In article ,
wrote:

The bottom line is this. It appears that you MUST have a Walgreens card
to shop in their stores now. If you dont have one, they charge you
DOUBLE the price listed on the shelf.

A rant from the past. When Safeway started theirs almost 20 years ago
the indignant usenet response was to call them "surveilance cards".
Obviously this sentiment did not prevail.

Some random observations...

These pogroms fall into 3 categories,
1) Costco, Sams, and that chain people mention but I've never seen in
California.
Cannot shop without a membership card.
2) Safeway, maybe Walgreens
Open to the public *in theory*, but even no sale items are priced
at usary prices such that no sane shopper would buy anything
without a card. Safeway has pushed further to where it's like an
airline where every customer pays a different price.
3) Rite Aid (still, I think)
Open to the public, but card required to get advertised specials.
4) Raley's, Lucky (for now)
Public can buy specials. Cards are used build loyalty points.

One tendency for fighting back is to get cards with fake names and
numbers. For this to really work, one should get a new fake card
each purchase. But I think it would make a better protest for everyone,
or at least a large group to use the same fake name and number.

I can't wonder if the reason people aren't generally irate at being
tracked to death by the NSA is because they already realize that every
corp out there already tracks the **** out of them.
m