RE: I've Had it With Apps, Subscriptions and "Loyalty" Programs!
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After the fridge situation in France, I definitely don't want any household appliances connected to the internet where someone else could take control of them !
When our local Dunelm told me that they were no longer going to be producing till receipts, only emailing them, I must admit I had a very frank exchange of views with them. Under UK law, that would have given them the "pre-existing commercial relationship" loophole as a way to circumvent rules on spam emailing.
So I pointed out that blind people tend not to use computers, or have printers (since braille printers are pretty specialist bits of kit), and many don't use email because they may find screen readers inconvenient. Dunelm would therefore be in breach of the Equality Act 2010, and also if the customer was buying for a business they'd be breaking the law about providing a VAT receipt at the point of sale. Shortly afterwards they dropped the idea, although I suspect I can't claim credit for it, their legal department might have seen what was going on and gone "hold on a minute...."
There's an old saying — I'm not sure where it came from — that ”silence is consent.”
So I always make a point of giving constructive feedback — not just attacking and calling them stupid RIP offs — whenever I encounter a situation that's really annoying me, and I tried to frame it in such a way that it will leave no doubt that I'm saying ” your policy is going to lose you money, because I'm not the only customer who's going to walk away.”
These venues don't care about actual feedback but they do care about their bottom lines so if the feedback is always wrapped around damage to their bottom line I feel like it is more likely to be ”heard.”
Your example with Dunelm is also an effective angle if they think they're going to get in trouble legally things tend to change rather fast.
Again not trying to take credit, but some years back my wife started rattling an attorney e-commerce giant eBay because of a practice they had of arbitrarily holding incoming payments from buyers for up to three weeks, which led to a major class action lawsuit, as a result of which PayPal stop being and integrated part of eBay commerce.
Regardless, it often feels like paddling upstream against a current that moves you backwards ever so slightly faster than you're capable of paddling.
=^..^=