I just use my phone number for the few I like to use. It's less trouble and takes up no space in my pocket.

There are some purveyors that won't do the scanning thing on my phone, believe it or not. So I went back to the cards rather than try to remember which ones did and which didn't.

It's a good idea to have one on your key ring. Before the loyalty cards, some of the credit card companies had similar tags. If you lose your keys, the finder can put them in a mailbox, and the post office will deliver them to the company, who will get them back to you. This only works if you have an address or phone number listed with your card though. :)

I have not run into a place that didn't accept my telephone number instead of using the card. I throw all the cards away.

I use the app called KeyRing. The original cards are all in an envelope in our fire safe.

I use the key rings cards because the information I give these loyalty programs is bogus. There are two that have our real phone number on them and that is because DH did the signing up. For years there were about ten of us who are unrelated using the same old phone number at Safeway. ;-)

Are you paying cash? If not, they can associate your info from your card or check...

I just store mine in my car. I always have my car along. ;)

I can't think of one loyalty card type store where I would use a credit card. If I have a credit card at a particular store they have built in rewards without the loyalty card.

I generally shop far less frequently at stores with loyalty cards because I dislike the practice of having one group of shoppers subsidizing discounts for another group of shoppers. Every time I shop at one of those stores I feel a bit like an enabler.

I just signed up for yet another "loyalty" card, just because I happened to be near a grocery store that I don't normally go to, needed a couple things and just couldn't bear spending even a penny more for an item without the card. Which led me to spending time filling out the keypad-entry thingy for my name (which is long), address, etc., while the customer-service counter was dealing with 2 other customers at the same time.

I know stores are battling for our dollars, but I agree with Donna. Just lure people in with lower prices and forget all those cards (which I keep on a keyring, mostly because I've always hated giving my phone number -- even tho I know that's probably the easiest piece of personal information anybody can find on the Web!).

I know that stores use them to help track buying habits, loss leaders etc. But to tell the truth, I hate getting the e-mails from the stores of items in my buying profile that are on sale -- reminding me once again that I'm a repeat Ben & Jerry's customer!

I agree with Donna. The program which irks me is Von's grocery store's "just for you." Shoppers get emails of the specials and have to go to the website and click on them in order to get the savings. I think it's outrageous. People who don't participate pay the higher prices. I think I get two emails a week from them to click on the savings. It's greedy and unfair.

You can unsubscribe from those emails. In fact, you can mark it "no emails", or not give your email out, when signing up.

You can also get a free e-mail address on Yahoo, Gmail and the like, and use it just for promotions. I sometimes want to see if there's a deal, so I'll sign in and find the latest couple of e-mails from that store.

For most loyalty cards you don't have to give your personal information if you don't want the coupons in the mail or to be able to enter a phone number instead of carrying the card/tag.