willc.me

It’s a question that is becoming more and more familiar as massive chains take over seemingly every other retailer on the high street. Whether it be a Boots Advantage Card or a Tesco Club Card they’re moving in and it’s really got my goat. It’s more inane chatter that you have to deal with at the till. And worst of all being asked, “Do you have a Boots Card” is akin to being asked, “do you have a vagina?”.

For truly, and all women will deny this, it is only women who carry around Boots card. I conducted a rough and very unscientific survey of a load of guys in a bar and not one of them had a Boots card. Neither do any of my guy mates. We just don’t like them. For guys it’s another piece of crappy plastic we have to carry round, for girls it’s something to fill up the little card slits in your purse.

Whenever I bring this up with a girl they’ll always without fail extol the virtues of the shiny plastic card. “But it gives you points and then you save the points and then you can buy stuff with the points. It’s like real money!” Points, points, points. It’s just another thing to worry about. And what do you end up buying with these points. Apple slices and nuts when you go in to buy more crap that you don’t need.

As a man I think it’d probably take me a couple of years to save up enough to get a bag of apple slices. You’re hardly gonna be clocking up the big points with deodorant, face wash and the occasional hairspray. A girl I spoke to about it said, “but it makes a real difference, you know, when you go in and you spend 60-70 pounds in Boots. Then you can get something really nice with the points too.” How the hell am I going to spend FIFTY quid in a Boots? How do you even do that? I guess it’s make up and things like that but to spend that much you must be having to cement it onto your face.

In reality it’s all just a con. And the people that are being conned here is men. In order for them to give away free stuff on apple slices and whatever else women spend their accrued points on, they add a few pennies to all the stuff in the store. You don’t actually save any money. Nothing comes for free and I can guarantee there’s some fat cat accountant rolling around on the floor meowing and laughing at how successful the Boots advantage card has been. There’ll be someone who works out how much free stuff they give away and how much more they have to put on men’s aftershave in order to negate the cost.

But the real losers here are the small businesses that it’s so trendy to defend these days. Every time you go out to buy toiletries you go to boots. You could probably go to chemist that has exactly what you need for the same price that’s nearer but you head to Boots so that you can get a few more advantage points. Loyalty cards are there to do just that. Ensure you go back to the same chain so they can get bigger and bigger crushing the smaller shops out of business.

Well what’s the solution? Maybe men should sign up or women should give up. All I know is that the less time I have to spend talking to the gremlin behind the till the better so every time they ask me, which I’m sure could rise to the thousands, “do you have a boots card?” I’ll answer with a little sigh. “No”.