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I have noticed that the cashier's have gotten pushy about asking about a Prime account, and very recently about a charity donation. It's a good way to 'make' pe
by imagiko 8y ago
I have noticed that the cashier's have gotten pushy about asking about a Prime account, and very recently about a charity donation. It's a good way to 'make' people donate when asked upfront. I'm sure the probability of people donating increases. When I denied, I was asked if I'd like to round off my payment and have the balance donated. Honestly, it's very annoying. Whole foods is unfortunately becoming an REI store.
- srtjstjsj 8y agoThat's the new trend in many grocery stores. Someone on HN or Reddit mentioned that grocery charities are actually a tactic to estimate the sign of the derivative of e the customer base's grocery-discretionary income, as a hint of when to raise prices.
- bendoidic 8y agoInteresting angle. Any resources to back up that claim? Feels so dirty, like free health screenings for employees, when the real purpose is to built an insurance risk profile for a geographic area.
- cedivad 8y agoHN; the place where people use "sign of the derivative" instead of "trend" or "growth".
- anothergoogler 8y agoI was particularly confused by the typo, "sign of the derivative of e", e being constant.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- YaxelPerez 8y agosign of d/dx e^(discretionary income) perhaps
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- DrScump 8y agoOr simply introduce themselves as the vector for charity, taking corporate credit for the donations of their customers.
- swensel 8y agoThis is what I always guessed was the reason.
- asntbqjkwbucaa 8y agoI always assumed the reason was to generate $XXX million in donations for a tax deduction for the grocery store chain.
- gardnr 8y agoI'm not a tax attorney but I don't think that's how deductions work.
- asntbqjkwbucaa 8y agoDo you mind explaining more? I was under the impression that a corporation can take a tax deduction for charitable donations. There's a line item for it on Form 1120 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1120.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1120.pdf)
- smileysteve 8y agoIn order to take the tax deduction of an expense to a charity they have to first recognize the income the customer just gave them. Since the income and the deduction directly offset each other, this is a zero sum maneuver.
- asntbqjkwbucaa 8y agoAh, okay. Thanks!
- loosetypes 8y agoIt doesn’t work like that with regards to taxing. What they do get is a good PR image at no cost to themselves (many places don’t match any donations[0]). Worse, some even keep a percent in “administrative fees” [1] And there is concern that these checkout charities are replacing more traditional means of corporate giving, reducing net contributions. Whether or not they make you feel ambushed, due diligence is worth hope before giving, as some companies (and the non-profits they give to) are more worthy than other. [0] Such as walgreens. But there are some places, like Costco, that will match customer and employee giving. [1] Petco
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Kephael 8y agoI never donate via proxy, I don't want to give some corporation a tax deduction on my behalf. I am sure they are doing this for PR purposes.
- simonsarris 8y agoThe charity donation thing has been part of WF forever. They do it on and off over the years. South Park making fun of them for it in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKsOwJ8AGWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKsOwJ8AGWo
- bendoidic 8y agoRalphs and Vons in California have been doing the charity ask for years. I always assumed it was their way of bragging later "how much they gave back to the community" while conveniently forgetting to mention those funds came from customer donations. I hate it, too.
- masonic 8y agoSafeway also.
- BookmarkSaver 8y agoSafeway and Vons are both subsidiaries of Albertson's.
- lsmarigo 8y agoPanda Express kicks this up a notch and has a little bell they ring whenever someone donates their change adding an element of social pressure/shame, super scummy
- 0x8BADF00D 8y agoThey have to recoup the losses from all the free fortune cookies they give.
- rbritton 8y agoI absolutely hate their charity solicitation. If I’m going to donate to anything, it’s going to be a charity of my own choice after a thorough vetting with no middlemen. Next time I go there, I’m tempted to request they round down my total instead.
- masonic 8y agoThey are scummy in general. All the PEs near me stop cooking all their best entree items by 7PM on the theory that customers will accept whatever slop is left... yet they continue to offer all their items over mobile (they'll just happily tell you they "ran out" when you get there).
- aviv 8y agoPanda Express is high up there in the list of nastiest fast food places. Pure garbage food. And as you probably know, they will gladly dump a fresh batch of Orange Chicken on top of a 3 hour old batch and so some portion of their entrees are kept on the hot plate for half a day. Nasty. What they do is criminal.
- lovich 8y agoYou should perhaps, never look at how food is prepared at any fast food location. At every food prep place I've worked, we only saw the big boss when they were running over to tell us to replace everything because they saw the health inspector. Usually they had the line manager telling us to replace nothing, and firing or reducing hours of employees who followed the posted food safety guides
- borski 8y agoSorry, what's wrong with REI? I've never been asked to donate to charity at my local REI...
- imagiko 8y agoHaven't you been pushed about getting an REI membership? I think twice before asking any REI salesman for help, because I know they are going to push me to get a membership. They're doing their job since their incentives are tied to memberships to some degree, but it makes for a poor experience. /edit:I'd rather be asked about a membership once at the cashier's than by every sales staff I talk to during my visit.
- borski 8y agoOh, I see. To be fair, I signed up and paid $20 for a membership many years ago; it's a one-time fee to never have to worry about saving receipts, which is a massive win for me since I shop there so often, and to get the dividend which inevitably amounts to far more than the one-time $20 charge. So, to be fair, I don't recall being pushed, since it made sense to me, and they wouldn't push me now because I'm already a member.
- vadym909 8y agomy wife probably signed up sometime- cos when I gave them my phone number they said you have $21 dividend- want to apply it? I was like - wow - I love this place and I don't even shop there a lot. Don't love their prices but I love REI. Too bad the Orchard Supply which is also a CoOp is shutting down.
- cliffordthedog 8y agoIt's a coop, that's what they do. FWIW the dividend is pretty nice. Combined with the sale I saved a pretty solid chunk of money on a nice cooler.
- biscoe9116 8y agoI've been shopping at REI for years and have never been asked about membership by the people working the floor. Also if you're shopping at REI without a membership you're doing it wrong. You get a percentage of every purchase back as dividend that you can put towards anything in the store.
- cliffordthedog 8y agoha, I had a job interview recently and they had me do a take home thing. They offered to pay me for it, just a few hundred dollars for the time I put in. That's cool. But in the email they asked if I wanted the money, or I could donate it. Right now I could use the money, but now I feel just a little bad about it.
- spython 8y agoSo you replied that you'll donate the money yourself to the charity of your choosing?
- notyourwork 8y agoTo which they replied, "no worries let me know your favorite charity and we'll send it over right away!" LOL
- spython 8y agoHere the potential employer is clearly looking for an indication of the financial situation of the candidate, to be in the position of power when negotiating the salary. So it would be important to deny this data. A simple "Here's my bank account, I'll donate it myself" should be enough.
- cliffordthedog 8y agoThey had already rejected me, so who cares. Though I do appreciate your well cultivated sense of suspicion and cynicism. Keep it up!
- fma 8y agoBefore Trump's tax law which upped the standard deduction to the point very few have the ability to deduct... a benefit of donating yourself is your can deduct it from your taxes.
- 8y ago
- notyourwork 8y agoThe donation inquiries are not from Amazon, they were doing this well before Amazon bought them.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoI quit donating to charity after I found out that Red Cross only gives a small fraction of its donations to charity the rest is spent on Administration costs. Just like colleges and the healthcare industry. Got to pay all those vp's of vp's of vp's.
- ceejayoz 8y agoYou quit donating to charity because one specific charity is egregiously bad? Isn't that a bit like ceasing to eat because you had something yucky once?
- saalweachter 8y ago... one specific charity was accused of doing something bad. The Red Cross is frequently accused of having excessive management costs and mismanaging funds; if you do a little research (a) they appear to have reasonable overhead (b) a lot of the accusations seem to come from competing charities with higher overheads.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoNot transparent enough for me! https://www.npr.org/2014/12/04/368453320/red-cross-misstates-how-donors-dollars-are-spent https://www.npr.org/2014/12/04/368453320/red-cross-misstates...
- saalweachter 8y agoJust out of curiosity, can you find a source for the "26% spent on fundraising" figure? Charity Navigator only goes back to the 2000s and never shows anything near that. Charity Navigator: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-services/haiti-assistance-program/donations-at-work.html https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-ser... Haiti spending: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-services/haiti-assistance-program/donations-at-work.html https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-ser...
- 8y ago
- wil421 8y agoThe charity donation thing has been around for a while. South Park even had an episode 3 years ago about Whole Foods and the pushy donations.
- LaikaF 8y agoI worked there as a cashier. You got tested on this. Prime account is just the replacement for their rewards program. For the month of... may? The old one who stopped and the prime one hadn't started. This made some customers mad. Plus it's a lot easier if you're basically running off a script to do the eight hours of repetition.
- late2part 8y ago“No thanks, I choose my own charities.”