Philosophy
I'm not sure when I first noticed them. I don't remember them as a child or a teenager. Then, one day, walking out of a CVS, I looked down at my hand and there it was ... a two-foot long receipt decorated with coupons and miscellany like the back of an old magazine. What was this so-called receipt? And why was it so long?!
This creeping sign of postmodern malaise, in which the length of one's receipt bears no relationship to the number of items purchased, has been swirling out of printers and control for too long. We are beyond paper, the anguished people cry. But the pharmacy does not hear us.
As the angry proprietor of the Facebook group, "One Million Strong Against Unnecessarily Long CVS Receipts," put it, "I don't care that they use my CVS card to track me across the planet, I just want a receipt that isn't 1/3rd my height."
Last June, it appeared that the madness might end. The Los Angeles Times reported that CVS was doing away with its often yard-long receipts and moving toward a more useful, digitized rewards program.
But now the company is backing away from that plan. LA Times reporter David Lazarus kept digging (that guy deserves a Pulitzer) and found the company "in fact isn't working on doing away with printing rewards on receipts and the goal isn't to store rewards in people's cards." Instead, the "rewards" CVS gives you -- which are what gets printed on that receipt -- will continue to come in paper form unless you opt into an offers-by-email program.
The reason, the company says, is that the receipts are, apparently, exciting to customers. "When you give rewards, you want people to feel excited," a company representative told Lazarus. said. "You want them to know that they've earned the reward." (Finally, I understand the whoops of joy often heard in the self-checkout aisle.)
CVS trumpets its decision in a press release titled "CVS/pharmacy Launches New Digital Savings Option for ExtraCare, the Nation's Largest Retail Rewards Program," which sounds great -- at first.
The release goes on to explain that customers can now get their rewards digitally if they sign up for ExtraCare emails. Easy enough, just sign up for the emails and then create a filter so you never have to see them, or send them to an email address you never check.
Unfortunately, such work-arounds will not help: Customers who want to avoid receipts and still use their coupons will have to read each coupon email and decide whether to send it to their printer or to their CVS card. Which is annoying, almost as annoying as receiving a 25-inch receipt after purchasing a quart of milk.
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Philosophy
Case of the long paper receipt
"Ridiculously Long CVS Receipts Will Remain Ridiculously Long"
by
Rebecca J. Rosen
August 10th, 2011
The Atlantic
by
Rebecca J. Rosen
August 10th, 2011
The Atlantic
I'm not sure when I first noticed them. I don't remember them as a child or a teenager. Then, one day, walking out of a CVS, I looked down at my hand and there it was ... a two-foot long receipt decorated with coupons and miscellany like the back of an old magazine. What was this so-called receipt? And why was it so long?!
This creeping sign of postmodern malaise, in which the length of one's receipt bears no relationship to the number of items purchased, has been swirling out of printers and control for too long. We are beyond paper, the anguished people cry. But the pharmacy does not hear us.
As the angry proprietor of the Facebook group, "One Million Strong Against Unnecessarily Long CVS Receipts," put it, "I don't care that they use my CVS card to track me across the planet, I just want a receipt that isn't 1/3rd my height."
Last June, it appeared that the madness might end. The Los Angeles Times reported that CVS was doing away with its often yard-long receipts and moving toward a more useful, digitized rewards program.
But now the company is backing away from that plan. LA Times reporter David Lazarus kept digging (that guy deserves a Pulitzer) and found the company "in fact isn't working on doing away with printing rewards on receipts and the goal isn't to store rewards in people's cards." Instead, the "rewards" CVS gives you -- which are what gets printed on that receipt -- will continue to come in paper form unless you opt into an offers-by-email program.
The reason, the company says, is that the receipts are, apparently, exciting to customers. "When you give rewards, you want people to feel excited," a company representative told Lazarus. said. "You want them to know that they've earned the reward." (Finally, I understand the whoops of joy often heard in the self-checkout aisle.)
CVS trumpets its decision in a press release titled "CVS/pharmacy Launches New Digital Savings Option for ExtraCare, the Nation's Largest Retail Rewards Program," which sounds great -- at first.
The release goes on to explain that customers can now get their rewards digitally if they sign up for ExtraCare emails. Easy enough, just sign up for the emails and then create a filter so you never have to see them, or send them to an email address you never check.
Unfortunately, such work-arounds will not help: Customers who want to avoid receipts and still use their coupons will have to read each coupon email and decide whether to send it to their printer or to their CVS card. Which is annoying, almost as annoying as receiving a 25-inch receipt after purchasing a quart of milk.
- What's The Difference: Work, Job, And Labor
David Brooks was rooting FOR Duke in the NCAA men's basketball championship. By itself, that is sufficient for condemnation on character grounds, but then he spelled out his reason -- the Duke players are "paragons of privilege" and in line with the...
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Despite the caffeine I've consumed today, I have not been very clear-thinking (there was a brief window of thought-clarity this morning, but it was taken up by work at my real job), so I drew a graph of philosopher-faces for the post. This is an extremely...
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"Sly shoppers' bag of tricks" Some money-saving moves are outright fraud, but others are technically allowed. Much of the retail industry has been hesitant to push back. by Tiffany Hsu and Andrea Chang February 2nd, 2014 latimes.com Nordstrom is...
- Does Recycling Cause People To Consume More?
What a ridiculous thought...rubbish! "Rewards for recycling may encourage people to create waste" Plans have been dropped to penalise those with overstuffed bins, but the emphasis should be on unnecessary packaging. by James Garvey June 8th, 2010 guardian.co.uk...
- Environmental Incentives
Dangle the environmental principles in front of people and few move, but dangle a dollar and everyone moves. "Getting paid to save energy, recycle? Incentives expand" March 28th, 2010 USA Today Americans are being paid to save energy and recycle. A...