Simon

Cumbria

IT

Hey - speak for yourself !

"The buying public assume businesses know their preferences and more importantly their dislikes or bad experiences."

I don't. I don't expect ANY business to keep more information than they need to in order to process my requests. I know they all do keep more, but that's another matter ...

For example, if I want to buy something, I'll ask someone to supply it - when I want to buy it. If I don't want to buy something, or don't want to buy it now, then I don't want someone trying to sell it to me. So given that, what more do you need to know than a) who I am so you can invoice me and deliver the goods, and b) how I pay you ?

You don't need to know how many brothers, sisters, cats, dogs, gerbils, whatever I have. You don't need to know if I prefer heavy rock or classical. You don't need to know if I enjoy a good steak or are vegetarian (except perhaps if you are food retailer and I tick a box telling you so that you can filter the products displayed on your website).

You don't need to know how many mobile companies/networks have p***ed me off in the past. If you aren't a mobile network then you don't have any reason to know, and if you are a mobile network, then you still don't need to know (you can assume it's several) as all you need to be bothered with is not p***ing me off now you spend all that marketing money on gaining my custom. Not p***ing me off now doesn't require any special knowledge about me - all it takes is simple 'old fashioned' customer service, you know, where the customer is treated like they are important to the business rather than something to be tolerated !

So put simply, there are no reasons for you (or any other company) to be storing ever more information about me. Most of the arguments for 'more data' usually follow some pre-condition that you are going to try and 'sell me stuff' that I probably don't want anyway.