Here on Oxygen Tuesday (so named for its falling just after Cyber Monday and Black Friday, allowing frenzied holiday shoppers the opportunity to catch their breath), I’m taking the time to wade through the stack of loyalty cards I now have perched near my computer, as they’ve become too numerous to fit into my wallet.

It seems like practically every company has a loyalty card these days. Barnes & Noble, Borders, Circuit City, Staples, and Virgin Megastore are my own personal top five, listed here in alphabetical order like the cast of an all-star disaster movie.

Most of these cards allow for a discount, either in the way of an advertised sale (“For card-holders only!”) or in a cumulative manner, as in “Once you’ve spent $1,000, you can take another 5 percent off!”

There’s just one problem: I don’t feel particularly loyal to any of these companies.

Online, the lowest overall price – with all applicable loyalty discounts applied – still gets my nod. Offline, price and ease of shopping experience (read: proximity to my home) are the major factors. If, after factoring in the “loyalty” discount, you’re still $2.00 more than your competitor, zoom! I’m gone!

Part of my problem, I suppose, is that I don’t feel particularly special to any of these companies. If discounts and extra attention are being accorded non-cardholders, then I’m not sure what the benefit of joining is – and, I daresay, neither is the company.

Then there’s the “Dear Kevin” personalized emails. Hey, that’s 1to1 marketing! They used my name! I’ll bet a real live human being took the time to compose that e-mail to me!

Well, no. This was made obvious with the arrival of my favorite “loyalty”-related email of recent vintage, from Borders, entitled “Kevin, You’ve Earned $0.00 in Borders Bucks!”

The excitement engendered in that exclamation point was perhaps surpassed by the easy-to-understand directions on how to realize my booty: “Just print this email and bring it to any Borders, Borders Express, or Waldenbooks and redeem your $0.00 in Borders Bucks any time before November 30, 2007.”

To be fair, a couple of hours later I received a “correction” e-mail, with the thrilling news that I’d actually earned a whopping five “Borders Bucks” for the hundreds I’d laid out there over the previous 10 months. I then spent the next half-hour surfing the web to determine that any book, DVD, or CD that I might want to blow all this free money on was still cheaper elsewhere.

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that some companies are offering up loyalty cards for the same reason that they’re featuring blogs or online communities: because everybody else is. And they’re probably getting enough ROI from easily-gulled customers that they don’t need to examine it any more closely.

Still, I’m just about ready to start printing my own disloyalty cards, to be used anytime I wind up going with a given company’s competitor. These would, over time, accumulate enough Kevin Koins that I could be exempt from being asked at the cash register whether or not I have a loyalty card.

Who’s with me?

By Kevin Zimmerman on November 27, 2007