I get criticized a lot for not having every single app installed on my smartphone. Seems like many places want you to have an app installed in order to get certain discounts at their place of business (retail stores, restaurants, etc.). The apps are just another way of tracking your purchases and selling that information to others. No thanks.
you are correct. Also, paying for the app is tantamount of them getting all your info and your consent. Using it for free and the subsequent data is not what the third parties are primarily interested in.
I bet criticized a lot for not having a cell phone at all. But I am running more and more into things where they demand a cell phone- for now, I just shop elsewhere if that is a requirement.
The app craze has gone insane. We parked in a municipal lot in Leavenworth, Washington last fall. You needed an app to pay for parking!! I had to download the app, create an account, set up username and password, add all my phone, email and address data, create a virtual credit card number on the Capital One app (I use them for all web purchases), add the credit card info...and I could FINALLY pay for parking. We wasted 20 minutes doing all that crap.
When we walked out of the lot, we found a pay by credit card kiosk! The signs in the parking stalls only told you about the app, not that there was a payment kiosk nearby. I was so PISSED OFF.
We got back to the car ten minutes after our time limit expired. Why wasn’t the app smart enough to automatically buy me another 15 minutes of time? Sure enough, got a $70 ticket.
I wrote to the city and explained how awful the entire process was and they cancelled the ticket.
I swear some brain-dead 20 year old idiot in the city selected that app for parking without once thinking about the user experience.
Later, on the same trip, we found parking in Jasper, Alberta to be a breeze. You scan a QR code on the meter, double-click and pay by Apple Pay. Piece of cake. Took ten seconds. What a contrast to Leavenworth!
We were at a restaurant the other day that required us to order with a QR code and made it hard without the app.
We got up and went to a real restaurant with actual servers.