Enshitification

The services are getting worse. And I apologize for the local news.

Maxbo <https://maxbo.no>_ - the local hardware-chain - is slowly but surely worsening their offer.

1. Initially they were always more expensive than other stores. Their benefit was that they were usually close and easy to get to. When Obos <https://obos.no>_ paired up with them, your membership at Obos would also buy you 10% off on every purchase at Maxbo. Obos is a service for buying flats and houses, but their bonus-program would give you multiple percent off at several places. So the membership fee payed for itself by the money you saved at other stores.

   Maxbo always had a internal membership program, which - if you were kind enough to leave you telephone number there - spammed you with news and offers. Using Obos got you around that, plus that the 10% from Obos were initially more than you got from the Maxbo internal program.

   All you needed to tell them at the register was your Obos member number, which I kept in my phone.

2. At one point only providing the membership-number wasn’t enough, you needed either to show the same number from within the Obos app (which has no benefit in daily life), or have a physical card, which you needed to ask for. That I did. I kept the card in my car, so I had it available at the checkout.

   The internal Maxbo bonus-program still existed.

3. Since now, your Obos membership is not enough anymore. You need to be a member of the Maxbo Max-Bonus in order to even get started with 10% off. When connecting the Obos number additionally, you get 15% off on all purchases.

   So th trade-off seems to be:

   You get my phone number and are allowed to track my purchases and spam me with information I don’t want, and I get 10 to 15% off my purchases. Obos also gets to track my purchases.

   vs.

   Obos gets to track my purchases and I get 10% off.

Maxbo just made their product worse to my disadvantage and offers me 5% discount. I’m not sure how discount I would accept. The thing that bothers me is that I get the 10-15% once per purchase, but they can spam me continously.

Sadly, I now have to reevaluate Obos as well, since the Mabox discount was the main financial factor that kept the Membership as a benefit.