Grumble Thread

[gurnemanz]

The charity shops that had been mostly, or in a couple of cases solely, cash, but had to start using contactless, mostly set much lower limits(£1 in my 2 favourite shops) and have kept them.

Re charity shops, a friend of mine was grumbling the other day. He regularly works as a volunteer for one of the larger chains. Items are nearly always priced at an amount ending 95p. With every transaction sales assistants have been ordered to ask customers if they are happy for it to be rounded up to the next round pound. My friend has refused on principle and threatened to resign if they continue to insist on it.

[Old Grumpy]

And...

...fuel - why is this always priced at ***.9p/litre?

Just round it up!

[Dave2002]

And...

...fuel - why is this always priced at ***.9p/litre?

Just round it up!

Sadly it goes like this.

1.49 -> round it up 1.5 Oh - we have to put the 0.9 on, so 1.59!

Some marketeers approach to squeezing a bit extra out of the customers.

[oddoneout]

Re charity shops, a friend of mine was grumbling the other day. He regularly works as a volunteer for one of the larger chains. Items are nearly always priced at an amount ending 95p. With every transaction sales assistants have been ordered to ask customers if they are happy for it to be rounded up to the next round pound. My friend has refused on principle and threatened to resign if they continue to insist on it.

It's a risky strategy and could bite back - not just with volunteers. When most transactions were cash the odd few pennies from purchases that added up to £x-97/8/9p would often be popped, without prompting, into the donations jar on the counter. With that route having reduced or disappeared I suppose someone in head office decided it was necessary to find another way of hoovering up those odd pennies. At retail checkouts tills sometimes are set to ask when paying by card if you want to make a 5p/10p donation to the firm's chosen charity (to which I don't respond positively ) but this is not the way for a charity to do it, depending as they do on goodwill for revenue and support. Better to look at their blanket pricing policy(which can often be out of step with local expectations and the original cost of the item) and consider lowering/adapting prices and selling more stock to increase revenue. There is a good mix of national and local charity shops in my home town, and the nationals don't lack customers as many will buy there to support a chosen charity rather than with the intention of getting the best bargain. If they want to pay £3-50 for a secondhand Primark t-shirt - because that is the price for all tops - then fine. Others, myself included, will say "too much" and find an M&S one for £2 in one of the other shops.

The Gift Aid add-on to entrance charges is another nudge scheme I dislike - fortunately I don't visit the kind of places that use it except once in a blue moon, because saying "No thank you I'll just pay the actual entrance fee" is not always accepted with good grace. I still don't see how that one works anyway as GiftAid is supposed to be linked to paying tax (children hardly ever pay tax but they are included in the arrangement - the view apparently is that the parents do)but the add-on arrangement, with no ID for tax status needed, seems to be just a way of getting a handout from public funds unrelated to tax actually paid by the individual. I have asked more than once for an explanation but not received an answer that makes sense to me - but perhaps that's my blind spot with matters numerical and financial.

[smittims]

The reason I dislike add-on-donation requests is that I like to keep things simple. If I go to buy a priced article I expect to pay the price and that's it. If I want to make a charity donation I do that as a separate decision; one thing at a time, Dr.Strauss.

I can see why they do it. It's a sort of trap; you feel bad if you refuse, and they probably do get more donations that way. But it's sort of sneaky and American, and I an see a lot of people bridling at it .

Of course I know why so many shops price things at £x.99. But I admire M&S for not doing it,e.g. socks £15, not £14.99.

[eighthobstruction]

....generally the day of people standing with tins and stickers has all but gone....certainly very rare at our rural Coop and when there is someone there it is for monthly direct debit rather than instant cash....Am I alone in having to turn away/sound off for some of the animal and children TV adverts....but cash text diverts from phones must work for the larger charities....but what of the smaller ones....I only discovered Debra : a charity for children with ultra sensitive skin last year because a x footballer swam the Channel....

[french frank]

....generally the day of people standing with tins and stickers has all but gone....certainly very rare at our rural Coop and when there is someone there it is for monthly direct debit rather than instant cash....

Just Big Issue sellers outside our Coop. Charity collectors come to the door and they do all right because if I offer an online one-off donation rather than a DD it has to be at least £10 rather than a sixpenny piece in the tin and you get a lifeboat flag.

[Old Grumpy]

Sadly it goes like this.

1.49 -> round it up 1.5 Oh - we have to put the 0.9 on, so 1.59!

Some marketeers approach to squeezing a bit extra out of the customers.

Yes, both it's 0.9 pence not 9 pence

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes - it's good to have electronic services, but babies and bathwater spring to mind. One doesn't have to completely discard some fairly well established ways of doing things.

It depends on the reasons for their introduction. Under a different system your second sentence would apply, but under the one we labour under electronic services are used to replace human labour and reduce costs. Machines aren't troublemakers and don't go on strike, and this consideration always outweighs any problems caused by breakdowns or obsolescence. As long as there are people elsewhere making the machines, or servicing them, this contributes to the Exchequer. Mechanisation (and computerisation) were once promised as offering reduced working time and longer holidays, but it is no accident that since the 1980s when new tech introductions started being accelerated, British workers have been working some of the longest hours of any advanced industrialised country. This fact speaks for itself.

[LMcD]

And...

...fuel - why is this always priced at ***.9p/litre?

Just round it up!

Ah - the good old days when you could buy a man's suit for £2/19/11d!

[Serial_Apologist]

....generally the day of people standing with tins and stickers has all but gone....certainly very rare at our rural Coop and when there is someone there it is for monthly direct debit rather than instant cash....Am I alone in having to turn away/sound off for some of the animal and children TV adverts....but cash text diverts from phones must work for the larger charities....but what of the smaller ones....I only discovered Debra : a charity for children with ultra sensitive skin last year because a x footballer swam the Channel....

I don't wish to sound mean, but has anyone else noticed the ever-increasing number of TV ads devoted to charity work? Implicitly suggested is an idea that without their work in mitigating or even conquering effects of war, drought or flooding etc the poor people dragged before the camera to tug at our sympathies would starve, entire communities potentially wiped out or subtextually even forced to arrive on our coasts in dinghies! Any idea that left alone people in general show great resourcefulness when dealing with problems without external interference is seldom raised, other than in genuinely informative documentaries showing peoples co-operating at grass roots level to find solutions to Western-imposed problems ranging from oil leaks to war by way of environmental degradation and climate change. Yet the purse strings appeal places guilt-ridden demands to choose which charity should one be supporting? All of them?? In positively answering the calls for help, right now, I could well bankrupt myself. What good will draining ones own dwindling finances do to solve problems that never get solved year on year because they are deep-down systemic, most often causally rooted in the demands of First World banks and lenders and political powers' supporting endemic corruption?

[Old Grumpy]

You don't sound mean, S_A, you sound realistic.

I have several charities I give to on a regular or irregular basis. The remainder go unheeded, I'm afraid.

In passing, I do wonder how much the TV advertisements cost and whether the money could be better spent!

[Serial_Apologist]

You don't sound mean, S_A, you sound realistic.

I have several charities I give to on a regular or irregular basis. The remainder go unheeded, I'm afraid.

In passing, I do wonder how much the TV advertisements cost and whether the money could be better spent!

Exactly. I should perhaps have qualified when it comes to giving following natural disasters such as tsunami, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which being no one's fault are tragedies in the genuine sense of the word. Sadly the disappearance, apart from on Poppy Day, of the simple town centre tin-rattler and his or her replacement by the tressel table attender surrounded by publicity notice boards who refuses my cash insisting instead on regular bank deductions means I only normally donate online these days.

[Old Grumpy]

I find a Charities Aid Foundation account very helpful in this regard. As well as adding the tax rebate from Gift Aid to the account, it is possible to donate anonymously, thus avoiding annoying follow up letters/emails/texts/calls etc.

[eighthobstruction]

I was thinking of starting a thread called FLUFF...

....We've had a good innings - us the lucky generation....The next generation they say will be less well off and less upwardly mobile in general.....more likely to be employed by huge conglomerates - Big Pharma, Big Communications - Big Retail powered by interweb. China will be hugely involved in EV's , Semi Conductors, and Stuff. Employment and wages will be highly controlled.
If adverts really do reflect modern life,then folk will be dancing and parkouring everywhere; everyone will in general be mixed race. They will be very pleased that the cameras on their phones are able to make people and objects disappear, make everyone smile at the same time, make dogs not bark, babies speakwords - all will be fine. The Multi-nationals will sort it (sic) all out, and we'll all live in open plan houses with huge windows and our happy nuclear and extended families will visit for food and parlour games.
Where's the fluff....where's the fluff....my house is full of fluff....fluff from jumpers, socks, towels, blankets - skin/tissue/hair [long and short]....where is the fluff....I've got plenty , they've.... ....well they surely have fluff too at their actors houses....I'm not that house proud, but I am to a certain extent....but obviously not to the extent that keeps fluff at bay....if only we could commodify - add value....if everybody on the forum kept all their fluff and sent it to me, and after spinning it i was able to knit a jumper....hmmmmm, I've already got red fluff and torquiose fluff (grey and brown fluff goes without saying)....anybody got some interesting fluff....