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”.
Thank you for reading my mundane rant, would you like to hear more? Just sign up for my weekly mailing list! Your email will be shared with our 12 453 partners
(Your Area Code) 867-5309. None of the younger store clerks know the song reference when I give them this number. But I get chuckles from older folks in line behind me
There’s usually already an account with that number, so just try it out. You probably don’t even need to actually open an account. BTW, if you do open an account, don’t expect that a fake phone number is going to keep you anonymous. Everything is linked these days. All of the big data brokers are buying and selling information to each other. The second you swipe a card, it’s going to match that card to real information from some random online purchase 95 years ago, and they’ll have all of your real information, including political preferences, address, phone number, all of your email addresses, ethnicity, height, weight, sexual preferences, everything. They have it all, and it’s all linked to every credit card you have ever used.
I just search online for the stores number and use that. They can bear the burden of their own bullshit spam
From a privacy point of view, it makes pefect sense to not share your phone number with a merchant. The only buisness you have with them is a single transaction, they don’t need any more information about you other than knowing that you paid.
Agreed. It used be worse here - at some point merchants wanted your social security number to create a unique customer identifier.
I will not describe how angry I felt hearing a shoe store clerk ask for my social security number (again, did not lash out at the clerk), but I was angry.
That thankfully did not last long (iirc).
Duh fuq.
I wonder how many people would give their social that easily.
Your phone number is linked to your social security number in the data marketplace. So it’s kind of the same thing except only powerful corporations can access it and not just a random individual.
I had this experience once in an Ikea, of all places. I calmly told the clerk that according to local laws (which I cited), it was illegal for them to demand that information from me (phone number and post code) to sell me anything, and if the computer wouldn’t let them do it, then they should call a manager for an override.
When the manager came, the clerk said “this person refuses to give me their info” — to which I added, “your computer refuses to comply with the law; please override and then notify HQ that they are in contravention of the law and liable for significant fines.”
The next time I went in, they still asked me for the info, but the clerk was able to override. I suspect they just put in fake info for everyone who refused to supply it.
Well done for taking a stand. The problem, as ever, is that most people prefer to comply obediently even if it feels wrong. And then next thing we know, it becomes standard practice.
BTW I have been in your situation and responded similarly. Usually it ends in the clerk inputting dummy info, sometimes after I irritably tell them to do so.
I can imagine that the tactic used on me works - same as making the hide/close/disagree button small. Dark Patterns in real life.
