Didn't dress smart enough for House of Fraiser?

I like going into shops looking like a tramp and paying cash for expensive things...Just to **** with them.

*n
 
fatiain said:
@ Chronos-X, and I'm guessing Sequoia knows this already going by his comments.

If you pay by card in a store, you leave behind a HUGE amount of information, even moreso if you ever do a refund back onto a card. There's a scary amount of info on *every* shop you have ever paid by card in.

Just before I left my last job, they were bringing in a system to monitor card purchases throughout the company with a view to recucing card fraud. There were about 20 of us trained to use the system, we each spent about 2 hours a week "data mining", we probably covered about 10-20% of the information we had.

Some people don't want to leave that kind of data trail behind them, me included. Cash all the way.
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Indeed I do, fatiain. I'm sure pretty much everybody knows they leave tracks, but I wonder if they appreciate the extent of the picture that builds up.

Of course, there are perfectly valid and beneficial uses to data mining, and fraud reduction is a good example. It's also a phenomenally useful business tool, and as the vast bulk of data mining techniques apply to aggregate data and aren't personalised, it's a non-intrusive way to develop and test business strategies. It not only allows numbers of strategies to be tested that wouldn't be practical in the real world, but can actually throw up data relationships that wouldn't be visible any other way.

But the data warehousing it relies on also has the potential for considerable invasion of privacy.

I use credit cards. I have several. But I only use them when it suits me to do so, and I use cash when that suits me. And I don't use store "loyalty" cards. Ever. I see no point. The payback is trivial, and I'm not prepared to give the stores that much data about my spending patterns. So I use cash in supermarkets. And it doesn't require vast sums to be carried about. Surplus cash is kept safely locked up at home. And there's also no need to "flash a wad" of cash, as has been suggested. If you do that, you're just showing off. I just extract a few bills from my wallet, not wave a big roll of cash about.

I'm sure lots of people think this attitude is paranoid. I don't. I just use what for me is the right tool for the right job, and for the bulk of day to day activities, cash suits me better than card. If card suits someone else better, go for it. But it isn't how I see things.
 
I had something like that happen to me last month, but I was treated the total opposite.

I was in Giorgio Armani on Sloane Street looking for some jeans, when one of their sales staff came along and helped me out. After I decided to take a pair of jeans, he asked me if I was interested in some tops. Now, at this moment in time, I didn't have much cash on me, so I kinda nodded and decided to see what he'll bring me. So he bought some tops over to me, and he started talking about them. I pretended I was interested (I wasn't) and I said 'how much' as I didn't have anything else to say, and he replied 'this top, its £650, fantastic material, very good'. I was shocked lol. I wasn't dressed particularly well, no suit or anything, and I'm only 17! I tried not to laugh and I was thinking at that point, how on earth can a kid like me afford £650 on a top?!?! So I just bought the jeans and walked off.

I probably wouldn't have received any attention if I went to a similar store, as I don't look anything like their target market. But I was seriously surprised, as they treated me as if I had the money, even though I looked as if I obviously don't. Has anyone else had people treat and offer you their time, even though you look like you can't afford it?
 
penski said:
I like going into shops looking like a tramp and paying cash for expensive things...Just to **** with them.
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Essentially then, you dress in such a way as to encourage people to prejudge you, and then throw it in their face when they do? ;)
 
Arcade Fire said:
Essentially then, you dress in such a way as to encourage people to prejudge you, and then throw it in their face when they do? ;)
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Yup. ;)

And I agree with others (I skimmed the thread... ;)) - I pay cash because I don't really want a record of everything I buy.

*n
 
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