Loyalty/Points and Discount Cards

Are you loyal enough to be gendered?

Loyalty and discount cards exist solely to track what you buy and build a profile of you in order to market things to you better. In exchange for you giving away your privacy and allowing [Company Name Here] to tie all your purchases down to a specific individual or family, you get coupons/discounts/points/perks/etc. As such, the more info they know about you, the better they can narrow down their marketing to certain groups of people including, you guessed it, gender. Advertising and marketing still relies heavily on gender stereotypes, so signing up to one of these cards and using it may cause some headaches, even if they don't explicitly ask you for a gender. That being said, if you can live with being advertised to directly, the discounts and offers could be useful. So let's get to it!

Nectar Card

• Type: Multi-retailer points card, though with a Sainsbury's focus
• Status: New customer
• Method: Internet form
• Status: Title is mandatory, though "Other" is an option. As of 23rd June 2019, the form no longer requires a binary gender if you select a non-gendered title. Looking at the web inspector, it's suspicious how the gender selector is still there and defaults to "male" if you select a non-gendered title. I wonder how they handle this for salutations and database storage. Signup at your risk I guess.

Tesco Clubcard

• Type: Single-retailer points card
• Status: New customer
• Method: Internet form
• Status: Title is mandatory, "Mx" is an option. Does not ask for gender at all.

Co-op Membership

• Type: Single-retailer points card
• Status: New customer
• Method: Internet form
• Status: Title is optional, "Mx" is an option too. Does not ask for gender at all.

Bite Card

• Type: Discount card for airport and train station fast food retailers
• Status: New customer
• Method: Internet form (card activation)
• Status: A couple of years ago, title was mandatory and was from a set list. However, it was susceptible to the DOM Inspector method (resulting in me getting "Mx" on my card. Since then, title became no longer mandatory, but is still from a limited list without "Mx".

Booths Card

• Type: Single-retailer discount and incentive card
• Status: Register temporary card
• Method: Internet form
• Status: Optional gender field and a mandatory title field that contains "Mx" as an option.

Holland & Barrett rewards for life

• Type: Single-retailer points and incentive card
• Status: New customer
• Method 1: In-store at the till
• Date 1: 26th September 2018
• Status 1: Mandatory title field with "Mr", "Mrs, "Ms", "Miss", "Dr", "Prof". No Mx option and can't be blank.
• Method 2: Online with an order
• Date 2: 27th September 2018
• Status 2: Title is optional when checking out. Since the products I want are not available online (chilled/frozen products) I haven't fully placed an order, but the website account was created without a title, but without the loyalty card attached. Unless there's an additional page after checkout that requires title and/or gender specifically for the loyalty card, I think we're good with this method.
• Response: I contacted Holland & Barrett about their in-store signup process. Since the backend system can support no title, I was signed up manually by the customer support rep who responded to my query. I have since received the card and it's working fine. I'm not sure if the in-store signup process has been updated yet, but at least it's still possible to get a card. The one letdown though is the welcome letter starts "Dear Sir/Madam".

Greggs Rewards

• Type: Single-retailer discount, incentive and stored money app
• Status: New customer
• Date: 3rd January 2019
• Method: iOS spp
• Status: Gender field has an "Other" option, no title boxes.

Boots Card

• Type: Single-retailer discount, incentive and stored money app
• Status: New/Existing customer
• Date: 30th September 2021
• Method: Website
• Status: Title optional, Mx included.