Credit and Debit card reward points are a fixture today. You can get cards that give you bonus points for air fare, travel, or general use – to be redeemed out of a catalog. Years ago, I remember my local bank giving 4 points per dollar for the first six months your account was active. It later downgraded to 2 points per dollar, then one point. Now, it’s one point per two dollars spent. Guess we were having ‘too rewarding’ an experience, America.
Scanning my online bank account, I noticed a promo (yes, embedded into my online account statement!) for 40 points per dollar (!) when I dine at Burger King®. Wow. Over 200 reward points for a fast food combo meal – quite a deal. That would be equal to me having to spend $400 elsewhere.
It struck me that I had just read an online article about particularly unhealthy food choices and that there was a Burger King® entry on that list. So I double checked and yes, bringing up the bottom at number 11 was the Whopper with cheese. 760 calories, 47 grams of fat and over 1400 mg of sodium. Yum. Make it a combo to get a 1500 calorie meal. That’s about two-thirds of the recommended daily caloric intake, by the way. And they were at the bottom of the list.
Now, I’m not singling out Burger King®. To the contrary, there are a lot of unhealthy choices that we make every day. And it’s not just a single franchise or food type. What did strike me is that we could get such a crazy ‘reward’ for such a generally unhealthy choice. Buy combo meals for the family of four and get a bonus 800 points! I guess if it’s a special treat, that’s one thing, but somehow I think most people eat a whole lot more fast food than I do. Good marketing? Perhaps.
Or maybe we’ll be able to use our rewards at the local hospital to defray the cost of our next cardiac stent procedure.
This is one of an occasional non-Real Estate post. Because sometimes you just have to write about other things.
No comments:
Post a Comment