of the email that bothers me:
So if you live in Quebec, you have to be informed that your PC Optimum account has been pwned. But they don’t have to inform you if you live anywhere else in Canada?
Am I the only one who looks at this and says that this is suspect at best?
The problem with this is that you might not notice that you have been pwned until it’s way too late. Unless you’re in Quebec where I am guessing that there is a legal requirement for the company to let you know that you’ve been pwned. That to me is problematic as Loblaw should do the right thing and let anyone who has been pwned know that they’ve been pwned and not just the people where they are legally forced to do so.
I pointed this out to my wife as we’ve been shopping substantially less at Loblaw and associated stores such as Shopper’s Drug Mart over the last few months due to their high prices when compared to their competition. But we still had around 250,000 points in our PC Optimum account which is the equivalent of $250 CDN. That changed this weekend where we redeemed most of those points for groceries, personal health items, and the like. Taking our points total down to just over 19,000 and we’ll eventually figure out how to spend that. But I can say that we’re stocked up in a number of areas from food to health and beauty for not a whole lot of cash outlay to do so. Why have we done this? This news really rubs us the wrong way, and combined with their high prices, we’re done with Loblaw and the PC Optimum program.
If this course of action sounds familiar, we did something similar with Petro Canada when they got pwned last year. And I have maybe been to a Petro Canada station twice since then. My wife and I are big believers that companies who do stupid things should not get your hard earned money. But it’s not just the cash that we’re depriving Loblaw of. We’re also depriving them of the data on our shopping habits that I know is equally as valuable. Because when you sign up for one of these programs, the company behind it is gathering data on you so that they can do anything from mine it to better sell things to you, of to sell this data to third parties. And I am pretty sure that if enough people say that enough is enough and pull out of this program, Loblaw would likely rethink their actions because it’s the data on your shopping habits that they really want.
This is slated to go into effect on Halloween. Let’s see if Loblaw gives consumers a treat by changing course on this, or they are going to go ahead and roll out this trick that really isn’t a good one.
This entry was posted on September 9, 2024 at 8:08 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Loblaw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
PC Optimum Terms And Conditions Changes Are A #Fail
If you are a member of the PC Optimum points program which is run by Loblaw, you likely recently got an email that looks in part like this:
The way this email reads, Loblaw is altering things so that account takeovers, and the resultant financial costs of said takeovers, is lessened. In their favour. While most of this email seems fine “ish”. Here’s the part of the email that bothers me:
So if you live in Quebec, you have to be informed that your PC Optimum account has been pwned. But they don’t have to inform you if you live anywhere else in Canada?
Am I the only one who looks at this and says that this is suspect at best?
The problem with this is that you might not notice that you have been pwned until it’s way too late. Unless you’re in Quebec where I am guessing that there is a legal requirement for the company to let you know that you’ve been pwned. That to me is problematic as Loblaw should do the right thing and let anyone who has been pwned know that they’ve been pwned and not just the people where they are legally forced to do so.
I pointed this out to my wife as we’ve been shopping substantially less at Loblaw and associated stores such as Shopper’s Drug Mart over the last few months due to their high prices when compared to their competition. But we still had around 250,000 points in our PC Optimum account which is the equivalent of $250 CDN. That changed this weekend where we redeemed most of those points for groceries, personal health items, and the like. Taking our points total down to just over 19,000 and we’ll eventually figure out how to spend that. But I can say that we’re stocked up in a number of areas from food to health and beauty for not a whole lot of cash outlay to do so. Why have we done this? This news really rubs us the wrong way, and combined with their high prices, we’re done with Loblaw and the PC Optimum program.
If this course of action sounds familiar, we did something similar with Petro Canada when they got pwned last year. And I have maybe been to a Petro Canada station twice since then. My wife and I are big believers that companies who do stupid things should not get your hard earned money. But it’s not just the cash that we’re depriving Loblaw of. We’re also depriving them of the data on our shopping habits that I know is equally as valuable. Because when you sign up for one of these programs, the company behind it is gathering data on you so that they can do anything from mine it to better sell things to you, of to sell this data to third parties. And I am pretty sure that if enough people say that enough is enough and pull out of this program, Loblaw would likely rethink their actions because it’s the data on your shopping habits that they really want.
This is slated to go into effect on Halloween. Let’s see if Loblaw gives consumers a treat by changing course on this, or they are going to go ahead and roll out this trick that really isn’t a good one.
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This entry was posted on September 9, 2024 at 8:08 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Loblaw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.