Friday's print column

Sunday evening, in a checkout lane at my Northwest Side Jewel-Osco, I slid my ring of keys down the belt toward the cashier in advance of my groceries. On the ring is a small version of my Preferred Customer Card, a personalized passport to often significant savings over the price supposedly charged to non-cardholders.

Since the program began 20 years ago, I've allowed Jewel to track my purchases and do what it will with my family's buying patterns in exchange for 50 cents off a box of cereal, a dollar off a gallon of milk and so on.

It's such an everyday transaction there and at many other retailers that I've ceased even to be annoyed by it or to wonder if it's true, as critics claim, that the discounts are mostly an illusion created by inflated list prices. So I was more startled than pleased when the cashier slid my ring of keys right back to me. "We don't need that anymore," she said. "We're discontinuing the program."

Good timing. Just as fears about the erosion of privacy have become the No. 1 topic in the land due to emerging revelations about mass data mining by the National Security Agency, Jewel-Osco is taking a modest step in the other direction.

Anonymous shopping! No longer must their customers worry about getting a letter saying, "We know what toilet paper you bought last summer."

This seemed noteworthy to me, so I emailed the spokeswoman for New Albertsons Inc., Jewel's parent company out in Boise, Idaho, for confirmation and an explanation. No, she replied, "the Preferred Customer Card is still an active program."

Was my cashier misinformed? Confused by the pending discontinuation of a related gasoline-discount program? If so, she wasn't the only one. On June 6, those responsible for the Jewel-Osco Facebook page had responded to a customer query about the apparent discontinuation of the card program with an answer that began, "We are still accepting Preferred Cards until June 25."

The following day, on a different thread: "Just the Fuel Rewards will be ending. You'll still be able to save with your Preferred Card."

Still puzzled, I drove to a different Northwest Side Jewel Wednesday morning to buy umbrellas in advance of the storm of the century predicted for later that day. I saw no references anywhere on the shelves to preferred prices, and, again, the cashier assured me the card program was being phased out.

I then called the customer service line: "No card, no hassle," the operator cheerfully informed me.