So now that Target has compromised your data, Walmart has it figured that
they are going to welcome you home. You can now expect an intrustion into
your Walmart shopping experience by an “interceptor”. Apparantly, Walmart
Canada has installed them into stores so that they can come up to you and
ask if you have yet received your free $25. Oh of course, they will simply
execute the “assumptive close” by asking your name for their application
form. You won’t know who they are, whether they are a third party promotion
company and you will certainly not be honored with an “excuse me” and a
formal introduction. In short, you will be ambushed.

I haven’t read it yet although it’s been available in the public domain for a week now.  Government bureaucrats are making serious dough and they don’t want you to know about it even though as Albertans – you pay their salary.  Not surprisingly, more than 300 folks in your government earn more than $100,000 per year.  They push paper, defer decisions, and scamper along cathedral halls with elevated chins in Henry Singer suits.  Oh yes….if there’s a whiff of relevance in a seminar trip to the tropics in February – they’ll be on that junket.  Suddenly everyone is Nelson Mandela’s old friend when he dies and Alberta needs “representation” half way around the world.  This positions these same folks to sit down with public sector unions and negotiate on behalf of me the taxpayer.  Have your roads been cleared yet here in February from the November snow fall?  Oh ya….it’s a municipal problem.  

They wanted your banking information yet you are a retail shopper.  American big box comes to Canada and thinks by tying your discount to your banking information they think they’ll turn you into a customer life.  Well, it’s all back fired for them and their paternalistic marketing ploy has been handed back to them on a silver platter.  Now they think they can still get you back by granting you one month of free credit monitoring because of their security breech.  What are you to think now?  I suppose if you haven’t closed your account by now you’ll take them up on it because you’ll have no control of ever gaining confidence that your information has been adequately destroyed and not disseminated.  However; if you have closed your account – in order for them to offer the credit monitoring service, won’t they be looking for more confidential data from you so they can fulfill this one year free service.  It’s all preposterous to me. 

Imagine all the retrofits across Canadian malls to accommodate this big box and now they’re potentially faced with consumer back lash.  We wanted big box and best price.  What we got has been poor service, bad management, parking gridlock at malls and shopping cart congestion. We put many aspiring business retail entrepreneurs into the driver’s seat of a taxi cab or the kitchen of a fast food joint and in the process produced a banal shopping environment whereby once it used to provide fuel for diversity and cultural distinctiveness.