Tetherd Cow Ahead

While Violet Towne was waiting at the pharmacist recently, she noticed the above item which she knew would pique my interest. This, Faithful Acowlytes, is ‘The Original AntiSnor Acupressure Ringâ„¢’ a little piece of cheap metal that probably costs a fraction of a penny for the material of which it’s made, but reels in a massive $39.95 for its purveyors. ((Or more if you don’t buy it directly from the AntiSnor website. The pharmacist was whacking on a hefty $10 margin.))

How does it work? Well, I’m glad you asked. According to the AntiSnor website, the ring is worn on the sucker’s user’s little finger ‘to apply pressure to the nerve points to activate the muscles which control upper airway patency to help reduce or prevent snoring’. And, to make it all sciencey and stuff, there’s this diagram that I’ve featured over to the left there. Yup. The red line that runs out of your little finger connects directly to your snore centres. Can’t argue with a diagram.

OK, so let’s firstly assume that acupressure/acupuncture works – which it doesn’t, but hey, just saying it did, what do the interwebs say about acupressure points that relate to snoring? I’ll tell you what they say – they say that the people behind AntiSnor just pulled the above ‘fact’ out of their asses. Aside from direct links to AntiSnor or AntiSnor publicity, there is absolutely no reason to think that there’s an acupressure point for controlling snoring anywhere near the point on your little finger at which the AntiSnor ring applies its pressure. Being very charitable, I will concede that some acupuncture charts show ‘sinus’ points on the tips of the fingers around where the sketch at left terminates its little red line. But if you can employ acupressure on a line drawn from one arbitrarily-chosen place to another on a diagram of the human body, why the fuck are there pressure points? Why don’t acupressure sessions merely consist of fat people sitting on you?

Puzzled by this conundrum, I ventured further into the wilds of the internet woo to see if I could find another diagram to help me out with the Mysteries of Acupressure. Oooh. Here’s one showing the supposed acupressure points in a hand:

Let’s have a closer look at the little finger:

Uh-huh. So if acupressure worked – which it doesn’t, but hey, just accepting for a moment the daft ‘logic’ of millennia-old Chinese hocus pocus, according to the chart the AntiSnor ring might conceivably be affecting your skin (wtf?) or your kidneys or your spleen, but I’m still not getting how it’s linked to snoring.

But I think I know what’s going on. Let me try to explain further via the use of another diagram of acupressure points on the hand.

You see what I did there? That, my friends, is science – am I right? Frighteningly, the people behind the miraculous AntiSnorâ„¢ ring can’t make sense of their product even by making shit up.

The AntiSnor website comes replete with the ubiquitous glowing testimonials, of course, but you know what I’m looking for dear Cowpokes, don’t you? That’s right, a science page. And I am full of glee to find that there is one. Well, ‘science’ in the duplicitious and disingenuous manner that we’ve come to know from people like this, anyway. Somewhat smarmily, on this site the page is called Medical Philosophy and we will see why AntiSnor have shied away from using the actual ‘S’ word in a little bit.

The more astute of you will have noticed on the AntiSnor red-line ‘explanatory’ diagram, a little logo with a microscope that says, intriguingly, ‘Clinical Trial 2012’. Violet Towne spied this same boast on the packaging, but with the rider: ‘European clinical trial. Details inside’. She was, unfortunately, unable to see these details as an obvious manufacturing error has rendered the AntiSnor boxes sealed shut with security stickers. Oh noes! Well, it has to be a mistake. It’s not like they’d want to hide such convincing evidence of efficacy from a potential customer, right? After all, if the sealing of the boxes was intentional, why, they’d have put such important information on the outside!

The ‘Medical Philosophy’ page might give us a clue to what’s inside though, because there’s some wonderful swagger right at the top, which I’ll quote here in full:

CURRENT MEDICAL RESEARCH HAS SHOWN THAT STIMULATION OF THE NERVES THAT ACTIVATE THE MUSCLES THAT SUPPORT THE AIRWAYS … MAY HELP REDUCE SNORING.

Reference: Inspire medical systems. Collaborated with Paul Van de Heyning.M.D.Professor of Otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery, and Wilfried De Backer, M.D. professor of Respiratory medicine of the University Hospital, Antwerp.

But wait a bit – the astonishing thing is that this claim does seem to hold a degree of truth! Indeed, Professors Van de Heyning and Doctor De Backer (and others) have a published scientific paper to the effect! Actual science! Only… it doesn’t have fuck-anything to do with acupressure, Chinese meridian lines, little fingers or metal rings. It’s about directly stimulating the nerves in the throat with electricity to cause muscle contractions.

AntiSnor is saying, without even flinching – proudly, even – that ‘Our product is effective because some scientists have shown that a procedure completely unrelated to anything we’re selling – except that it concerns snoring – might possibly ((The authors of the paper quite clearly state even in the abstract that ‘Further research is needed to evaluate this… as a strategy’)) work’.

This, it appears, is the extent of the AntiSnorâ„¢ Clinical Trial evidence. ((I will accept here that there may be different ‘evidence’ hidden away inside that sealed package, that is, through some massive oversight, nowhere mentioned on the AntiSnor website. But I sense that you are already feeling the magnitude of my disbelief. I’m certainly not forking out fifty bucks to prove myself right.)) Oh, sorry, I forgot – there’s a picture of a microscope too.

The rest of the ‘Medical Philosophy’ page goes on with a whole lot of waffle that attempts to tie the nerves of the little finger into the picture but makes about as much sense Melissa Rogers explaining quantum mechanics. There are, of course, lots of CAPITAL LETTERS, because, you know, IMPRESSIVE. I was concerned for a moment that they might not get to tell us that the ring is hypo-allergenic. But I need not have worried. ((And I bet it’s hypo-allergenic as in ‘cheap stainless steel’, rather than as in ‘expensive gold’.))

The sneaky tricksy nature of this site intrigued me somewhat, though, so I wondered what else I could find out about AntiSnor and why they were being so cagey with their language. Well, it didn’t take more than a second to find out that they ‘have form’, as the constabulary puts it. In 2010, Australia’s Competition & Consumer Commission (the ACCC) well and truly bitch-slapped the maker of AntiSnor, ATQOL Pty Ltd, for misleading consumers on the efficacy of their product. In short, ATQOL was compelled to remove claims that their deceitful little gadget ‘had a ‘proven history of successful drug free treatment of snoring’ and was ‘Tested and recommended by a Physician’. As a result of the ruling ATQOL provided the ACCC with court-enforceable undertakings that it would:

• not make absolute representations that the Anti-Snor Ring will stop snoring or relieve sinus problems, restless sleep or insomnia

• not represent that the ring has a ‘proven history of successful drug free treatment of snoring’ unless it has caused clinical trials to be undertaken to prove such a history

• not make any representation that the ring has been tested, approved or recommended by a health professional unless that health professional has undertaken testing in accordance with accepted standards for the design, conduct, records and reporting of clinical trials

• amend the ATQOL website and any current and/or future advertisements or publications to remove the incorrect representations
ensure that all future representations made in the promotion and/or sale of the ring comply with the Act, and

• implement a trade practices law compliance program.

So what do we think, my Crusading Cowmrades? Has ATQOL lived up to their end of the bargain? Are they giving consumers a fair appraisal of the efficacy of their shiny little trinket, or is it time for the ACCC to pay them another little visit…?

One area of hokum into which I’ve not ventured much here on the Cow ((Well, excluding our interludes with Sister Veronica, that is. But I’m fairly sure you understand that as just silliness.)) is the murky depths of the profession known as ‘psychic mediumship’ – or, by those at Cow Central as ‘despicable emotional opportunism’. This morning I saw on my friend Dr Rachie‘s Facebook page an ad for a purveyor of this nonsense, one Lisa Williams, ((Dr Rachie wasn’t advertising it, you understand – she was holding it up to scrutiny.)), who is, it would seem, currently plying her wares on my turf. I thought it might be time to turn the eye of the Cow onto things clairvoyant.

According to her advertising, Lisa Williams is apparently ‘TV’s top medium and psychic’, but as I rarely watch tv I can’t speak to that claim. All I can say is that I’ve never heard of her, so she’s obviously not as famous as people like John Edward or Sylvia Brown. A Searchâ„¢ for ‘tv’s top medium and psychic’ also tends to throw a little doubt on the assertion since people like Michelle Whitedove, June Field, Carla Baron, Colin Fry and Sally Morgan – along with numerous others – purport to hold similarly lofty distinctions. In fact, the search returned so many names that the full scope of this industry put me on the back foot slightly. Psychic mediums are astonishingly big business it would seem.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by that – it just confounds me that, here at the cusp of the 21st Century, people are still being sucked in by the same sort of flimsy trickery that has been around for millennia.

Lisa Williams’ website is a veritable library-full of addled waffling and nutty feel-good advice. I will allow here that there is a vanishingly small chance that Ms Williams actually believes all the stuff she says, but it should be clearly understood that the ‘gift’ she so often talks about in her writing makes her a packet of money. And while I say there is a chance, I’m being very generous. Quite frankly, I think that Lisa Williams, like so many of these so-called spirit mediums, is a fraud.

Ms Williams features on her site a page called ‘Messages From Beyond’ – or, more accurately, ‘Messages from Beyond®’, for it seems that she has successfully registered this fairly common phrase as a legitimate service mark. How this kind of thing gets through the US Trademark office completely boggles my mind. Pretty soon you won’t be able to write an English language sentence without paying royalties.

There are a couple of videos on the this page and these are what make me think that Lisa Williams is less a dizzy self-deluded fruitcake than a cynical opportunist. Watch this one and we’ll talk about it:

Oh boy. Well, the very first thing that happens revealing: “Fantastic, I think this is it,” she says outside a hotel door. As if she’s ‘psychically’ arrived here. This is a small thing, but it sets up the tone of what’s to come. Lisa Williams is already hiding facts (things she previously knows) under the guise of flakey absent-mindedness. It’s so ingrained that it’s a habit.

What follows inside the room is a classic – albeit heavily edited – cold reading (although, for all we know it could have been a ‘hot’ reading – we have no idea what Lisa Williams knew about these people before she arrived. She could have had someone assemble a complete dossier on them). ((Just to clarify, in case people don’t know these two terms: a ‘cold’ reading is where the supposed psychic fishes for evidence from the victim using vague catch-all language, and builds on any hits by emphasising the stuff that fits and de-emphasising or ignoring stuff that doesn’t. A cold reading also involves scrutinizing the mark’s body language and other physical signs such as accents, type of clothing being worn and so forth. A hot reading, on the other hand, is built on knowledge that the psychic has already gathered in some manner, and which is known to be true. This kind of information is often accumulated by accomplices who mingle with the audience before the show begins, pretending to be punters themselves and asking questions like ‘Ooh, have you lost someone too dear? I lost my old Uncle Gilbert – who did you lose? Was it long ago?’ etc. It’s a technique that is widely used by stage psychics and faith healers such as Peter Popoff. It can be astonishingly effective if you’re not aware of it.)) This is nothing more than a performance. Personally, I find it so offensively manipulative and cynical that I was almost inclined not to embed it. Taking advantage in this way of bereaved and emotionally fragile people like Joanna, the young woman in the video, is, in my opinion, despicable. Putting the video on your website in order to attract more business is the lowest form of exploitation I can think of.

As I said, this clip is quite obviously edited, and we simply can’t tell what was removed. We can be totally sure that we’re only seeing the things that we’re meant to see – no bad guesses, no flubs, no ‘fishing’ for hits. Even so, there are some telling moments:

“I see a wedding picture on the wall”, says Lisa, a punt which Joanna immediately contradicts. She had a wedding picture, but she took it down. Lisa Williams makes this seem like a hit, but it just plain isn’t. It’s a complete no brainer to guess that a person who has been relatively newly married will have a wedding picture on their wall somewhere, but in this case it’s actually a miss so Ms Williams swings around for “Oh, he [the husband] ‘interfered’ with it”. Whoa. That could mean just about anything – and sure enough, Joanna looks for an explanation. Cold Reading Basics #1: be general and allow the mark to fill in information for you. I’m sure this is what fills up most of the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor, but for some reason, this one survives – probably because it’s rectified so favourably.

If you think I’m being unfair here, take a look at the second video on that page.

This one features some stuff from a live show, and the major observation I can make is that if this is a portmanteau of Lisa Williams’ best stuff then her usual show must be appallingly transparent. Watch her fish for a rube with this one:

“I see a little girl on a scooter… riding up and down… with a cat in a basket. She’s got one sock rolled up and one rolled down and she’s waving at you…”

All the time she’s scanning the audience… but no-one’s biting.

“She’s showing me that she’s, like, your grandmother, or your mother, or…

OK, she’s now expanded the possibilities from ‘little girl’ to include ‘mother’ and ‘grandmother’ and ‘or’. Remember here that a large number of people that make up Lisa Williams’ audiences have come to hear their dearly departed make contact, so in this case we’ve cast the net so wide that really the only females not specifically included in that kind of description are young women who haven’t had children – the least likely part of the female population to have recently died, and, of course, they were little girls once, so that’s covered too. And there’s the hugely all-encompassing ‘or…’. That little girl could be ANY female. I’m sure that with some deft footwork Lisa Williams could get transgender folks in there too.

…it’s like a red scooter… And I want to say there’s a connection to the name Mary. And her feet blew up.” ((This kind of language – ‘her feet blew up’ – is enormously useful in cold readings. This could mean the ‘departed’s’ feet could be swollen. It could also mean an accident, like a land mine. The first one is very general – I defy you to find a grandmother who hasn’t had, at some stage, swollen feet – but the second meaning might pay off on the very odd occasion, making it seem like a totally astonishing hit. If you are clever and do this kind of thing often enough, eventually you’ll get a very powerful payoff.))

Nothing.

“Come on, help me out here,” pleads Lisa Williams to an audience frantically trying to find relevance in their own lives to her vague fishing. The happy little girl on the red scooter means bugger-all to them.

When she does get a response, you get the distinct feeling that it’s more out of sympathy than for even a small shade of accuracy. It’s a young woman who obligingly feeds our ‘clairvoyant’ more information to be recycled as ‘psychic’ insight. Once Lisa Williams cottons onto the fact that the mark is Eastern European (the woman has a pronounced accent) all manner of opportunity presents itself. It appears that the ‘departed’ in question is the woman’s grandmother. Ms Williams runs with it using lots of hand gestures to help make generalised visual impressions. The grandmother wears ‘some kinds of rags and mismatched clothing’ which apparently explains the socks from the first fishing expedition. There’s ‘something about vinegar’. Oh please – there’s probably also ‘something about’ potatoes and pickled fish. This stuff is banal and offensive. Somewhere along the line the little girl riding a scooter with a cat in the basket goes by the way. Somewhere along the line the name ‘Mary’ is completely forgotten. In fact, that picturesque image first conjured up by Lisa Williams – a feisty little girl called Mary with odd socks and a happy wave, riding on a red scooter, has been deftly supplanted by a manky European babushka with bad teeth and appalling table manners. It’s truly audacious swindling.

I won’t go on. Watching the two videos above is so distasteful to me, that I almost abandoned this post several times. I find it terribly hard going to see people being hoodwinked so blatantly and so callously – and, more troublingly, so easily and transparently.

The main content on the Lisa Williams’ Messages from Beyond® page features another riff on the Law of Large Numbers. It is in fact a psychic win/win scenario. Here, Ms Williams features from time-to-time a ‘message from the other side’ that has come to her while on the toilet or picking her nose. It’s a great con. She can put any old shit here – being 100% wrong has no negative consequences whatsoever. All the lame waffling will go unnoticed for the most part, but should anything happen to ring true with someone who reads her website – Bingo! She’s a psychic! And you can bet that Ms Williams will make sure everyone knows about it.

It’s truly shameful.

And, if nothing else, the awful faux Comic Sans-style font in which all these revelations are proffered is embarrassingly childish. As is the appalling spelling. For the record, Ms Williams, ‘purserver’ is actually spelled ‘persevere’, it’s ‘feisty’ not ‘fistey’ and ‘hypercondriac’ is usually penned as ‘hypochondriac’. But I suppose it’s really the ‘spirits’ who can’t spell, right?

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Fortune teller image from Vintage Blog.

Sometimes some things just annoy the crap out of me. What is it with the daft ‘Keep Calm and [Insert Any Lame Thing Here]’ plague that stuck its head above the ramparts some years ago now and is STILL lumbering across the memetic landscape like a zombie hopped up on qualudes? Why the hell do people think this is still cool/funny/witty/whatever? In fact, why did they EVER think so?

You will no doubt have read of the Amazon ‘Keep Calm’ debacle in recent weeks, where an apparently random ‘Keep Calm’ generator designed by t-shirt vendor Solid Gold Bomb created almost unbelievably offensive slogans that actually appeared for sale in the Solid Gold Bomb Amazon shop. The mechanics of what happened have been thoroughly examined elsewhere so I won’t go into it here, other than to add the admonishment that you play with random processes at your peril.

The extreme unpleasantness of the affair notwithstanding, it seems to me that the greater crime has been left unexamined: why the fuck is anybody still allowed to sell anything with ‘Keep Calm and [Whatever]’ emblazoned upon it anyway?

As a meme it started with little value in the first place and proceeded from there on a downhill trek to banal in about the time it takes for a bunch of comedy writers to roundtable and discard a crummy routine (usually about 38 seconds, in my experience). It is a blight upon humanity and people caught perpetuating it (except in the course of exposing its lameness to the world, it goes without saying) should be incarcerated for long periods of time. No, fuck it – let’s bring back drawing and quartering.

Let’s see ’em keep calm while horses tear their limbs off.

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* I mean, seriously. WHAT. THE. FUCK?

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Say what you will about the various social media, there is one thing at which they really excel: providing a brand new platform for the endless circulation of the kind of inane and poorly informed pop ‘wisdom’ that we love so much here on TCA. Just recently, for example, I’ve been sent the same exhortation about five times to sign an Avaaz petition against Bayer for being responsible (via their manufacture and marketing of insecticides called neonicotinoids) for bee Colony Collapse Disorder. Now, while I don’t particularly hold with the use of Bayer’s products, and don’t even particularly like Bayer as a company, this irks and frustrates me. What Avaaz is doing here is piggybacking an agenda on top of an emotionally-charged issue to give the impression that CCD is being caused by one simple mechanism, and that Bayer should be held responsible. As I’ve written before, it is far from being quite that simple. ((As we have seen time and time again here on TCA, human beings just lurve to fall for the most simplistic solutions to complex problems. Our brains shy away from complexity. We are not made to cope with it, and we deal with it badly.)) Unfortunately, very few people who get the link to the Avaaz petition will know much, if anything, about bee Colony Collapse Disorder, and not bother to take the trouble to research the Avaaz claims. And so the ‘OMG! The Bees Are Dying Sign the Petition’ suggestion will no doubt circulate for another few weeks, etching into people’s minds the notion that Evil Bayer is Killing Bees (supplanting the previously-etched notion in most of those same people’s minds that the culprit was mobile phones). ((What’s actually killing bees, my friends, is that voracious, deadly scourge of the planet Earth – human beings. Our demand for cheap honey (and for cheap fruit and flowers and grains and all the plants that the bees rely on to make that honey) is creating a population pressure on the bees that is just not something that they cope with well. We’ve made bees into something they are not, for our own purposes, and while that works to an extent, it is truly not surprising that it is not a sustainable prospect.)) ((One friend commented to me that surely the fact that Bayer was not necessarily responsible for CCD is irrelevant if they’re doing something environmentally irresponsible – an ‘end-justifies-the-means’ argument, if you will. That’s all well & good – maybe the petition will get one environmentally undesirable substance out of the way BUT the bees will still be dying. It deflects the view of the public away from addressing the actual problems, and so is, in my opinion, doing more harm than good.))

Anyhoo, that’s all really just a way of introducing the real subject of today’s post, which is another wonderful social media ‘advice’ epidemic which also concerns honey. Honey and cinnamon, in fact. It’s very lengthy, so I’m not copying it here, but you should really go have a look at it so you can witness the true scale of its stupidity (you can find it linked just about everywhere across the net, so ubiquitous has it become).

Synopsizing, it begins with a warning that ‘Drug companies won’t like this one getting around!’ and goes on to list ways in which the combination of honey and cinnamon will cure EVERYTHING. Well, I’m exaggerating, but not by much.

Here are just some of the troubles that you will no longer have if you imbibe and/or smear yourself liberally with honey and cinnamon:

•Heart Disease
•Arthritic pain
•Bladder infections
•Colds
•Weight gain
•Stomach ailments
•Gas
•Cancer (oh yes)
•Pimples
•Aging (!)
•Hearing loss.

I’m totally sure the drug companies would be mightily pissed off if there was even a grain of truth in any of it, but there ain’t so they happily continue with their business of converting their piles of cash into cocaine and snorting it off stripper’s tits. ((This is a colourful metaphor, intended to provide humour. It is not meant to imply that drug companies make huge swodges of profit at the expense of our health. Because we know that they are all doing it for the love of humankind.))

The long list of cures ends with the folksy signoff: ‘Remember when we were kids? We had toast with real butter and cinnamon sprinkled on it! Re-post!’

Because, you know, we never had any of those problems when we were kids, right? Except for the poor tykes with cancer who obviously didn’t eat their cinnamon toast.

The thing that really ticks me off is the completely undiscriminating way in which this stupid piece of internet diarrhoea is pooped all across the various social media platforms even by those who should know a LOT better. This is the internet, people. It should be the work of moments to find out the bona fides of this gob of banal hogwash.

And moments it takes. Less than thirty seconds of Searching™ turns up the original source of the Cinnamon and Honey gumpf:

That’s right, Space Cadets. The provenance of this piece of 21st Century wisdom is an article published in 1995 by that veritable shining bastion of scientific respectability, The Weekly World News. It’s travelled down almost two decades unscathed. What’s that you say? What other scientific discoveries has WWN delivered up? I’m so glad you asked.

I mean, for fuck’s sake. Who’s going to believe Dick Cheney is a robot? We all know perfectly well that he’s really a lizard! ((This QED really is SOOOO much better than I could ever have hoped for. I wish all rubbish of this kind was so easily slapped down.))

In breaking news, Rupert Murdoch, head honcho of one of the world’s largest international corporations said today “Give me another shovel, this hole’s not big enough!”

Haha, I jest, but what he actually said was effectively the same thing, when he tweeted that the people making a representation to British Prime Minister David Cameron over News Corp’s reprehensible hacking of their phones were ‘scumbag celebrities’. Nice one Rupert, that’ll endear you to just about everyone.

But best of all, this Twitter exchange was made:

Commenter: “Scumbags”? And your journalists and executives are what?”

Murdoch: “They don’t get arrested for indecency on major LA highways! ((Oh, but they DO get arrested and charged for other much more serious criminal activities, or perhaps that’s slipped your mind?)) Or abandon love child’s”

Love child’s? Love child’s? Awesome. The head of one of the biggest news agencies on the planet has no grasp of grammar OR punctuation.

It’s not a crossword puzzle, Mr Murdoch, it’s a leopard. You’re totally fucked.

Faithful Acowlytes. I want to speak to you today about loyalty. Oh, no no no – not your loyalty dear friends. I would never call that into question. No, specifically, I’m talking about the mechanism that seems to have become an integral part of pretty much every consumer commodity transaction on the planet: the Loyalty Scheme – or Loyalty Scam, as I prefer to call it, because the concept is essentially a swindle. If you are voluntarily ((In some cases you have very little choice. Credit cards almost universally include loyalty schemes in the form of ‘reward’ points – you literally can’t not be involved in one.)) taking part in a loyalty scheme of any kind, you’re being tricked.

I must confess, I didn’t really think much about this situation until fairly recently. As many people do, I just accepted the notion as a little extra perk that you got with your shopping experience and I dutifully had my various cards swiped, stamped or checked as I went about my shopping chores. And then, one day I had an interesting experience that threw some illumination on how retailers understand the concept of loyalty.

The incident in question involved a juice place in the local shopping centre. We’ll call it ‘Joos’. I would, on occasion, buy a juice from Joos as I was passing, and one day with my purchase I was given a little card. Apparently the object was to have it stamped each time I got a juice and then I would be rewarded after my tenth stamp with a free juice! How awesome is that! If you do the sums, that’s 10% off each juice I purchased. Well, I kept the card in my wallet (crammed at that time as it was with a dozen other Loyalty cards) and eventually, after a thirsty summer ((It’s not like I frequented this place often. It was an occasional stop on my shopping trips.)) I had accrued ten juices and I went to collect on my free one.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the hip young Joos counter kid, “We don’t use that system anymore. Now we have a swipe card. Would you like one?”

“No,” said I, “I would like the free juice to which I’m entitled on account of my loyalty.”

“I can’t give you one – that system is out of date. You have to use the swipe card.”

“I see,” I said. “And when does the swipe card go out of date?”

The sarcasm was lost on her.

It got me to thinking. If Joos really cared about its customers – ALL its customers – why does it not simply mark its prices down by 10%? Surely these lower prices (at the usual Joos quality, of course) would be a big incentive to keep customers coming back to Joos! This is the sum effect of having all your customers in the loyalty scheme after all. The fact is, the reward system is nothing more than sleight of hand to make you think you’re getting value where there is none at all. Joos doesn’t care about their customers enough to pass on a substantial saving across the board, but is instead selling them the illusion that they are being faithful to the brand by making them go through a silly charade with a swipe card. They are, in effect, bribing you to be a customer. Wouldn’t it be something if customers were loyal simply because Joos was offering a great product at reasonable prices?

All loyalty/reward systems operate in the manner I’ve described above, to a greater or lesser extent. You need to keep in mind that the reduction in price conferred by these systems must be accounted for in the profit structure of the company offering them, anyway. The prices of a product have effectively been increased to offset any deficit that the reward scheme might have – in other words, the company doing the offering is selling an illusion that you’re getting a deal, when in fact they could offer you that ‘deal’ as a fairer price if they wanted to. ((There is also a level of scumminess that comes with the scamminess, as I’m sure you’ve encountered, where the ‘reward’ is somewhat underwhelming when you actually collect it. For example, my local vet sells a cat food dental product that I buy in 3 kilogram bags. “Do you want to be part of our loyalty scheme?” asked the vet assistant, when I bought my first one. “You get one free bag for every six you buy!” It sounded good, so I signed up. Imagine my disappointment when I reached the sixth bag and was given the free one – not, as I expected, a complimentary replacement for my usual 3k bag, but a miserly 500 gram one instead. Yes, technically ‘a free bag’ but really a grudging and tight-fisted swindle. Honestly, I don’t know how vendors can treat customers with this kind of contempt.)) ((Oh, and let’s not even start on Frequent Flyer points…))

So here is what I want you to do, my intrepid Cowmpanions, when next you’re out shopping and someone offers you one of these ridiculous Loyalty cards. I want you to look that person straight in the eye and say:

“My dear Sir/Madam, if you want my loyalty, all you need provide is efficient, polite service and reasonable quality goods at sensible prices. If you do that, you won’t ever have to bribe me to come back to your store.“