[Rain Man]

I think RJ uttered some words of wisdom about this sort of thing a while back, when he said about his own company's promotions that he would ask the question, "Are we doing this for the customer or are we doing it for ourselves?" I guess one could read the loyalty card thing both ways, but I tend to think that it's more for the company.

The challenge is that if one place does it, it's not bad. The problem now is that everybody does it, and it exhausts and overloads the consumer's patience. It's like the popup surveys that companies put on their web sites. It's to the point now where I want to write a letter congratulating any company that doesn't put a crappy popup survey on their web site.