I walked up to the counter at the frozen yoghurt shop.
“I’ll have an English toffee swirl with all the toppings, please.”
The server nodded and proceeded to fulfil my dairy dream.
This was in the early 2000s when frozen yoghurt was wildly popular because it was seen as a healthy yet delicious dessert.
“That will be R8.50,” he said, handing me the cone.
I slapped my loyalty card on the counter in triumph.
Over the course of a few months, I had diligently stuck 10 stickers to the card, each sticker representing a frozen yoghurt I’d bought at the shop, with the promise I would get my 11th free.
I had started – and lost – so many cards, but I had looked after this one as if it contained the nuclear codes.
The rich and buttery caramel-like treat was going to be so sweet not only because it was so sweet, but because it was going to be free – gratis, for niks, and on the house.
The server picked up my card and scrutinised it.
“One of the stickers is torn. According to the rules, we can’t accept torn stickers. That will be R8.50,” he said with a sneer that put me in my place.
The only dessert I was getting for free from the sneery server was a giant slice of humble pie.
He did give me another sticker, which I stuck over the torn one so that my next frozen yoghurt would be free.
That card went into a box in a drawer for safekeeping, which I fished out last week, some two decades later.
Over the years, I’ve watched friends and family grok the rewards system and accumulate freebies. The highlight was my cousin Mark using his air miles for a first-class return ticket to London.
Rewards are an effective tool for hooking customers and keeping them coming back. This savvy marketing tactic isn’t new.
In fact, the concept dates back to 1793, when a merchant in New Hampshire began rewarding customers with copper tokens that could be used for future purchases, generating repeat visits.
Fast forward to today, and loyalty programmes have become the foundation of marketing strategies.
Banks, garages, cellphone service providers, supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, movie houses, and even my local vet are part of the South African Loyalty Landscape.
I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point, I got sucked into this reward culture and signed up for as many loyalty programmes as I could.
Amassing points is addictive, and there’s nothing quite like the endorphin rush of moving up levels.
Not even the endorphin rush of exercise. Not that I would know about that, thanks to the reward programme.
You see, I signed up to a gym that rewards you with smoothies if you visit the facility several times a week. Six months later, I had gained 5kg because I’d spent more time indulging in smoothie slurp-downs than burpees and push-ups.
I would stop at a coffee shop on the way home from the gym to take advantage of its buy-10-get-one-free reward.
Best of all, thanks to being in the app age, there were no cards to get lost — just open the app, scan the slip, and your purchase is automatically recorded.
A large latte costs R42, although at a nearby coffee shop, it’s R35. But I paid the extra R7 because of the programme.
My wife shook me and told me that “loyalty math” was even worse than “girl math”. Girl math, for those not on TikTok, describes how all people (not just girls) justify their quirky purchases.
For example, anything bought with cash is basically free, anything bought in advance is free, and you’re making a profit if you buy something on sale.
My wife pointed out that if I’d bought the R35 latte, I’d have spent R385 after 11 lattes – which is a R35 saving on the R420 I spent on 10 lattes and a free latte.
What she must never know, though, is that the voucher had expired on the day I went to claim my free latte.
I’ve decided to detox from my reward obsession, one frozen yoghurt, one smoothie, and one latte at a time.
But before I do that, I’m going to take my 20-year-old fully-stickered loyalty card and claim my English toffee swirl with all the toppings.
I really hope that the sneery server is still working behind the till, so I can wipe that sneer off his face!
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