Ludmila is currently standing in the middle of a brightly lit aisle, clutching a box containing a four-slice toaster that she doesn’t particularly like. Her keys are on the floor-they slipped from her hand when she tried to juggle her phone, her purse, and the oversized cardboard box-and the woman behind her in line is making a very specific clicking sound with her tongue.

It is the sound of societal impatience. Ludmila is paralyzed not by the choice of appliances, but by a digital ghost. She has found a better toaster, a sleeker one with a crumb tray that actually slides out, for 114 lei less at a shop three blocks away. But she isn’t going there. She is staying here, in this line, with her keys on the floor, because her phone screen is currently displaying a “points balance” that feels like a bank account.

She feels thrifty. She feels like she is “winning” the consumer game by applying these points toward a toaster she only half-wants. In reality, she is paying a premium for the privilege of staying put. She is paying 114 lei for the comfort of not “wasting” her accumulated history with this brand. It is a small, ordinary failure of logic, a glitch in the human software that prioritizes the retrieval of a “reward” over the actual saving of money.

I walked into a glass door yesterday. It was one of those incredibly clean, floor-to-ceiling panes in a modern office lobby. I was looking at the exit, seeing the sidewalk and the freedom of the street, and I walked straight into the barrier. My forehead hit the glass with a wet thwack, and for a second, the world vibrated.

Loyalty programs are that glass door. They are designed to be invisible. They look like a clear path to a benefit, but their primary function is to be a physical limit. They are there to stop you from leaving the building.

The core frustration of the modern shopper is this: we are no longer loyal to products, and we are certainly not loyal to the experience of standing in a queue while someone clicks their tongue at us. We are loyal to an account balance. We have been trained to hoard these digital crumbs as if they were gold bullion. We keep coming back to the same store because we have points there-points we have never quite spent, points that make leaving feel like throwing money away. It is the “switching cost” dressed up in the Sunday clothes of a gift.

01

The Endowment of Digital Dust

Retailers know that the hardest thing to do is to get a customer to change their habit. If you shop at Store A, Store B has to work twice as hard to get you to walk through their doors. They have to offer a better price, better service, or a better location. But if Store A can convince you that you have “equity” in their system, they don’t have to be better anymore. They just have to be yours.

The points exist to make comparison shopping feel like a loss. If the toaster is cheaper elsewhere, you don’t see a saving of 114 lei; you see the “loss” of the 500 points you would have used. This is the endowment effect in its most predatory form. We value what we already possess (even if it’s just a digital number) far more than what we might gain by looking elsewhere.

The math is almost always fuzzy. Try to calculate the actual value of a point mid-aisle. Is one point worth 0.1 lei? 0.05? Does it vary based on the category? Does it expire? The mental load required to decode the true value of a loyalty program is high enough that most people just give up and assume “more is better.” We have accepted that being rewarded and being retained are the same thing, when the whole design depends on them being different. A reward is a thank you for past behavior; retention is a barrier to future behavior.

“

The secret to a great tower isn’t the sand-it’s the tension of the water. But add too much water, and the whole thing becomes a slurry.

– Nora J.-P., sand sculptor

Loyalty programs are the same. A little bit of reward creates tension; it keeps the relationship solid. But when the program becomes the only reason for the relationship, the structure collapses into a muddy mess of resentment. You aren’t shopping; you’re fulfilling a contract you never signed.

The design of these systems is intentionally asymmetrical. The store gets your data, your purchase frequency, your brand preferences, and a guarantee of your return. You get a discount on a kettle three years from now. It’s a trade where you give up your freedom to choose for a fraction of a percent of your own spending returned to you as “credit.” It’s like a landlord telling you that if you pay your rent on time for a decade, they’ll give you a free gallon of paint, but only if you buy the brushes from them at full price.

The Currency of Reliability

In the local Moldovan landscape, the stakes are different. People are more skeptical, more attuned to the “catch.” Reliability is the currency that actually matters. This is where a company like

Bomba.md

finds its footing.

For over twenty years, they’ve occupied a space where the loyalty isn’t just a digital tally; it’s a reflection of having been there for the first washing machine, the first flat-screen TV, and the smartphone upgrade. When a retailer becomes a fixture of the household, the loyalty program needs to be transparent to survive. If the “points” feel like a trap, the twenty years of trust evaporate in a single afternoon of realized frustration.

Genuine value is found in the removal of friction, not the addition of weight. A loyalty program should be a tailwind, making the journey easier, not an anchor that prevents you from sailing to another port. When the ecosystem is built on transparency-where the discount is clear, the financing is flexible, and the points are a genuine bonus rather than a “switching tax”-the customer stays because they want to, not because they’re afraid to lose their “investment.”

If the answer is a hesitant “maybe” or a flat “no,” then we aren’t customers; we’re hostages to a database. We are the dog on the leash, and the leash is made of 1s and 0s. The stores that understand this are the ones that don’t just reward the transaction, but respect the choice. They know that the moment a customer feels “forced” to stay, they start looking for a pair of scissors to cut the cord.

The psychological weight of these unspent points is a form of cognitive debt. We carry it around in our pockets, checking our apps, waiting for the “perfect” moment to redeem them. We wait until we need a big purchase-a refrigerator or a high-end laptop-and then we realize the points only cover a tiny fraction of the cost, and they can’t be combined with other offers anyway. The “gift” was always a tether.

I remember staring at that glass door after I hit it. I could see the smudge of my own forehead on the surface. It was a mark of my own lack of awareness. I was so focused on where I wanted to go that I didn’t see what was stopping me. We do this every time we open a shopping app and check our balance before we check the price. We are looking at the destination, ignoring the barrier.

Memory of Service

True loyalty isn’t a balance. It’s a memory of service. It’s the knowledge that when the washing machine leaks at 2 AM, the place you bought it from has a path to a solution. It’s the confidence that the price you’re seeing isn’t inflated to account for the “free” points you’re earning. It’s the transparency of a retailer that says, “Here is the best deal we can give you, and if you come back, we’ll make it even better,” without the fine print that requires a law degree to untangle.

Ludmila eventually picked up her keys. She looked at the toaster, then at her phone, and then at the door. She realized the 500 points in her account were worth about the price of a cup of mediocre coffee. The 114 lei she would save down the street was worth a lot more-it was worth the realization that she was a free agent. She put the box back on the shelf. She walked out.

The click-tongue woman in line moved up one spot, still clicking, still trapped in her own mental arithmetic. Ludmila didn’t care. The air outside was cool, and for the first time in months, she wasn’t shopping for points. She was just shopping.

And in a world of digital leashes, that is the only real reward. It’s the difference between being a “user” in a database and a person in a store. One is a statistic to be managed; the other is a neighbor to be served. The best businesses, the ones that last twenty years or more, never forget which one is which.

This reflection was composed in 2024, considering the evolution of commerce over the past 20 years.