The privacy of shoppers signed up for Woolworths’ new loyalty card Everyday Rewards has been questioned with the fine print revealing the supermarket can record licence plates, capture video and audio of customers and link them to membership numbers.
Woolworths states video footage and audio recordings are used for security, theft prevention and safety purposes only.
One customer said he was not bothered too much with the recording of licence plates and CCTV footage - “I’m not planning on stealing anything or abusing anyone” - but questioned how the information was kept secure.
The man pointed to an IT oversight last week which saw Everyday Rewards customers cashing in by creating multiple accounts and sharing points to get vouchers.
“Our team is well versed in protecting the information we do hold,” the spokesman said.
My selection of paragraphs may have made Countdown/Woolworths look less competent than the article makes out, but I don’t think it’s too far off.
Enshittified aside, until I saw this is in New Zealand, I was immensely confused as the Woolworth’s I know of in the US is long since defunct.
Whatever the store behind it, the practice is repugnant.
Apologies that I don’t tend to look at which community I’m clicking on while scrolling. That would’ve served as my first clue, yes?
Interestingly, NZ hasn’t really had Woolworths for many years. The Australian Woolworths that owns the stores rebranded all the Woolworths stores into “Countdown”, a different supermarket company that they owned, starting about 2009. Countdown was an existing NZ supermarket that was bought by (or some sort of merger with) the company that Woolworths Australia bought. After the purchase they had a bunch of Woolworths and Countdown stores, and rebranded them into Countdown as it had the public image they wanted.
So since perhaps 2011 there have been no Woolworths stores in NZ, and only recently did the Woolworths Australia owner decide to rebrand all Countdown stores to Woolworths, something that drew a bit of criticism that they were spending $400 million NZD on rebranding at a time when their high prices (and profits) were partly responsible for the high inflation rate.
This new loyalty card scheme is part of that rebrand.