I don’t know about CVS - but Rite Aid has had my cell phone number for years and the only texts I get are about my prescriptions - they’re due for a refill , my prescription is ready to be picked up, that kind of thing. Although actually, I think CVS does have my cell number and I’ve never gotten a text from them.
But that’s sort of what I meant about taking it to an extent that I find inconvenient - sure I could give Rite Aid or CVS my landline number and wait till I get home and retrieve the message- but that would mean I couldn’t stop and pick up the prescription on my way home from work, since I didn’t get the message until after I got home.
I ask for all of my client’s numbers, then I ask them if they would prefer a text or a call for reminders and for when their dog is ready to be picked up.
I’ve never had anyone refuse to give me their phone number, but I don’t think that I’d take in someone’s dog if they refused to give me contact info.
I do ask about their home address. But all I ever do with that is to send them custom made christmas cards with their dogs on them. If they don’t want to give it to me, then that’s one less card I have to make.
I do check the number from time to time and so far it’s still unused.
Having said that, I should probably just start using my work fax number. At the moment, to stop junk faxes, it doesn’t accept incoming calls (you’ll just get a busy signal), but even if changed that back, you’d get a fax machine handshake beeping at you.
Oh, I do too. I won’t give my phone number or email address or anything to Home Depot Or Lowes or places that, have no business needing it. But other places, use it as a rewards account number. So I could decline, but I’d rather give them a phone number (even a BS one) and get $10 off my $200 purchase.
We had a guy using our work number for…I have no idea what, but we spent 15 or 20 years getting weekly (or more) debt collection calls.
I could never convince them that I wasn’t him, that he didn’t work here, that he never worked here, that I’ve never heard of him, I don’t know his ‘new’ phone number etc. I think I may have used so Fair Collections Act stuff to get them to knock it off with all the calls. But it didn’t matter because a new place would start calling a few weeks later.
I was just thinking… I used to give out my work phone number for “Rewards Club” and such*. But then I retired, and just now wondered if the company reassigned the number (to someone who’s now getting promotional calls from Walgreen’s, CVS, Home Depot…).
*I never got the calls because, get this, I never plugged my work phone in. Sounds anti-social, but I was a teacher who was in classrooms or cafeteria, never in my office. And a transcript of any important calls where someone left a message would show up in my school email.
Oh, whenever I get asked by a chirpy clerk “And are you a member of our Happy Savers Discount Club?” I say “No…” (here I raise an eyebrow menacingly) “…and I NEVER will be…”
Clerks usually laughs and says “Sorry, I have to ask that.”
OTOH, I recently purchased several thousand dollars of equipment from a vendor. When I was checking out, it told me that I could save 10% if I gave them my cell phone #.
I pondered it a bit, but decided it was actually worth a few hundred dollars to have a slight inconvenience for a bit.
May I recommend memorizing this number?
007 495 606 36 02
It is the number indicated in the official Kreml website, so public knowledge. They are used to stupid calls, they can manage that. And yes, the international code for Russia is 007. Yours is 001.
“Some things” is all very well. My vaccination appointment demanded a cell phone number. I don’t know what they do about somebody who hasn’t got one – and a lot of people in this area don’t.
Ditto.
Why? For not putting the stuff back on the shelves?
There’s no reason one should be required to give any of that in order to buy something, unless it’s going to be delivered. And for that they only need the address.
I’ll give my mechanic both phone numbers if I want to know when the car’s ready, sure. There’s an actual reason for that. If I’m standing at the counter of the store with everything I’m buying and cash or a valid card in hand, they don’t need my phone number.
Well, yeah. That’s a different situation. I wouldn’t agree to babysit somebody’s kid if I had no idea how to get ahold of them, either.
But I assume they can choose what contact info to give you.
You’re not required to give that info to buy something. Just say “No thanks.” It’s really very simple. No one will refuse to sell you merchandise if you don’t give a number. Just dropping your stuff and leaving in a tantrum like a toddler creates unnecessary work for the cashiers, who do not set the policy of asking for numbers, and makes others on line have to wait longer while someone clears away your crap. I guarantee no one thinks “Hmm, we’d better not ask for a number next time.” All the workers think when you do that is “Fucking entitled bitch.”
I have been in at least one store where indeed they refused the sale rather than let me get away without providing an email address. They were “not allowed” to sell batteries to me unless I gave them a method of spamming me. (Radio Shack, yet another reason I don’t mourn their passing.)
Here’s a discussion from about a year ago, in which we talked about some having two phones, while others are using Google Voice to have a second number on the same phone, etc. OP, you could give the “other” number if you want.
I haven’t had any issues with spam when giving my info to a restaurant, fortunately.
In Vermont last fall, the two times we had sit-down meals, they asked for a cell phone number, but that was related to COVID; they wanted to be able to contact us in case of exposure, I think.
If they don’t accept that, then they are the ones that are preventing it from being that simple.
No one said anything about a tantrum, that’s just something that you have made up out of whole cloth.
People leave things in the line all the time. They decide they don’t want it, their payment doesn’t go through, the coupon that the had wasn’t valid for that item. The stuff is just set off to the side, and in any decent sized grocery store, there is a constant stream of stuff that needs to be reshelved.
That’s exactly what happens. If no one objects to a policy, then that policy never gets changed. If enough make their objections known, then the policy does get changed.
Nah, they think, “There’s another customer that doesn’t appreciate these dumb policies that our PHBs make us follow.”
I’ve been known to carefully spell out “fuckuinyabutt@blowme.com” when someone got too insistent about an email address. Funny thing is, my spam catching garbage address isn’t all that far off from this one but it is a valid gmail address. I also have a Google Voice number I can give out–it will ring to my phone but I can always dump it and get a different number.
(I’m a pensioner), but I get spoken messages on my landline when someone sends me a taxt.