Okay the title is a bit exaggerated, but honestly not far off. This post is very mundane and a bit long, but thought it fits the community.
I’m visiting my home country and went shopping for pants, there were “30% off everything!” signs with a tiny text underneath that said “member discount” (don’t have membership). Not a problem, did not notice and I don’t care for such marketing tricks to get you into the store but okay.
Picked up couple of pants, went to the cashier and they asked me “do you have our membership?” - I answered no and expected the follow up question whether I’d like to join, but, to my positive surprise the cashier just happily responded “okay, not a problem!” and continued to bag my stuff.
I stood ready to pay and then the cashier said “now I just need your phone number and you can pay”. Hold up. What. I did not expect that, I honestly had a burst of anger inside me (never gonna take it on a cashier, they are just doing their job). I asked nicely why do I need to give my phone number and I was told that to register me as a member so I can get the discount.
I declined and said I don’t want to join and would like to just pay.
The entire interaction after questioning why they need my phone number was awkward, as if I had been the first person to decline, the weirdo, aluminum foil hat wearing hermit.
This was just one of many interactions in the recent years that make me feel as if I was a weirdo for not sharing all my info around. The worst is when everyone keeps telling me “its just an app, just download it and use that why do you make things complicated” or “just sign up you don’t need to pay anything”.
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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I don’t have a phone or address, I am unhoused.
Caring for your Privacy and the general privacy of society in the aggregate, given the increasing data mining, collecting, advertising and other trends is the normal mindset.
Getting propagandised and brainwashed into thinking that paying, with your own money for literal microphoned devices operated by for-profit-focused Corps that will listen in and record you so as to give you lazy weather updates or help you play a song, or purchase knick-knacks online in exchanhe is the crazy take.
Getting you to feel ackward is the point of peer-pressure and their Marketing. Just ignore it. You are not in the wrong.
Nah, you’re not abnormal. I’ve had the same thing happen at multiple store. The most invasive has been Microcenter; they tell me that I have to give them my email in order to wait in line for tech support, and then bombard me with spam. Every time I buy something new there, I have to tell the cashier to NOT use the address on file that they won’t unlink from my bank card.
Microcenter hasn’t been nearly the worst of it for me, but I can confirm the spam side of it. I had to give them my email for some part warranties. However the actual emails in my case was just a single click to unsubscribe or change the preferences (It’s been a while, don’t remember which) and it was done just like that. It’s still a little infuriating that I have to give them my email though, let alone the spam that comes along side it.
Yeah, but every time I have to buy something new, they automatically sign me up again. They never give me an opt-out.
I wonder where you live that that happened. In America you’re expected to say no, cashiers don’t care. They don’t get paid enough to.
This happened in Finland, but I didn’t want to specify it to spark a universal conversation, which succeeded!
I know people from all around the globe deal with privacy issues and hoped that others would share their experiences.
No point asking them to justify why they have to ask, they probably don’t even know. Just say “Sorry, I don’t give that out”. I’ve never had a store push back after that - they probably get it all the time.
Why not lie ? My phone number is 526-432-8267
I’m a casher in the US of fuckin A and I can assure you that we don’t care on a personal level what you do. If someone not having or wanting to enter a phone number at the register is the weirdest customer thing that happens in a shift then it’s the most relaxed shift of my damn life.
Why don’t you just lie … Each time a different name surname email address physical address phone number … Yeah sometimes it’s Mandatory to use a real address for delivery purposes just put a random name in and add a post-it on the doorbell saing something on the line of leave packages for Crudelia demon here please. Temp mail for most discounts is enough… The test cases in which they do not only ask for your phone but also want to verify it it’s pretty slim …
Missing the entire fucking point, but that’s typical for braindead .ml users I guess.
Please enlighten me at this point I’m curious
Some email services will let you append arbitrary strings to the end of your email address with a +. Whenever a sales associate asks for my email to sign up for discounts, I give them email+spam@provider.com. I love the looks I get for that.
Wow that’s so cool hope proton does
That’s the advice I’ve gotten here pretty much, and will probably deal with it in that way from now on!
It is sad that we have to do that, but don’t think this will change any time soon.
I have a second SIM that I use for situations where I don’t want to give out my real number.
It’s a traditional PAYG SIM where I pay for a tiny bit of credit and it lasts until I use it. I need to make a billable once every few months to keep it active. So I just text myself once every couple of months. The $10 I put on it will last a few years before I need to top it up. Or I could just ‘burn’ it and get a new one.
This is another great idea. Similar to having extra email for spam.
Yeah exactly
Yeah usual 2024 dystopia
This is sadly very common where I’m from, except you don’t even get a discount from it. I’ve taken to just politely declining, since I’m sure the person working the cash is probably pressured to get people to give their personal info.
“No thank you”
“I appreciate it but no thank you”
It’s a slight non sequitur while still being polite. Saying “no thank you” when someone is pressuring you works well in many situations.
The receipt is rarely optional for the store though, if you ask for a print out they would have to do it
The email is 100% optional though. Also customer can decline a receipt.
Right, they can’t refuse issuing a ticket because you don’t want to provide an email.
In some countries receiving the ticket is not optional even for the customer 😭
Oh I didn’t know that, they can’t just wave it away?
No, in Argentina for example, they’re supposed to hand you the receipt, otherwise they could get in trouble.
I think it’s because there’s a lot of selling off the books
I do this all the time.
“Can I have your address?”
“For a haircut? No, will it let you skip it? Ok good do that then, thanks. I don’t need 50 new mailers a month about damn haircuts, you feel me.”
Problem solved.
“I don’t have one” is what I typically say lol
“Would you like your receipt to be emailed to you?”
“No thanks, would you like to masturbate with a cheese-grater?”
Every time this happens to me, the clerk/cashier just shrugs and is like, “okay”. They get it, but are obligated to try anyway. The best you can do is be polite.
100% would never want to make their day tougher than it already probably is.
This hermit politely declined, paid, thanked, and left. The anger I felt was towards the retail company and the clerk doesn’t need to witness that.
“Would you like to donate money to us that we pretty pretty promise will go to some vague charity while we reap the tax benefits? No? Are you sure? Fine, we’ll just ask you next time (regardless of your answer this time).”
What tax benefits? Sure they can deduct the donation, but that just cancels out the income from you giving them the money to donate. It’s net zero for the company.
I hear the charity tax myth all the time and I don’t understand why everyone just believes it.
Obviously, it’s not possible for a store to claim a tax deduction for a customer’s charity donation. But, the store can claim tax deductions for the cost of collecting the donated money on the charities behalf.
Costs would include: a percentage of the staff members salary for asking the customer to donate, equipment costs to modify the registers to process donations, a percentage of the credit card transaction fees, a percentage of the shop lease costs, etc etc.
Initially, it sounds ridiculous as the real costs of what I listed above would realistically land somewhere between zero and shit-all. But we can be sure that the businesses that ask their customers for charity donations have all the numbers geared heavily in their favor.
Except all of those things you listed would be business expenses which aren’t taxable as they would be deducted from gross profits as part of the calculation for determining net profit (which is the taxable part of profit) and if they’re also using that as a charitable contribution then they are deducting it twice which the IRS tends to frown upon. Or at least they would if they had any kind of worthwhile enforcement mechanism for dealing with corporations.
I would assume the tax agencies of countries outside the US similarly frown upon such double deductions, possibly even with effective enforcement.
Would you like to donate to the Cut Child Hunger in Half fund?
Plot twist: Literally
They are told to try to convince people to sign up. So they’re going to act manipulative in order to get you to. It’s just part of their job. Just keep refusing and don’t think much of it.
Yeah, I’m a bit sad that even offline shopping is showing clear signs of dark patterns, but guess it is just so.
Nothing against someone just doing their job though. Can’t always choose where you get your living from.
Agreed, but to be fair, retail has been doing this for over like 10 years at least lol. It’s the most common with clothing shopping. It’s nothing new.
Very true, this is nothing new and just wanted to stop for a moment and rant about my mundane experience and love the the discussion this sparked here!
“Sure thing, It’s +XX 111 222 3333” Just give them garbage.
That’s probably exactly what I’ll be doing from now on. Was hoping for the simple “would you like to join?” but guess that’s out of style.
I think the cashier was under the assumption that you wanted the discount, and asked at the end instead of immediately after you said you weren’t already a member. It doesn’t feel rude or invasive, from my perspective, maybe just phrased as an underpaid employee.
What I do recommend is a VOIP phone number and attached separate email for all marketing purposes. They can track and sell that as much as they’d like without impacting your personal details or necessary accounts.
Haven’t looked into VOIP phone numbers before, thanks for the tip!
Could have been that too. I was polite and didn’t fuss about it thankfully!
Everyone’s approaching this from the privacy aspect, but the real reason isn’t that the cashier thought you were weird, they’re just underpaid and under a lot of pressure from management to try multiple times and in some cases they even get written up for not doing it because it’s deemed part of their job. They hate it just as much as you. Same when you try to cancel your cable subscription or whatever: the calls are recorded and their performance is monitored and they make damn sure they try at least 3 times to upsell you, even when it’s painfully obvious you’re done with them.
Just politely decline until they asked however many times they’re required to ask and move on.
I’ve worked retail and call centre jobs and I can assure you this is many people (at least those who are not too exhausted to care). These workers are constantly pressured to enshitify their service at the expense of theirs and the customer’s experience.
I haven’t worked a counter in over a decade, so can only imagine it’s got worse.
I did politely decline and didn’t want to make a fuss about it - the title is bit exaggerated and from outside perspective it probably wasn’t that dramatic.
I know that the cashier is just doing their job and I didn’t want to make their day any harder than it probably already was. I smiled, thanked and left right after paying.
Hope I don’t sound like a karen, just wanted to share my mundane experience in this community since I really love the discussion that is going on in this thread. I do hope that all of us in this community still remember the human when interacting with people in the real world.