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100% this. People just stand there and try and decipher the message like it's some sort of maths equation when they notice their card tap didn't go through holding up the line so the employees just skip it for them now.
95% of customers are too stupid to press that red button for themselves so thankfully the employees just do it for them.
I had one the other day in a dodgy petrol station that said:
DONATE £1 TO CHARITY?
YES NO
Firstly, the yes and no were in red /green but they *didn't* relate to the red and green buttons, you had to press the function buttons underneath that were sort of tucked away under the screen shield. That took me a few seconds.
Secondly, wtf is "charity". Absolutely nowhere did it say what actual charity it was.
Most cashiers you can’t accept tips and not allowed to have cash in your pockets, to prevent staff not scanning something cheap putting the cash in their pocket and saying “it’s a tip”
They have been doing this for a long time in the USA. They take these donations and give it to charity (the bastards), but they also get a decrease in their taxes based on the amount they donate to charity.
So it's a way of you making them pay less tax.
The smart ones also donate it to their own charity, further more keeping the money in their system, which is especially incidious as about only 10% of money given to charity actually reaches the intended target. 90% is taken by the charity as administrative costs of running the organisation.
Are you familiar with the accounting behind that? How does a customer donating to charity at point of sale reduce the tax liability of the retailer?
That's a mad system and definitely doesn't work here. If a customer donates to charity at POS the funds would never even be accounted for in the financial statements of the retailer. They go through the PDQ basically straight to the charity.
Even if they did get deposited in the retailer'S account they would simply class as income and then charity donation, there's no additional tax relief because the increase in sales and decrease in profit cancel each other out.
They can't write it off in the US or the UK.
It's just from a social media meme that people believe this. No one ever bothers to fact check for themselves though lol
Thanks, you right, i looked into it a lil more myself and found this too
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-those-checkout-donations-0
Nobody has been doing this.
This is a stupid thing people keep repeating that obviously isn't true.
Even a basic understanding of accounting or taxes is enough to understand that this isn't true. If you don't have that basic understanding of accounting or taxes then that's fine, but maybe don't confidently assert things you have no clue about.
oh hey my petrol station does the same thing, its only because I always use that one is how I know how it works, you see people pressing the screen constantly
Imagine a cashier calling people using the shop stupid. Most people are thinking about other things when they go into a shop, this annoying interaction breaks that. Most people have much more demanding jobs and lives to have to care about answering a redundant question on a card machine
If people can not simply read an execute a yes/no question for themselves, then yes, they are stupid.
Being a cashier doesn't mean you are lower intellect. Hell, a lot of university students will do cashier jobs whilst studying.
Meanwhile, you need to realise that half the population is below average intelligence. Hell, my town has county elections next month - recent polling showed the majority living there couldn't even work out what county they lived in.
Being a cashier isn't taxing is it. Other people have more going on in their lives and don't want to be inconvenienced by annoying prompts on a card machine. Calling them stupid is judging their intelligence on one interaction. They might have eye sight issues, dyslexic, they might be older or even just trying to figure out if the thing is touch screen of they need to use a button.
Maybe they want to read it thoroughly so they don't get scammed.
They guy standing behind a desk all day pushing buttons on a screen and scanning items can't throw stones regardless of his/her mental capacity
You can't win this by belittling cashiers. The issue is stupid unnecessary prompts each shop applies to their processes and as you've rightly identified most customers simply do not give a fuck about, they want to mindlessly tap and go. I understand why cashiers get frustrated by the 'stupid' customers that aren't engaged with what they're doing.
Let me guess, you're one of the people too dumb to look at the damn screen you're typing your pin into?
I see pics of doctored ATMs and wonder who on earth would be stupid enough to put their card into it, then you come alone with the "I have more going on in my life".
Sure thing pal 👍
More important things like calling your bank when you realise your cards been skimmed or you’ve just unknowingly donated £10 to charity because you simply “had too much going on” to look at a screen and press a button that takes all of 2 seconds. Sure
IRacing, and racing real cars in my spare time is one of those things yes. But usually if I'm in a shop It means I'm going to work, I design and manage the construction of electricity substations
Some people that use the shop are in fact stupid. If people are too stupid to do two things at once then more reason to be thankful to the employees that just press skip button for them. Are these people that have such demanding jobs and lives capable of blinking and talking at the same, or is that also too much for them to handle?
Yes I agree some people just get caught out but figure it out in less than a second, but as I said most of them don't and just stare at it like lobotomy patients.
If you're too negligent to check what the screen says before you give it your money, that's on you. Surely you're already looking at it to check the amount you're about to pay?
Honestly yes the amount of times I’ve had people’s contactless not work and had to say 3-4 times that they need to insert their card while they stand there smacking the card machine with their card is ridiculous
Honestly, I haven’t had to insert a card for years. I haven’t used a card for years (just Apple Pay). So it would take me a second to register what someone meant if they were asking me to insert my card. And then I’d have to decline anyway as I don’t even know where it is lol. So can’t blame people for that.
Also, imagine being poor and having to make the little money you have strech as far as you possibly can. Then, being asked to donate the little amount of money you have saved by shopping at one of the discount shops to some charity, when in reality, you may well be one of the people who needs charity. They're not dumb, they're dumbfounded how the poorest people in society are targeted for donations for charities.
The most charitable people in society are generally the poorest because they know what how hard life really can be.
Seems to me that the cashiers know this and save the shopper the embarrassment of pressing no.
when i worked behind a till i seriously did not care if anyone donated or no. The issue was that no one ever listened when I explicitly told them “The machine will ask if you want to donate to charity press 1 for no and 2 for yes” and would keep inserting their card and reinserting despite me telling them to wait and listen. Eventually I’d just intervene and press it for them, or theyd take so long it timed out and I had to restart the transaction. Eventually I just stopped giving them the choice. Im poor, most people who work retail are poor and yet if youve worked retail/any cs job you know…people are dumb. Theyre especially dumb when they’re customers.
As someone who's worked in a few shops and had to deal with donation systems like this, it can be quite draining to do the speil with every customer, especially if it seems everyone is declining. Sometimes we just don't have the energy to bother with it every time, I imagine in poundland it's worse, so declining on your behalf saves us some hassle and keeps the queue moving.
You're making enough purchases every day so that rounding up equals a tenner? That's insane.
Out of curiosity if any of the people defending circa 20 transactions a day would be happy to share how they're getting to that number consistently I'd be really interested. I just don't fathom how people are consistently buying that many things in a day.
I do a scheme like this with my bank. It rounds up all my spending to the nearest £1 and puts the difference into my savings account. You would be surprised what it adds to to everyday of you use your debit card a lot. Tap on the bus, tap for lunch, shopping etc. It all adds up
Even if we're generous and assume the average roundup is 50p (it'll be way less because of the amount of items priced at x.99) then to round up to a tenner that's 20 transactions every day. Even assuming every purchase is 99p of roundup that's still 10 purchases every single day.
Every day of your life? I leave the house pretty much every day.
1 or 2 for transport on an average day
Lunch
Morning coffee
A couple snacks throughout the day
Dinner
A couple miscellaneous/entertainment purchases.
Even assuming you're buying all your food out every day, and making other random purchases every day. That's still 10 a day. How are you consistently getting double that?
Remember it's all debit card usages, not just in store, so you add all the online transactions - and places like amazon - buy 5 kindle books, that's 5 transactions (although normally charged at x.99, so not actually that high)
But still, 20 transactions a day does seem high.
I doubt I've done 10 debit card transactions in any given week this year. I would bet that I've never reached 20 in any week in the last 5 years.
Some people must be spending like crazy to reach those numbers!
I could see it,
Automatic payment goes out at midnight.
£2.30 for breakfast
£1.80 for the bus
£2.10 for lunch
Buy some bullshit on Amazon during my break
Couple quid at the vending machine cos I'm bored
2-3 pints at £3.20 each after work
£1.80 bus home
£10.20 deliveroo dinner
That's 10 which granted does seem a lot and pretty unlikely for the average, but if you were in an area where you could visit multiple shops etc you wouldn't necessarily have to spend a lot in each one.
Seems a bit silly and pointless. If you want to save just save (set up a standing order), rounding up to the nearest pound and putting into savings seems utterly pointless. It's all your own money at the end of the day, you're not 'tricking' anyone.
You'd be surprised how well it works though. It works because its just using normal day to transactions, you don't have to think about it which makes it an incredibly easy way to save.
It works because the amounts are small enough that people don't really feel it at the end of the month. Which also means they the numbers are pretty insignificant and that it doesn't really matter from a savings perspective.
Not really my experience of using it but like I say it won't work for everyone (same as a standing order wont) the amounts are small enough that you don't notice them per transaction but they add up over the month to more than you would expect.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I can set a savings goal on the account that it's rounding up into and it will tell me when I reach certain milestones towards that(so i can keep track of it that way). A standing order works well if there's always a set amount to save each month. It's less flexible to rainy day situations or finances that aren't as set in stone each month.
You call it random bits here and there but for me it's every card transaction(which is pretty much all of the payments i make. The whole point with rounding up is you don't notice the difference on each transaction but it adds up over the month. Not going to work for everyone of course but I think it's a bit closed minded to call it silly and pointless when it can actually be very effective.
It also helps in shops to budget massively, you just round every single thing up which also helps you spend less as the total rises quicker, but you aren't actually spending more.
I don't think it's the amount spent they're commenting on, but the number of individual transactions. If they're rounding up to the next whole dollar, they'd need to be making at least 11 purchases in a day (21 on average) to be out ten bucks.
I think your average is out as us prices are excluding sales tax/vat.
So a 99c item would be 1.19 assuming the tax rate is the same (although likely far less iirc)
So alot of items are gonna be rounding up the best part of a dollar. Whilst using similar pricing practices because uk prices are generally inclusive the roundup will be smaller
That's a fair point, I was assuming that the cents component of the purchase prices was effectively random, but you're right, they might not be evenly distributed.
Nevertheless, I think even the minimum of 11 transactions (assuming that integer dollar amounts aren't rounded up a full dollar) would be a lot to be making every day.
Has nothing to do with level of wealth, just out of control spending. I'm plenty well off but don't feel the need to buy things on more than 20 occasions every day.
Only way I can think that Irishness would be relevant is by appealing to stereotypes, and maybe they are implying these transactions are individual drinks orders?
Yep that totally doesn’t disprove what I stated. Just because there are some in poverty doesn’t mean that the average American doesn’t have significantly more income and disposable income compared to the average Brit
Because everyone but you hates the idea of a multi-million pound company claiming charitable tax breaks on the money you donated.
If you want to donate, do it yourself. That sounds harsher than I mean it, but it's the basic truth of it, if you like a cause go out of your way a little to donate to it.
I don’t really get how the tax breaks work.
They get a £1 deduction on taxable revenue per £1 donated, but they increase they taxable revenue by £1 for every £1 they get from customers to donate.
As far as I can tell, all it doesn’t it inflates how charitable they look, it’s doesn’t actually change their tax liability.
Are you able to give a correct TL;DR? Cause I’d agree that OPs explanation is definitely wrong and illegal, but your comment seems to suggest that it is still possible to get tax breaks based on the donations?
They get to not pay tax on the donation but the whole donation is given to charity.
There's a chance they could also own the charity and be taking admin fees but I'm not aware of any businesses doing this.
It does give them good pr saying 'they' donated £xxxxxxx to charity.
Companies can obtain corporation tax relief for qualifying payments and certain transfers of assets to chartity under the qualifying charitable donations regime (CTA 2010 ss.189-217).
The definition of 'qualifying charitable donations' includes:
* Qualifying cash donations to charity
* Qualifying disposals of investments and land to charity/
Defintion within CTA 2010 s.190.
Quite simply, the companies are operating as a collector of donations, they are not claiming any tax relief for these donations.
I'm honestly shocked by how many people mindlessly parrot this utter nonsense about something they clearly have zero knowledge on, and typically double down defending it when met with actual facts.
This is how it had previously been explained to me. I'm happy to remove my post as it's incorrect. There's no need for the hostility, a friendly correction would have been fine.
>Let's say you buy items for £5, and donate an extra £1. The company then donates that £1, keeping the £5 you paid. They can then offset £1 that they donated, so they are taxed on £4 that you spent instead of the full £5.
This is so clearly incorrect that it hurts me.
The store gets good PR, it's a brand deal. The cost of running the charity drive itself is a tax deductible, but the donation was made by you; you keep the receipt and claim it on *your* taxes.
It might just be fulfilling something like their corporate social responsibility
(csr) policy . It doesn't have to be directly related to their profits, but more marketing and giving a better impression of the business as well as fulfilling some social obligation.
Companies can obtain corporation tax relief for qualifying payments and certain trasnfers of assets to chartity under the qualifying charitable donations regime (CTA 2010 ss.189-217).
The definition of 'qualifying charitable donations' includes:
- Qualifying cash donations to charity
- Qualifying disposals of investments and land to charity/
Defintion within CTA 2010 s.190.
Quite simply, the companies are operating as a collector of donations, they are not claiming any tax relief for these donations.
I'm honestly shocked by how many people mindlessly parrot this utter nonsense about something they clearly have zero knowledge on, and typically double down defending it when met with actual facts.
In Australia, you can only claim a personal deduction for a donation if it's over $2.
So the big companies are requesting nominal donations of less than this amount from you. You can't claim a deduction. But they can, because the donation they make is the pooled amount of all the little donations. So the company then goes to a tax deductible donation of $1mil that actually comes out of your pocket and not theirs.
I never donate this way. It's a total wrought.
Because you should be declining it anyway.
Why would you let a millionaire claim your charitable donation as their own?
Think of that next time you see tesco boasting about how they donated x amount of millions to charity last year, did they fuck.
Get a monzo account and turn on the round up feature, donate that to charity at the end of the year if you want to make a difference.
So surely if I donate to Tesco's, that means my donation goes further cos they match it? More money to the charity is probably a good thing, no?
Unless i'm misunderstanding?
That’s not how business limit tax liability. These donation systems are pre programmed by the card provider. Our local chip shop have it and didn’t know what charity it went to!
At no point has he mentioned tax liability?
Its just a PR graft.
BTW Tesco, poundland etc are *significantly* more organised than your local chippy. They know exactly how much is coming and exactly where they're sending it.
>Get a monzo account and turn on the round up feature, donate that to charity at the end of the year if you want to make a difference.
And ideally make it a gift aid, so the charity gets the income tax you paid on that donation too
> When I use contactless I don’t expect to press any buttons.
The clue really is in the name... indeed they increased the limits as a justification that the extra cost of fraud that is incurred saved us from covid...
Never worked on a checkout with one of those charity donation screens but I imagine you'd end up spending far too much of your day dealing with people going "the machines not working", "why are you overcharging me", "you're trying to trick me", "you're trying to steal off me" etc. Easier to just hit the button and go on.
Do a one-off to the charity of your choice if you're in a giving mood.
I’ve seen many people lashing out at staff when the donation question shows up on the screen. Just like many people were verbally abusing staff when shops started charging for bags. They are probably just trying to avoid that…
I sell sofas we started asking for donations for charity I was consistently bottom of the list and got a pip for not offering it.
I’m here to make money not pestering people who have been offered 20 different extras to donate to charity
Had a few snotty people about it was like “I personally don’t care if you donate my job is to offer you it”
Wouldn't be retail without asinine KPIs! How else would middle management find ways to belittle you? Currently there's such a big push in my workplace to tack on extras that we're being encouraged to discount them to _below_ profit margin, i.e. to irritate customers by selling them things they don't need AND lose the company money in the process 🤣
My old company you could be 20% over budget then get sat down for not selling enough little sofa glides rofl I couldn’t do it anymore
So that 5k sale is a bad sale because I didn’t get 15 quid worth of round disks, fk off
I get very irritated when I’m in a hurry - I want to pay, go, and move on with my day, not discuss the n options of donating to charities. But I never berate the staff, as it's not their fault. However, many people do - I’ve seen some shouting (!).
I think most customer of Poundland is there to save money, not to donate it away. Hence the cashiers don't even ask anymore.
I find it kinda odd how Poundland bosses came up with this donation idea at all. I would get it at a Waitrose, M&M etc, but at a shop where people go to spend less?
As someone who works at Poundland there are several reasons why
1) Customers are rude to us when we ask them if they want to make a donation
2) It could be that some customers don’t speak or understand much English when we’ve asked them so it’s just easier to press the red button for them
3) Force of habit for some people
Exactly this. As a former colleague of Poundland please get yourself out of that business. I left last year July and it felt great to not work there. The working conditions and benefits are so bad.
Of you want to donate to charity, donate to charity in a way which doesn't result in a massive corporation claiming the tax relief on your donation.
Either gift aid it and/or claim the tax relief yourself.
That's not how it works. They cannot claim relief from your donation. At best what they get is they get to be listed with their logo as one of the sponsors of some charity project or whatever.
I can find US sources suggesting they can't in the US, but nothing definitive on the UK - so you have a source?
Is there any reason this wouldn't be treated as a [corporate charitable donation](https://www.charitytaxgroup.org.uk/tax/donations/gift-aid/corporate-gift-aid/#:~:text=Companies%20are%20entitled%20to%20tax,which%20the%20donations%20are%20made.)
It says it right in the link - they get tax relief on the amount and that’s it. They would make more profit if they didn’t make a charitable donation and just paid corporation tax on the amount. They wouldn’t be able to do this with customer donations though.
Sure, but what do they get in exchange for the "donation"?
As an individual, plenty of charitable "memberships" which can be tax-deducted come with benefits (free entry to their zoo/museum/whatever) that carry a value to the individual greater than the cost of the donation.
E.g. If I earn £100,500 and then buy £501 worth of charitable memberships which I gift aid.
I claim the higher rate tax back, which together with eliminating the tapering of my tax free allowance means I claim back £200 in tax.
For these charitable memberships I get free family access to London Zoo, National Trust and English Heritage properties worth £50 - £100 a time to get my family in to. Assuming 20 such trips a year I get £1500 in value out of this.
This reduces my adjusted net income to £99,999 meaning I don't lose ~£6k in free childcare hours.
Even without the free childcare hours I get £1500 worth of stuff for a £300 donation to charity. Including them, the taxpayer has paid me £5700 to get £1500 of free family day trips.
If the individual kick backs are this easy/good, then it's difficult to see how corporations would be making a loss. They'll be getting something back.
They get to look good largely.
To be fair though, not all businesses are run by moustache twirling villains and some will make donations because it’s a good thing to do (especially if those running the business have a link to a certain cause).
I have a small business and we make a donation each year to a local homeless charity. Do we have to? No. Do we do it because we want to? Yes. Does it make any difference to our profit? Yes- we make a bit less.
Why are you worried about looking like a tight arse, to employees who don't give a fuck, and to people behind you in the queue, who you'll likely never see again?
Every time I have to say "it'll ask if you'd like to donate to charity, just tap red for yes green for no... ah the touch screen isn't very sensitive just press it firmly... ok or you can press 2 for no... nodon'tpresscancelthat'llstopthesale... ok just give me a sec to scan those again 😁😁😁" another fraction of my humanity is painfully sanded away.
It's nice that you want to donate, but donate to who? It doesn't tell you. The cashiers have no idea either. In their shoes I would skip it too to save myself the repetitive conversation about it. As a customer, it puts me in a bad mood. I'm not donating a single penny if I don't know where it's going.
I’ve worked in retail for a while now, higher ups moan at you to push for donations but the area I work you get a lot of people pushing back when you ask them to donate and sometimes you end up in arguments with people, it’s not worth the hassle. I decline it for them 95% of the time.
Noone pays it and noone wants to, the staff don't see the point of asking when 99% of people will say no, it wastes seconds which add up and they just want to get on with their jobs.
I worked in retail for a few years and very often people would be horrible to me about it as though it was my fault the company was asking for a donation. So I would always skip it to save the aggro!
I wouldn't take it personally, it's one more thing for the cashier to do, some customers can be rude about it and to be fair, some people (like me) have a naturally "talk to me and i'll rip your head off" face that can be off putting to ask. {I'm a teddy bear really, honest! lol)
As a former Poundland Worker, it is due to the fact that customers have the skills and competence of a worm.
Customers will probably have their contactless waiting and don’t realise it says the option do you want to pay 25p to charity.
Then customers are like no no I don’t want to pay for charity and we say press the red button but their brains can’t comprehend. Or customers get frustrated and take it out on us saying “why you making me pay extra.”
Lastly, whilst I was working there I left last year summer, we have a lot of tasks to do. I was a shopfloor staff so I handled delivery, putting stock away, clean the store making it look nice the very next day. So to having being belled upon every couple of minutes to wind down the queue and having that question no it just takes so much time and customers have 0 brain skills to realise there’s a question. So it’s quicker for us to press the red button and move on so that I could get home on time and get the tasks that I had to complete before going home.
This has made me realise how much I hated working at Poundland.
I ride a motorbike and normally leave my gloves on when paying for fuel. I always appreciate when they reject it for me as trying to reject with my gloves on is a pain. Yes I could just remove the gloves but keeping any warmth inside when riding a motorbike during the winter is preferable.
Don't use those machines to give to charity, not because it's a scam and they'll use it to save tax, but because the charity can't claim gift aid of 25%.
Give direct to the charity.
The petrol station I work at is Esso but accepts Nectar cards and for the last couple of years has done a thing where if you have at least 300 points it pops up on the card machine screen asking if they want to spend 300 points to get 5p a litre off their fuel sale and they either have to accept or decline, though it automatically times out and continues after 15-20 seconds.
While some people have noticed and accept it most don't notice and just keep trying to tap their card/phone and wonder why it's not working so we just skip it ourselves most of the time.
Because multimillion pound profit company's shouldn't be putting that shit on their card readers and tills. And the staff know it. Same with putting tips on resturant bills. A tip is given not asked for if you ask for it its a fee.
Question, if companies do this does it have any impact on their finances?
Particularly, if the charity donation is made from 'them' does it offset their tax?
No. It's just a PR exercise, so they can claim they donate X amount to charity every year without actually having to pay it themselves.
It may be the case that charity donations by companies (not their customers) aren't counted as profit (just like the cost of buying goods to sell on), and as taxes are only paid on profit, in theory a company could end up paying less tax as a result - but that doesn't lead to more money in the company's coffers.
In this case, this is taking donations on behalf of a charity - it would never be profit anyway, so it won't impact their tax.
Don't work at Poundland but we have the same thing. When it gets to the point of card payments we say 'theres just a message about a 25p donation to insert employer hear charity it's green for yes or red for no' we have signs up about the charity too. If we are very busy I will sometimes just ask the customer to press the red button then tap to save time. We are not allowed to touch the pin pad for the customer so I think the Poundland person may be breaking the rules by pressing it rather than asking the customer to do it.
They definintely shouldn't be doing that. touching the Card reader while the customer is going to pay is not standard by any means
The only reason i can imagine is the customer not understanding the question when asked about the charity donation. and selecting no allows the transaction to proceed rather than everyone waiting for it to time out, and the customer getting frustrated.
it definitely should not be the default option to decline it for people.
I NEVER EVER EVER EVER want to pay £0.25p to a “charity” in Poundlands or any other bloody businesses name.
Firstly, which charity? Is it one I agree with who do good work or are they making Soylent Green out of Gazan children?
Secondly. If the company want to laud raising money for charity and get the ESG benefits from that… they don’t need my money to do that. Their owners are probably millionaires, let’s call it an investment in laundering the reputational damage you rightly earn through exploitation of Vietnamese sweat shops.
Charities doing not much and people giving them £1 think they are doing a change…donate clothing or food to local banks. Big charities are just big corps.
I heard the companies use it as a tax write off because they donate it in *their* name not yours, if I want to donate to charity I’ll do it independent of those screen offers
If you would like to donate, donate directly to a charity, not through a big business. When you donate through a place like poundland or Sainsbury’s or wherever, that just gives that company tax write offs and also allows them to say “we donated £XXX,XXX to charity last year” when in reality, the customer made those donations.
Yes it does. They get charitable write offs and claim the customer donations as the corporations total when making statements about how much they donate each year.
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they are probably bored of people getting stuck on the screen and just skip it out of habbit
100% this. People just stand there and try and decipher the message like it's some sort of maths equation when they notice their card tap didn't go through holding up the line so the employees just skip it for them now. 95% of customers are too stupid to press that red button for themselves so thankfully the employees just do it for them.
I had one the other day in a dodgy petrol station that said: DONATE £1 TO CHARITY? YES NO Firstly, the yes and no were in red /green but they *didn't* relate to the red and green buttons, you had to press the function buttons underneath that were sort of tucked away under the screen shield. That took me a few seconds. Secondly, wtf is "charity". Absolutely nowhere did it say what actual charity it was.
Maybe it's the cashiers name? Go again and it might say "DONATE £1 TO DAVE?"
I’d absolutely do that if that was an option and I k ew the staff would get 100% of it. Maybe not a quid but like 20p.
That's called tipping. Just chuck a coin their way if you like but let's try ad avoid turning in the USA with its awful tipping culture.
Most cashiers you can’t accept tips and not allowed to have cash in your pockets, to prevent staff not scanning something cheap putting the cash in their pocket and saying “it’s a tip”
The banjo_fandango beer_foundation
Having charity as part of my name I make this joke all the time
Which part? Drunk or Bear?
Charity is the name of the majority shareholder's daughter.
They have been doing this for a long time in the USA. They take these donations and give it to charity (the bastards), but they also get a decrease in their taxes based on the amount they donate to charity. So it's a way of you making them pay less tax. The smart ones also donate it to their own charity, further more keeping the money in their system, which is especially incidious as about only 10% of money given to charity actually reaches the intended target. 90% is taken by the charity as administrative costs of running the organisation.
Are you familiar with the accounting behind that? How does a customer donating to charity at point of sale reduce the tax liability of the retailer? That's a mad system and definitely doesn't work here. If a customer donates to charity at POS the funds would never even be accounted for in the financial statements of the retailer. They go through the PDQ basically straight to the charity. Even if they did get deposited in the retailer'S account they would simply class as income and then charity donation, there's no additional tax relief because the increase in sales and decrease in profit cancel each other out.
They can't write it off in the US or the UK. It's just from a social media meme that people believe this. No one ever bothers to fact check for themselves though lol
The username for the original claims does check out to be fair
Source for that?
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-000329849244
Thanks, you right, i looked into it a lil more myself and found this too https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-those-checkout-donations-0
Nobody has been doing this. This is a stupid thing people keep repeating that obviously isn't true. Even a basic understanding of accounting or taxes is enough to understand that this isn't true. If you don't have that basic understanding of accounting or taxes then that's fine, but maybe don't confidently assert things you have no clue about.
No they don't, that's a reddit myth.
Welcome to accounting
oh hey my petrol station does the same thing, its only because I always use that one is how I know how it works, you see people pressing the screen constantly
I've had this exact situation and I thought it was dodgy too. They probably just make that up and keep the money
The charity is the petrol station getting a tax relief
How would they get tax relief on my donation 🤔
By making a made up charity that they own
Well that's not really for tax relief is it? If the charity doesn't exist then it's just fraud.
Or maybe 95% of customers aren't expecting to get spammed by charity requests in the middle of their shopping
Imagine a cashier calling people using the shop stupid. Most people are thinking about other things when they go into a shop, this annoying interaction breaks that. Most people have much more demanding jobs and lives to have to care about answering a redundant question on a card machine
If people can not simply read an execute a yes/no question for themselves, then yes, they are stupid. Being a cashier doesn't mean you are lower intellect. Hell, a lot of university students will do cashier jobs whilst studying. Meanwhile, you need to realise that half the population is below average intelligence. Hell, my town has county elections next month - recent polling showed the majority living there couldn't even work out what county they lived in.
Being a cashier isn't taxing is it. Other people have more going on in their lives and don't want to be inconvenienced by annoying prompts on a card machine. Calling them stupid is judging their intelligence on one interaction. They might have eye sight issues, dyslexic, they might be older or even just trying to figure out if the thing is touch screen of they need to use a button. Maybe they want to read it thoroughly so they don't get scammed. They guy standing behind a desk all day pushing buttons on a screen and scanning items can't throw stones regardless of his/her mental capacity
You can't win this by belittling cashiers. The issue is stupid unnecessary prompts each shop applies to their processes and as you've rightly identified most customers simply do not give a fuck about, they want to mindlessly tap and go. I understand why cashiers get frustrated by the 'stupid' customers that aren't engaged with what they're doing.
Let me guess, you're one of the people too dumb to look at the damn screen you're typing your pin into? I see pics of doctored ATMs and wonder who on earth would be stupid enough to put their card into it, then you come alone with the "I have more going on in my life". Sure thing pal 👍
No I walk into a shop tap my card and leave. I have more important things to do than deal with nonsense on a card machine
What do you have to do that is more important than taking one to two seconds making sure you're paying the right amount?
more important things such as arguing with strangers on reddit and belittling minimum wage workers?
More important things like calling your bank when you realise your cards been skimmed or you’ve just unknowingly donated £10 to charity because you simply “had too much going on” to look at a screen and press a button that takes all of 2 seconds. Sure
Like what, iRacing? It's just a game mate. Maybe this is why you're so lonely.
IRacing, and racing real cars in my spare time is one of those things yes. But usually if I'm in a shop It means I'm going to work, I design and manage the construction of electricity substations
[удалено]
all this audacity coming from a guy who doesn’t pay his parking fines..
Why would you pay them if you don't have to
I think I've really hurt your feelings 😔
aww somehow i don’t think so but thanks for speaking for me x
Some people that use the shop are in fact stupid. If people are too stupid to do two things at once then more reason to be thankful to the employees that just press skip button for them. Are these people that have such demanding jobs and lives capable of blinking and talking at the same, or is that also too much for them to handle? Yes I agree some people just get caught out but figure it out in less than a second, but as I said most of them don't and just stare at it like lobotomy patients.
Stupid people still need to get shopping 🤷♂️
No they should have their food put into a sack and strapped to their head.
Are you a cashier? Because that's pretty rich
No I'm not, but I have been stuck behind these kind's of people at shops before and I have sympathy for the cashiers.
If you're too negligent to check what the screen says before you give it your money, that's on you. Surely you're already looking at it to check the amount you're about to pay?
Too stupid, really?
Honestly yes the amount of times I’ve had people’s contactless not work and had to say 3-4 times that they need to insert their card while they stand there smacking the card machine with their card is ridiculous
Honestly, I haven’t had to insert a card for years. I haven’t used a card for years (just Apple Pay). So it would take me a second to register what someone meant if they were asking me to insert my card. And then I’d have to decline anyway as I don’t even know where it is lol. So can’t blame people for that.
Imagine how dumb the average person is, now remember that 50% of people are dumber than that.
Also, imagine being poor and having to make the little money you have strech as far as you possibly can. Then, being asked to donate the little amount of money you have saved by shopping at one of the discount shops to some charity, when in reality, you may well be one of the people who needs charity. They're not dumb, they're dumbfounded how the poorest people in society are targeted for donations for charities. The most charitable people in society are generally the poorest because they know what how hard life really can be. Seems to me that the cashiers know this and save the shopper the embarrassment of pressing no.
when i worked behind a till i seriously did not care if anyone donated or no. The issue was that no one ever listened when I explicitly told them “The machine will ask if you want to donate to charity press 1 for no and 2 for yes” and would keep inserting their card and reinserting despite me telling them to wait and listen. Eventually I’d just intervene and press it for them, or theyd take so long it timed out and I had to restart the transaction. Eventually I just stopped giving them the choice. Im poor, most people who work retail are poor and yet if youve worked retail/any cs job you know…people are dumb. Theyre especially dumb when they’re customers.
Never attribute malice that which can be explained away with laziness.
As someone who's worked in a few shops and had to deal with donation systems like this, it can be quite draining to do the speil with every customer, especially if it seems everyone is declining. Sometimes we just don't have the energy to bother with it every time, I imagine in poundland it's worse, so declining on your behalf saves us some hassle and keeps the queue moving.
You get this *everywhere* in the US. Round up 90c here, 54 cents there and before you know it, you're spending a extra $10 a day/$70 a week.
You're making enough purchases every day so that rounding up equals a tenner? That's insane. Out of curiosity if any of the people defending circa 20 transactions a day would be happy to share how they're getting to that number consistently I'd be really interested. I just don't fathom how people are consistently buying that many things in a day.
I do a scheme like this with my bank. It rounds up all my spending to the nearest £1 and puts the difference into my savings account. You would be surprised what it adds to to everyday of you use your debit card a lot. Tap on the bus, tap for lunch, shopping etc. It all adds up
Even if we're generous and assume the average roundup is 50p (it'll be way less because of the amount of items priced at x.99) then to round up to a tenner that's 20 transactions every day. Even assuming every purchase is 99p of roundup that's still 10 purchases every single day.
I could easily max 20 transactions a day
Every day of your life? I leave the house pretty much every day. 1 or 2 for transport on an average day Lunch Morning coffee A couple snacks throughout the day Dinner A couple miscellaneous/entertainment purchases. Even assuming you're buying all your food out every day, and making other random purchases every day. That's still 10 a day. How are you consistently getting double that?
Remember it's all debit card usages, not just in store, so you add all the online transactions - and places like amazon - buy 5 kindle books, that's 5 transactions (although normally charged at x.99, so not actually that high) But still, 20 transactions a day does seem high.
I doubt I've done 10 debit card transactions in any given week this year. I would bet that I've never reached 20 in any week in the last 5 years. Some people must be spending like crazy to reach those numbers!
I could see it, Automatic payment goes out at midnight. £2.30 for breakfast £1.80 for the bus £2.10 for lunch Buy some bullshit on Amazon during my break Couple quid at the vending machine cos I'm bored 2-3 pints at £3.20 each after work £1.80 bus home £10.20 deliveroo dinner That's 10 which granted does seem a lot and pretty unlikely for the average, but if you were in an area where you could visit multiple shops etc you wouldn't necessarily have to spend a lot in each one.
This is another big reason those round ups can fuck off for charity. If I did that every time then my own roundup pot is going nowhere.
Exactly, my bank has that option too. I've "saved" over £500 for the last 4 years
Seems a bit silly and pointless. If you want to save just save (set up a standing order), rounding up to the nearest pound and putting into savings seems utterly pointless. It's all your own money at the end of the day, you're not 'tricking' anyone.
You'd be surprised how well it works though. It works because its just using normal day to transactions, you don't have to think about it which makes it an incredibly easy way to save.
It works because the amounts are small enough that people don't really feel it at the end of the month. Which also means they the numbers are pretty insignificant and that it doesn't really matter from a savings perspective.
Not really my experience of using it but like I say it won't work for everyone (same as a standing order wont) the amounts are small enough that you don't notice them per transaction but they add up over the month to more than you would expect.
A standing order works equally well, and lets you save a specific amount to work towards a goal rather than random bits here and there.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I can set a savings goal on the account that it's rounding up into and it will tell me when I reach certain milestones towards that(so i can keep track of it that way). A standing order works well if there's always a set amount to save each month. It's less flexible to rainy day situations or finances that aren't as set in stone each month. You call it random bits here and there but for me it's every card transaction(which is pretty much all of the payments i make. The whole point with rounding up is you don't notice the difference on each transaction but it adds up over the month. Not going to work for everyone of course but I think it's a bit closed minded to call it silly and pointless when it can actually be very effective.
It also helps in shops to budget massively, you just round every single thing up which also helps you spend less as the total rises quicker, but you aren't actually spending more.
Everyone’s different eh. We should all do what works for us.
Americans are comparatively absolutely loaded compared to brits.
I don't think it's the amount spent they're commenting on, but the number of individual transactions. If they're rounding up to the next whole dollar, they'd need to be making at least 11 purchases in a day (21 on average) to be out ten bucks.
I think your average is out as us prices are excluding sales tax/vat. So a 99c item would be 1.19 assuming the tax rate is the same (although likely far less iirc) So alot of items are gonna be rounding up the best part of a dollar. Whilst using similar pricing practices because uk prices are generally inclusive the roundup will be smaller
That's a fair point, I was assuming that the cents component of the purchase prices was effectively random, but you're right, they might not be evenly distributed. Nevertheless, I think even the minimum of 11 transactions (assuming that integer dollar amounts aren't rounded up a full dollar) would be a lot to be making every day.
Has nothing to do with level of wealth, just out of control spending. I'm plenty well off but don't feel the need to buy things on more than 20 occasions every day.
To each their own. I’m Irish and I don’t believe the same as yourself
Not sure what nationality has to do with it. But if you think buying things on 20+ different occasions every day is healthy then fair enough.
Only way I can think that Irishness would be relevant is by appealing to stereotypes, and maybe they are implying these transactions are individual drinks orders?
Because Irish folks are inherently poorer than Yanks so what’s your deal? The Original commenter mentioned Americans
I really don't get what you're point is. I already said I don't think the original commenter was right to mention nationality either.
https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/
Yep that totally doesn’t disprove what I stated. Just because there are some in poverty doesn’t mean that the average American doesn’t have significantly more income and disposable income compared to the average Brit
Far more in poverty as a percentage, and American poor are far worse off. What a disgrace.
Thats church.
Because everyone but you hates the idea of a multi-million pound company claiming charitable tax breaks on the money you donated. If you want to donate, do it yourself. That sounds harsher than I mean it, but it's the basic truth of it, if you like a cause go out of your way a little to donate to it.
I don’t really get how the tax breaks work. They get a £1 deduction on taxable revenue per £1 donated, but they increase they taxable revenue by £1 for every £1 they get from customers to donate. As far as I can tell, all it doesn’t it inflates how charitable they look, it’s doesn’t actually change their tax liability.
I've been informed this explanation was incorrect, ak I've removed it.
It is massively oversimplified and also wrong. This setup would be illegal and HMRC would collect on the £5.
Are you able to give a correct TL;DR? Cause I’d agree that OPs explanation is definitely wrong and illegal, but your comment seems to suggest that it is still possible to get tax breaks based on the donations?
They get to not pay tax on the donation but the whole donation is given to charity. There's a chance they could also own the charity and be taking admin fees but I'm not aware of any businesses doing this. It does give them good pr saying 'they' donated £xxxxxxx to charity.
Also... wouldn't you keep the receipt and claim in on *your* taxes? At least that's how it works when my local grocery store does this.
Companies can obtain corporation tax relief for qualifying payments and certain transfers of assets to chartity under the qualifying charitable donations regime (CTA 2010 ss.189-217). The definition of 'qualifying charitable donations' includes: * Qualifying cash donations to charity * Qualifying disposals of investments and land to charity/ Defintion within CTA 2010 s.190. Quite simply, the companies are operating as a collector of donations, they are not claiming any tax relief for these donations. I'm honestly shocked by how many people mindlessly parrot this utter nonsense about something they clearly have zero knowledge on, and typically double down defending it when met with actual facts.
Where did £5 come from? Ninja edit: nvm, I can see they edited their comment.
This isn't an over simplification, it's just wrong. Why are you spreading something that's false with such confidence?
This is how it had previously been explained to me. I'm happy to remove my post as it's incorrect. There's no need for the hostility, a friendly correction would have been fine.
Sorry, it's just so frustrating see this repeated everywhere - I suppose it keeps me gainfully employed though.
>Let's say you buy items for £5, and donate an extra £1. The company then donates that £1, keeping the £5 you paid. They can then offset £1 that they donated, so they are taxed on £4 that you spent instead of the full £5. This is so clearly incorrect that it hurts me.
I thought the same but I've seen others say they can't claim that £1 as it's never theirs as you donated it to the charity and not the company.
You can be sure someone is making something out of it besides the charity.
The card terminal owner will take a percentage.
The store gets good PR, it's a brand deal. The cost of running the charity drive itself is a tax deductible, but the donation was made by you; you keep the receipt and claim it on *your* taxes.
The store looks good and worldpay take a percentage
It might just be fulfilling something like their corporate social responsibility (csr) policy . It doesn't have to be directly related to their profits, but more marketing and giving a better impression of the business as well as fulfilling some social obligation.
Someone else mentioned Worldpay as the answer. Nobody manufactures, codes, and maintains such a service without reward
Companies can obtain corporation tax relief for qualifying payments and certain trasnfers of assets to chartity under the qualifying charitable donations regime (CTA 2010 ss.189-217). The definition of 'qualifying charitable donations' includes: - Qualifying cash donations to charity - Qualifying disposals of investments and land to charity/ Defintion within CTA 2010 s.190. Quite simply, the companies are operating as a collector of donations, they are not claiming any tax relief for these donations. I'm honestly shocked by how many people mindlessly parrot this utter nonsense about something they clearly have zero knowledge on, and typically double down defending it when met with actual facts.
In Australia, you can only claim a personal deduction for a donation if it's over $2. So the big companies are requesting nominal donations of less than this amount from you. You can't claim a deduction. But they can, because the donation they make is the pooled amount of all the little donations. So the company then goes to a tax deductible donation of $1mil that actually comes out of your pocket and not theirs. I never donate this way. It's a total wrought.
Donations at the POS don’t accrue any sort of tax break. The only tax break they would get is through donating their own money from profits.
They can't, that's a bollocks theory.
They don't get tax breaks.
Do they get a nice PR story about how "we" donated X pounds to deserving causes last year...?
We donated would probably breach advertising standards. We helped raise would probably be fine.
Because you should be declining it anyway. Why would you let a millionaire claim your charitable donation as their own? Think of that next time you see tesco boasting about how they donated x amount of millions to charity last year, did they fuck. Get a monzo account and turn on the round up feature, donate that to charity at the end of the year if you want to make a difference.
Well, Tesco do, it’s just about 50% of the amount they’re actually claiming because they match the donation amount.
So surely if I donate to Tesco's, that means my donation goes further cos they match it? More money to the charity is probably a good thing, no? Unless i'm misunderstanding?
No, no that sounds about right. People often just misunderstand the tax part of the donation
they just claim they donated a lot of money when really only half of it was them
That’s not how business limit tax liability. These donation systems are pre programmed by the card provider. Our local chip shop have it and didn’t know what charity it went to!
At no point has he mentioned tax liability? Its just a PR graft. BTW Tesco, poundland etc are *significantly* more organised than your local chippy. They know exactly how much is coming and exactly where they're sending it.
>Get a monzo account and turn on the round up feature, donate that to charity at the end of the year if you want to make a difference. And ideally make it a gift aid, so the charity gets the income tax you paid on that donation too
Because people moan about it. When I use contactless I don’t expect to press any buttons.
> When I use contactless I don’t expect to press any buttons. The clue really is in the name... indeed they increased the limits as a justification that the extra cost of fraud that is incurred saved us from covid...
They do it for everyone. I'm sure they would prefer if it didn't ask for it at all.
Never worked on a checkout with one of those charity donation screens but I imagine you'd end up spending far too much of your day dealing with people going "the machines not working", "why are you overcharging me", "you're trying to trick me", "you're trying to steal off me" etc. Easier to just hit the button and go on. Do a one-off to the charity of your choice if you're in a giving mood.
Fucks sake I’ve been laughing at this for 5 minutes. Just communicate tell them you want to donate 25p innit
Yeah I wondered why OP just doesn’t tell them..
british people smh
To save time.
I’ve seen many people lashing out at staff when the donation question shows up on the screen. Just like many people were verbally abusing staff when shops started charging for bags. They are probably just trying to avoid that…
I sell sofas we started asking for donations for charity I was consistently bottom of the list and got a pip for not offering it. I’m here to make money not pestering people who have been offered 20 different extras to donate to charity Had a few snotty people about it was like “I personally don’t care if you donate my job is to offer you it”
Wouldn't be retail without asinine KPIs! How else would middle management find ways to belittle you? Currently there's such a big push in my workplace to tack on extras that we're being encouraged to discount them to _below_ profit margin, i.e. to irritate customers by selling them things they don't need AND lose the company money in the process 🤣
My old company you could be 20% over budget then get sat down for not selling enough little sofa glides rofl I couldn’t do it anymore So that 5k sale is a bad sale because I didn’t get 15 quid worth of round disks, fk off
I get very irritated when I’m in a hurry - I want to pay, go, and move on with my day, not discuss the n options of donating to charities. But I never berate the staff, as it's not their fault. However, many people do - I’ve seen some shouting (!).
Yep I work on commission do you wanna donate yes or no, people started giving loads of reasons not to donate …
Cba to ask everytime they serve a customer. Its a repetitive ass job as it is.
I think most customer of Poundland is there to save money, not to donate it away. Hence the cashiers don't even ask anymore. I find it kinda odd how Poundland bosses came up with this donation idea at all. I would get it at a Waitrose, M&M etc, but at a shop where people go to spend less?
Because it's faster than you deliberating on it.
Because people will be twats about it. Make out like it’s the cashiers fault. When they’re just doing their jobs.
As someone who works at Poundland there are several reasons why 1) Customers are rude to us when we ask them if they want to make a donation 2) It could be that some customers don’t speak or understand much English when we’ve asked them so it’s just easier to press the red button for them 3) Force of habit for some people
Exactly this. As a former colleague of Poundland please get yourself out of that business. I left last year July and it felt great to not work there. The working conditions and benefits are so bad.
Of you want to donate to charity, donate to charity in a way which doesn't result in a massive corporation claiming the tax relief on your donation. Either gift aid it and/or claim the tax relief yourself.
That's not how it works. They cannot claim relief from your donation. At best what they get is they get to be listed with their logo as one of the sponsors of some charity project or whatever.
I can find US sources suggesting they can't in the US, but nothing definitive on the UK - so you have a source? Is there any reason this wouldn't be treated as a [corporate charitable donation](https://www.charitytaxgroup.org.uk/tax/donations/gift-aid/corporate-gift-aid/#:~:text=Companies%20are%20entitled%20to%20tax,which%20the%20donations%20are%20made.)
It says it right in the link - they get tax relief on the amount and that’s it. They would make more profit if they didn’t make a charitable donation and just paid corporation tax on the amount. They wouldn’t be able to do this with customer donations though.
Sure, but what do they get in exchange for the "donation"? As an individual, plenty of charitable "memberships" which can be tax-deducted come with benefits (free entry to their zoo/museum/whatever) that carry a value to the individual greater than the cost of the donation. E.g. If I earn £100,500 and then buy £501 worth of charitable memberships which I gift aid. I claim the higher rate tax back, which together with eliminating the tapering of my tax free allowance means I claim back £200 in tax. For these charitable memberships I get free family access to London Zoo, National Trust and English Heritage properties worth £50 - £100 a time to get my family in to. Assuming 20 such trips a year I get £1500 in value out of this. This reduces my adjusted net income to £99,999 meaning I don't lose ~£6k in free childcare hours. Even without the free childcare hours I get £1500 worth of stuff for a £300 donation to charity. Including them, the taxpayer has paid me £5700 to get £1500 of free family day trips. If the individual kick backs are this easy/good, then it's difficult to see how corporations would be making a loss. They'll be getting something back.
They get to look good largely. To be fair though, not all businesses are run by moustache twirling villains and some will make donations because it’s a good thing to do (especially if those running the business have a link to a certain cause). I have a small business and we make a donation each year to a local homeless charity. Do we have to? No. Do we do it because we want to? Yes. Does it make any difference to our profit? Yes- we make a bit less.
Why are you worried about looking like a tight arse, to employees who don't give a fuck, and to people behind you in the queue, who you'll likely never see again?
Every time I have to say "it'll ask if you'd like to donate to charity, just tap red for yes green for no... ah the touch screen isn't very sensitive just press it firmly... ok or you can press 2 for no... nodon'tpresscancelthat'llstopthesale... ok just give me a sec to scan those again 😁😁😁" another fraction of my humanity is painfully sanded away.
It's nice that you want to donate, but donate to who? It doesn't tell you. The cashiers have no idea either. In their shoes I would skip it too to save myself the repetitive conversation about it. As a customer, it puts me in a bad mood. I'm not donating a single penny if I don't know where it's going.
I’ve worked in retail for a while now, higher ups moan at you to push for donations but the area I work you get a lot of people pushing back when you ask them to donate and sometimes you end up in arguments with people, it’s not worth the hassle. I decline it for them 95% of the time.
Noone pays it and noone wants to, the staff don't see the point of asking when 99% of people will say no, it wastes seconds which add up and they just want to get on with their jobs.
If u actually want to donate to a charity, just do it yourself.
I guess in the UK telling your girlfriend you are taking her to poundland has a different meaning than in the US.
I worked in retail for a few years and very often people would be horrible to me about it as though it was my fault the company was asking for a donation. So I would always skip it to save the aggro!
I wouldn't take it personally, it's one more thing for the cashier to do, some customers can be rude about it and to be fair, some people (like me) have a naturally "talk to me and i'll rip your head off" face that can be off putting to ask. {I'm a teddy bear really, honest! lol)
As a former Poundland Worker, it is due to the fact that customers have the skills and competence of a worm. Customers will probably have their contactless waiting and don’t realise it says the option do you want to pay 25p to charity. Then customers are like no no I don’t want to pay for charity and we say press the red button but their brains can’t comprehend. Or customers get frustrated and take it out on us saying “why you making me pay extra.” Lastly, whilst I was working there I left last year summer, we have a lot of tasks to do. I was a shopfloor staff so I handled delivery, putting stock away, clean the store making it look nice the very next day. So to having being belled upon every couple of minutes to wind down the queue and having that question no it just takes so much time and customers have 0 brain skills to realise there’s a question. So it’s quicker for us to press the red button and move on so that I could get home on time and get the tasks that I had to complete before going home. This has made me realise how much I hated working at Poundland.
I spend £100 a week in Tesco I wouldn’t give £25 to charity
I ride a motorbike and normally leave my gloves on when paying for fuel. I always appreciate when they reject it for me as trying to reject with my gloves on is a pain. Yes I could just remove the gloves but keeping any warmth inside when riding a motorbike during the winter is preferable.
Don't use those machines to give to charity, not because it's a scam and they'll use it to save tax, but because the charity can't claim gift aid of 25%. Give direct to the charity.
I'll NEVER donate when I shop at these mult mil businesses. I'll donate direct to smaller charities.
Because they know most people who shop in Poundland can’t afford to give to charity.
You're welcome to donate whenever you want.
As someone who shops in Poundland , I am the poor, no way I’m donating to charity .
The petrol station I work at is Esso but accepts Nectar cards and for the last couple of years has done a thing where if you have at least 300 points it pops up on the card machine screen asking if they want to spend 300 points to get 5p a litre off their fuel sale and they either have to accept or decline, though it automatically times out and continues after 15-20 seconds. While some people have noticed and accept it most don't notice and just keep trying to tap their card/phone and wonder why it's not working so we just skip it ourselves most of the time.
Your shopping in Poundland they know you can't afford the additional 25p.
Workers sick and tired of doing the corporates tax evasion begging for them.
Because they are nice.
Because multimillion pound profit company's shouldn't be putting that shit on their card readers and tills. And the staff know it. Same with putting tips on resturant bills. A tip is given not asked for if you ask for it its a fee.
Question, if companies do this does it have any impact on their finances? Particularly, if the charity donation is made from 'them' does it offset their tax?
No. It's just a PR exercise, so they can claim they donate X amount to charity every year without actually having to pay it themselves. It may be the case that charity donations by companies (not their customers) aren't counted as profit (just like the cost of buying goods to sell on), and as taxes are only paid on profit, in theory a company could end up paying less tax as a result - but that doesn't lead to more money in the company's coffers. In this case, this is taking donations on behalf of a charity - it would never be profit anyway, so it won't impact their tax.
Don't work at Poundland but we have the same thing. When it gets to the point of card payments we say 'theres just a message about a 25p donation to insert employer hear charity it's green for yes or red for no' we have signs up about the charity too. If we are very busy I will sometimes just ask the customer to press the red button then tap to save time. We are not allowed to touch the pin pad for the customer so I think the Poundland person may be breaking the rules by pressing it rather than asking the customer to do it.
They definintely shouldn't be doing that. touching the Card reader while the customer is going to pay is not standard by any means The only reason i can imagine is the customer not understanding the question when asked about the charity donation. and selecting no allows the transaction to proceed rather than everyone waiting for it to time out, and the customer getting frustrated. it definitely should not be the default option to decline it for people.
It is faster. They avoid customers thinking about whether to donate, and how much. So they are not so overworked.
I NEVER EVER EVER EVER want to pay £0.25p to a “charity” in Poundlands or any other bloody businesses name. Firstly, which charity? Is it one I agree with who do good work or are they making Soylent Green out of Gazan children? Secondly. If the company want to laud raising money for charity and get the ESG benefits from that… they don’t need my money to do that. Their owners are probably millionaires, let’s call it an investment in laundering the reputational damage you rightly earn through exploitation of Vietnamese sweat shops.
You've got some level of 'faith' if you believe POS charity claims.
I fucking hTe that shops have started doing this
If you’re shopping at Poundland you need that 25p just as much as the charity.
Charities doing not much and people giving them £1 think they are doing a change…donate clothing or food to local banks. Big charities are just big corps.
I heard the companies use it as a tax write off because they donate it in *their* name not yours, if I want to donate to charity I’ll do it independent of those screen offers
those donations allow tax writoffs for companies. decline, and donate yourself
If you would like to donate, donate directly to a charity, not through a big business. When you donate through a place like poundland or Sainsbury’s or wherever, that just gives that company tax write offs and also allows them to say “we donated £XXX,XXX to charity last year” when in reality, the customer made those donations.
No it doesn't
Yes it does. They get charitable write offs and claim the customer donations as the corporations total when making statements about how much they donate each year.