There are definitely good reasons to want an email receipt, but inserting that question into the checkout workflow is annoying–not only is it yet another tracking/spamming tool, but it causes registers to be tied up while people who can’t type are trying to key in their email that they can’t remember.
Can’t do much about the former–they already have my CC info.
If there are no lines, I don’t mind the latter. Let them type away!
Yes, but what’s the alternative?
If they want to provide this feature, it works best when there is a single line that goes to multiple registers, and if they open up all of the self checkout registers.
That way, nobody is stuck behind the one person who is filling out the email form (admittedly a shorter operation than answering a survey).
Still, it’s frustrating to see so much friction added to what should have become the most streamlined process ever.
Some years back I remember being at a Walgreens in line at the only register behind someone who said “yes” to filling out the survey and they filled out the whole darned thing over several minutes at the register. When I got to the clerk, I grumbled “this is how it’s done” and handed them cash and took my item. I felt bad for grumbling at someone who is being forced by their manager to insist on customers filling out the survey at the register, it wasn’t their fault.
The CASH REGISTER asks you to mill out a multi-minute survey? Not just a “how satisfied were you with this transaction on a scale from 1-10” thing? Yikes!!! Even if there’s no line, even if I have no place else to be, I can’t imagine wanting to stand at the cash register and fill out a lengthy survey.
(I don’t usually do self-checkout. When I do, I’ve never noticed a survey. This is a new idea to me. And a very very bad one.)
For some of us, it’s actually NOT easy - there are numerous instances of people having to go to court to get the government’s records straightened out. Other instances of name changes, ANY name change, for any reason. If you’ve had past ID’s that deviated in any way from what’s on your birth certificate you can be very screwed, even if it’s as innocuous as “Jim” vs. “James” or “Steven” vs. “Stephan”. Better hope no one has ever at any point made any mistake in spelling your name.
I speak from experience on this.
RealID is “easy” until it isn’t, then at best it’s time and expense and in some cases devolves to pure nightmare.
I’ll just add that one time when I was in the DMV trying to straighten out MY RealID problem then guy the next rep over was having a Very Bad Day - he’d been adopted as an infant and his new family started calling him by a new name but didn’t get it legally changed, or at least not in an official enough manner. So EVERY ID and record on this guy from infancy forward was in the name he’d been called all his life but the government no longer recognized it as his real name. He was told he’d have to go to court to have it changed. Until then - no ID, no driver’s license, no Officially Issued Government ID. Too bad, so sad, sucks to be you.
If you have EVER had a name change for any reason whatsoever be sure you have all needed documents before proceeding.
I’ll also point out that the copy of my marriage license I’d carried around for three decades, which until that point had been accepted by everyone who had ever asked for it, was also deemed insufficient and I had to get a new one.
I really fucking hate RealID.
My bank’s ATMs will try to sell me some kind of new service after I’ve entered my PIN. What the blue blazes is up with that? I mean, I really don’t think anyone wants to spend a single second in front of an ATM longer than absolutely necessary (I know I don’t, and I don’t think I’m any more paranoid than average), and here they are wanting me to read extra screens and make choices that have nothing to do with the transaction.
I fill out surveys for my children’s schools whenever I am asked because I care about their education and feel there are plenty of obnoxious asshole parents that make their feelings known constantly at meetings and I want to provide data that supports the notion that most parents are level headed and fine with whatever COVID related measures or busing measures or library book choices or race related topics the board has decided to make and are fine with most of us.
But that is the limit, no other survey deserves a millisecond of my time.
That’s basically my reasoning too. If I want to send a message (either positive or negative), I will fill out the survey.
Most of the time, I’m just like, whatever. I got by business done, it was fine. “Fine” should be the default.
I fill out the surveys when it’s about an individual service worker. In those cases I think of it like a tip—I don’t like it, but it’s part of the system so I’ll play along for the benefit of the person actually doing the work. As long as the job was done adequately I’ll give out a perfect score. (Just for clarity, I tip when appropriate, and think of the perfect survey as an additional part of the tip. Giving a perfect score instead of cash is a shitty move.)
Which comes around to the rant part of these perfect scores. The surveys are clearly not meant to use to improve service, or find out where there are problems. The surveys are meant as bludgeons that can be used to deny bonuses, raises, etc. If the companies actually wanted to know what customers think of their processes, they’d ask more appropriate questions with more nuanced answers.
I think that’s true, even if the survey started off with the best of intentions: Goodhart’s law paraphrased as, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
This was my experience, too. Also, everyone at the Torrance DMV office was helpful and friendly. I’d been dreading it, but it was surprisingly easy and painless.
As others have mentioned, it’s not always that easy.
JUSt brInG tHE doCUMenTaTioN yOU nEeD!
I reached peak dumb survey recently where I was using an app and before I’d even finished ordering the service I wanted through the app, a popup asking me to rate their app prevented me from filling in the fields I needed to fill to use their app.
Naturally I rated their app one star (zero wasn’t an option). Which is somewhat ironic given that apart from their rating popup, their app would have rated well.
When I lived in California, every time I had to deal with the DMV, there was no problem. Georgia’s DDS is a different critter.
Makes perfect sense in a world where, as soon as you log in to your computer, you’re asked to postpone whatever you wanted/needed to do so that updates can be downloaded.
I endorse the subject of this rant.
If I do try to take the survey, nine times out of ten it doesn’t allow me to say what I’d actually like to say about the service, and tries to force me to give an inaccurate answer to at least one question by phrasing it in such a fashion that I can’t honestly give any of the provided answers.
I get requests to rate a product that I just bought. I don’t know what I think of it yet; if it looked fine on first glance but broke/wore out long before I expected, that’s going to drastically change my opinion. This is especially annoying if it’s an item I haven’t, or can’t even, use once yet – a tool I can’t use till the ground thaws, a warm-weather shirt that arrived in a snowstorm, or whatever – but even if it’s a kitchen knife: ask me again in five years.
I have no intention of spending all of my life filling out surveys. I get surveys that I have to fill out, and surveys that I think it’s important to fill out, and those are more than enough of a nuisance. I’m not going to fill out a survey every time I go to the store!
Well, today was the worst yet – an automated phone survey about a medical appointment I had last Thursday. I’m having another one tomorrow at the same place, so of course they had to call me this evening and get me all wondering what’s going on, and then I find out it’s a survey, well, click. Buh-by, jerks. Not the medical people, they’re fine, the executives of this large medical conglomerate that, even though it is theoretically a non-profit, seems always to be chasing the dollars.
I occasionally buy seeds of palm and other trees on eBay, and am asked to rate the seller shortly after purchase. The seeds in question commonly take a long time to germinate if they’re viable. I won’t know for maybe six months whether they’re duds or not, sometimes longer. By that time ratings have been closed.
“Yes, they sent me crap - but it arrived on time!”
I wouldn’t sweat it. I’ve worked in busy offices, and I canNOT imagine a large company dedicating employees to reading the results of surveys.
I’m betting someone* gets a monthly update, but very truncated. Because all they look at, and all they report up the ladder, is “44% rated us a 5, 31% a 4, 3% a 3, 2% a 2, and 20% a 1… and 37% wrote a comment. Which is well within our target percentages.”
*(maybe someone in accounting, because Marketing would make too much sense)
Now, where you should put your essay skills to work is with a small business. I’m sure they do read every word. Look at all the Google reviews online where the CEO responds… everything from “Send that broken one back, and we’ll give you the upgraded model!” to “There’s no way anyone was rude to you, ya sow. I spend 24 hrs a day at that fookin’ store dealing with idiots like you, and if someone as bitchy as you had been there, I’d remember it. Take your lies to WalMart.” And we do hope you’ll keep making S-Mart your smart shopping home!
Which is another reason for me not to do their survey.
I’ll talk to them, when I’m in the store. Or I’ll contact them otherwise directly, in a fashion which lets me say what I actually mean; not through their survey system.