I see online ads all the time saying that I can get free gift cards if I donate blood.
Now I donate blood anyway. And I don’t do it for the free gift cards. But as long as I giving the blood, I’d be happy to take the gift cards.
But somehow the subject never comes up when I actually go in to donate. I’ve been offered snacks and drinks and was once offered a t-shirt but nobody has ever offered me a gift card.
So is there something I’m missing?
Maybe it’s an ad for selling plasma?
I see those too when I donate at Red Cross events. It helps if you have a donor profile on their app with a registered email address. But even then, the gift cards are pretty hit-or-miss. I think I’ve only gotten one or two.
Yeah…I didn’t think it was legal to pay for blood donations but they do pay for plasma donations.
Maybe a gift card is not “paying” for blood. I’ll ask my BiL who works for Red Cross organizing donor events (too late to get an answer tonight though).
I see this thread was moved from Great Debates to In My Humble Opinion. Which is fine because that’s where I wanted it to be. I must have hit the wrong line when I was writing the OP.
NY Blood Center is the major organization in my area; they used to have gift cards more frequently, but now it’s stuff like hoodies or tickets for the Mets. The current offer which they keep emailing me is Beyonce concert tickets.
After I registered with them as a donor they kept on calling me on the phone asking me to donate; I finally told them that the towel and T-shirt and gift cards I’d received from them weren’t worth the aggravation of their constant calls, so they stopped.
I just looked up their centers and blood drive locations, and they’re all downstate. You’re located in Western NY, I see.
The ads identify themselves as being from the American Red Cross (redcrossblood.org).
The text of the ad I just looked at:
Do good and get rewarded! Get a $20 e-gift card to a merchant of your choice when you come to give blood May 1-18. PLUS, come to give in May to be automatically entered for a chance to win a U.S. trip of choice for you and a guest!* Where will your donation take you?!
That said, I have seen other online ads for selling plasma.
Looks like you’ve indeed been donating blood wrong!
If there’s a secret handshake I need to use, let me know.
Have you not, you know, just asked for the gift card?
You should take the gift cards when available and not feel bad about it. Blood products are America’s 9th largest export!
$37B worth of exports. This is a good thing. The world is benefiting from American blood/plasma “donations.” But money is being made and you shouldn’t somehow feel bad about taking compensation, or even doing it solely because of the compensation.
I once managed to get a gift card without even donating anything! The first time I walked in, they had to bounce me because apparently not enough time had elapsed since I had been in the hospital. What a nice surprise to discover, days later, that I was still being rewarded for my thoughtful intent. Or there was a clerical oversight. Whatever.
Yes. Straight up ask for your reward.
The person clickkng you in for freebies sees no value in them anymore, after clicking in 100s.
They may not realize you’re not signed up for them or something.
Or the person checking you in is happy to keep the gift cards if someone doesn’t ask for them.
Oh, that’s bad.
Never occurred to me.
God, people are awful.
I’m a regular platelets donor at Stanford Blood Center and there, they’ll have promotions and compensation that are on temporarily, then off. So you have to donate when the promotion is on, otherwise you don’t get it. SBC also has a points system and you accumulate points as you donate, and then you can spend those points on a site that lists items for ‘sale’.
Sometimes the extra promotions are over and above the points system and you might have to ask for it if the staff forgets about it. Or, if you donate when the promotion is off and you don’t receive a promotion you’ve heard about, you might think you’re donating wrong when you don’t get it.
It’s certainly not like when you go to the IRS.
Over here, you wouldn’t get more than tea and biscuits
I’ve donated at the Red Cross in northern New England and western New York. Sometimes they offer gift cards and sometimes they don’t. It seems to me that they offer gift cards for platelet donations more often than for blood. Every time I was supposed to get a gift card, I have gotten one. They have never handed me or mailed me a physical gift card, as far as I can recall. If they’re offering gift cards, a week or so after the donation, I get an email from the Red Cross asking me if I really want a gift card. If I respond yes, then a few days later I get an email from a different address (recently that has been from an outfit called tangocard) that contains a code and link that I can redeem for a virtual gift card from a choice of various retailers. I can’t remember whether you can get a physical gift card mailed to you; I just take an Amazon credit and apply it to my account online. The whole process is rather convoluted and confusing.
If you’re not getting the gift card, it might be because they’re not offering one that month, or they don’t know your email address, or you’re failing to respond to the first email, or the second email is going to the spam folder, or any number of other potential hiccups.
I donate platelets on the regular - average about every other week. Sometimes they take a unit of plasma along with the platelets, when the opportunity presents itself (I think at most every 28 days).
For the past four years or so at least, the Red Cross has been offering e-gift cards to platelet donors “in appreciation for your support.” I donated them back to the RC because, I figure, a donation is a donation and really shouldn’t be done for something in exchange… but the past year and a half or so my daughter has been going to college in NYC and money is a little tight, so I’ve been claiming the e-gift cards since she started there and using them on Amazon for little extras. It doesn’t add up to a lot - maybe $300 since I’ve started taking them - but it helps keep the wolf from the door.
ETA: the scheme is the same as what @bibliophage outlines above. Semi-ninjaed!