Customer Profiling

Why is it that companies want to profile anything and everything about people who as much as look at them? Today I bought a pair of cheap PC speakers for my netbook from my local branch of Comet and was asked at the checkout if I'd give them additional information about myself. The reward for this valuable information was a voucher with many conditions attached. This is why I try to pay cash. Nobody needs to know who I am if I am simply paying cash for a pair of speakers.

I did some homework online to narrow down which speakers to buy, then where to buy them. I tried to check the stock levels in my local Comet store, but their .asp site kept returning generic errors when I clicked on that button.

My guess is that I block cookies and it was being denied in it's instructions to track me. I hate sites that demand to place cookies to function, but I do switch to accept them temporarily if I need to, then clear them out when I'm finished. If this was the reason, then it'd have been nice to have a reason for the error instead of just a generic unspecified error. It may also have been set to only work properly with Windows and IE. It may have picked up my TerroristOS (Linux) running CommieFox (Firefox) and decided that I wasn't worthy. The bottom line was that their site didn't perform it's job for me and I had to just chance the walk out and hope they had stock.

I understand the need for a non-anonymous purchase if a credit agreement is part of the purchase, or if the goods are being delivered. For something bought with no contract for cash in store where the customer takes it with them there is no need for profiling other than the rapacious appetite to profile everyone. My guess that if I gave my email address or brick and mortar address I'd get included in the marketing stuff that I don't want. I'm guessing since it was PC speakers I'd no doubt get the "why not upgrade to Windows 7, it's the best OS in the world, ever, no really, we mean it this time, honest" offers.

Any company who does it's job properly will get repeat business, those who don't will not. For the record I used to work for Comet many years ago and have seen it from the inside. There are certain things I would never buy from Comet for that reason, but with some goods they are no different to other retailers, so if the price is right I'm happy to shop in Comet.

Just an FYI on Comet as well as their competitors, all of the "Managers Specials" have been repaired umpteen times and will likely return the same (or additional) faults quickly after you buy them, so I'd advice not touching with a barge pole. A 10% discount is nowhere near enough of a discount to compensate for the return hassle you will almost  be guaranteed to have during it's first year as your new device. By law they are supposed to mark any repaired or refurbished unit as such and detail it's repair history; this is an area of Comet I didn't agree with, neither would the law if they got an audit.

On the bright side, the young salesman I spoke to was very helpful in checking the connector was a regular speaker jack and not USB, and my new speakers work perfectly so far. I've not done much with them yet, but my initial impressions are very positive, the build quality is solid too, which is always a good sign in speakers. These speakers seem to draw good reviews from various retailers sites. They are as tall as my MSI Wind 10" netbook is wide, but that's fine. For those who are interested in a pair of cheap speakers which sound much better than the price suggests, you could do a lot worse than Logitech X-140.