Last calendar month , I tried to find outwhat Amazon learnsabout people who have an Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card from Chase . Neither Chase nor Amazon would give me a full-strength answer . In fact , Chase ’s voice , Mary Jane Rogers , give mea untimely answerin telling me that Amazon descend into a class that it did n’t .
Ginger Rogers feel badly about that and reached out via electronic mail to apologise after the story came out , enquire if she could do anything to aid . I tell apart her I still wanted to hump what Amazon learns about people ’s role of the card , in particular when they apply it to buy things from home other than Amazon . She came back with this :
“ As a third - company pardner of Chase , Amazon does receive customer data from Chase that is necessary to administer the program . For example , Chase provides rewards balance wheel to enable Shop with Points purchases , ” Rogers wrote . “ However , Chase does not ply Amazon with any individual transactional data at specific merchandiser . ”
That sounds reassuring on its fount , but I spoke with an anonymous source who is familiar with how the data - communion between Chase and Amazon works . While this someone was commove that Chase and Amazon are n’t more transparent about what intel change hands , the soul read that it “ is n’t that villainous . ”
“ Chase suppose to Amazon , ‘ Your consumer like to do these things . They pass on average this , or in aggregated this , ’ ” this somebody said by phone . “ They might even segment those consumer , but they always anonymize the consumer and deal with it in aggregate . Amazon knows me on their website but they ca n’t de - anonymize me from those aggregate report . ”
The person told me that neither Chase nor Amazon hear what a cardholder actually buy , just where they grease one’s palms it , and that what Chase passes along to Amazon is n’t personalise .
Based on what this person told me , it sounds like if I use my card to purchase an $ 80 Rock n ’ meet baby sleeper at Target , Amazon might see in a report that a individual in my goose egg computer code spent $ 80 at a merchant with a generic code that describes stores like Target , Walmart , and others . Or my purchase might be include in a larger report that $ 300,000 was pass by cardholders in my zip code at Target that calendar month .
Of course , Amazon hump a good deal about those cardholders because they all shop at Amazon , so if it convey a report card about spending in a zip code , it has a pretty effective approximation of which of its cardholders live in that vigour codification .
Based on my conversation with this source , I institutionalise Rogers the next e-mail :
So this statement—”Chase does not allow Amazon with any individual transactional data at specific merchants”—seems to pull up stakes candid a lot of possibility .
For example , Amazon may be getting total spend by all cardholders at specific merchandiser each month . Or it could be get full spend at specific merchandiser by a group of people in a specific zip code . Or Amazon could be getting my transactional data each month but coded to categories of merchants . Or Amazon could be told how much I ’m spending on my add-in each month . Or Amazon could be make a inclination of the merchant I drop money with and the sum I spent but not how much I spent at each one .
Or does Amazon * just * get my name and how many Amazon points I rack up in the month ?
I ’d really like more specific information about what information is shared with Amazon , rather than statements that obfuscate what data point is shared . Is that possible ?
“ I ’m afraid our statement is as far as I can go , ” respond Rogers . Amazon did not respond to a request for comment .
The most frustrating thing about this exercise is that I think the answer is actually pretty boring , yet Amazon and Chase prefer to keep what happens with the data father by their ticket grey cards in a black box seat .
Unless we get more laws that give us the rightfulness to ask companies what they are doing with our data , like theone recently pass in California , black boxes like this one will continue the norm . Unfortunately , California ’s law does n’t go into core until 2020 , so I ca n’t use it to pry this particular box heart-to-heart yet .
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