To find these retail practices annoying

[Mistlewoeandwhine]

1. Having to pay 10% service charge added to the bill (with no pre mention of the fact) in Yo Sushi - which is expensive enough for what it is anyway. I only noticed when I read it on the receipt afterwards. I always tip waiting staff 10% anyway but I give it in cash to the actual server so I know they get it. If Yo Sushi want to pay their staff higher wages, they can do it themselves.

2. Lush - I know some people hate it but I don’t. I like their products but I can assure you that I buy FAR LESS when some stranger is standing beside me, disturbing my rare moments of peace and making me smell stuff I’ve no interest in.
   Stop it Lush!

@BuzzShitbagBobbly *
Matalan!! Why can't I just buy something without being asked if I have my card and then if I don't asking for you postcode, urghh

Come to think of it, why do they even bother with the stupid card?
They don't tailor their comms to you, so they're clearly not using the data for that purpose. In fact I don't even recall the last thing I got from them!*

They do, MIL and I get different offers/discounts off each time the booklet comes through the post- that seem to correspond with how much we spent last time.

Either way though, I’d still rather not have to be a member!

They do, MIL and I get different offers/discounts off each time the booklet comes through the post- that seem to correspond with how much we spent last time.

Pfft. So it's just me they cba with!
Still stupid to have to show a card just to shop there though!

Email receipts
Especially as my email is rather longer than average. Back in the late 90s I didn't think I'd be using it all really let alone need to spell it out to shop assistants on a Black Friday for a receipt

Service charges
All of the loyalty cards especially
Now that they are moving to apps I can't keep up and can never remember I have a card for that shop or not

Yes, with Matalan, I'm assuming it's to keep tabs on who their customers are. From a retail management POV, it's quite clever; but from a shopper's POV, it's a faff and potentially an unwanted intrusion.

I'm guessing they probably do tailor their mailings to their customers who go there regularly and spend a lot, send out standard ones to customers who go in there now and again and don't bother at all for those who haven't been in for a year or more.

x-posted with babycatcher411

Webuilt I worked in matalan over Christmas. First retail job and it's hard enough to get your head round the till, and all the other normal checkout stuff.

But the loyalty card system was something else. From the hard sell to get people to sign up and take details when there's a queue of people behind. To what to do if they have an older style of card. It was so overwhelming

I once went into Lulu Lemon and they never left me alone, I went into the changing rooms to try on their overpriced yoga pants, they asked my name and then wrote it in chalk on the door of the changing room. Every 2 mins I had someone calling out "how are you getting on Mrscainndingle"
"Can we get you anything else Mrscainndingle" I ran out of the store trying not to scream 😱
It was a relief to be mostly ignored in shops when we came back to the UK.

I have a theory that people who get to top management levels are both extreme extroverts and also those who love to have their egos massaged and lickspittles fawning over them - and they just would never comprehend the fact that many people actively hate this.

I find it with tailored advertising online too. If you opt out, you are patronisingly told that you won't get ads that are as relevant to you and are invited to consider again and make the 'right' decision; but maybe I don't want to be forced through your algorithms that invariably make gross assumptions about me rather than thinking I might actually be an individual.

I realise that advertisers' motivations are at cross purposes to mine, but it isn't like the old pre-internet days when you had to be specifically alerted to a product you might not otherwise have been aware of or known how to find. Don't pretend you're trying to help me to find the overall most suitable and relevant products for me as a big favour as if you aren't just one shop with one limited range of goods out of the hundreds of thousands available online.

It's like charity appeals where they just want to get in your face and push their own cause on you and deliberately act oblivious to the huge number of other charitable causes people might prioritise over their own. Of course, I expect you to want my spending/donating targeted towards you, but don't pretend that you're putting me and my assumed financial decision-making thought processes in your sights to try to help me.

You have my sympathies, Lego. It just seems such a huge waste of time and unnecessary faff.

You're a shop, I want to take these goods away and I have money here to pay you in exchange for them; so why exactly is that not possible without some silly card? How is deliberately slowing down that simple transaction helping either of us?!

I'd understand if they were restricted or valuable items, but when it's a jumper, a bog-roll holder and a random kids' DVD that I picked up from your queue labyrinth of wonder, who really has time for all that? In fact, call me a cynic, but maybe that's their entire thinking - slow people down and make a queue build up deliberately by introducing a membership card as a macguffin so as to lengthen the amount of time people spend in the impulse-buy labyrinth and pick up more last-minute purchases?!

*When they ask if you found everything you were looking for as you pay

surely 9/10 times people are just browsing, and if you haven't found what you're looking for then you'd leave the shop without buying anything.*

I work in a shop and we have to ask that question as we are marked on it by a mystery shopper.
We hate having to ask questions and up sell but we have to do it otherwise we will get disciplined.

A Lush member of staff grabbed my SIL by the arm when we went in there about a month ago. The shop was rammed - mostly by members of their own staff! SIL has no interest in crossing the whole shop to go smell something so the assistant grabbed her arm and insisted. SIL and I moved away right into the path of a different member of staff who started going on about sugar scrubs. I regretted not having a huge sign saying I AM JUST BROWSING to hold up in front of my own face to make them all go away.

It's always been over-friendly-on-the-side-of-pushy in there, but that was the worst visit to a Lush shop I've experienced.

Recently I’ve found the upselling at the till has been focused on charity donations or raffle tickets. I feel so guilty with my purse out paying for a £50 item and they ask me face-to-face if they can add just £1 to my bill for the kiddies at the hospice. The problem is when it happens repeatedly, £1 in every shop adds up.

I feel so guilty with my purse out paying for a £50 item and they ask me face-to-face if they can add just £1 to my bill for the kiddies at the hospice. The problem is when it happens repeatedly, £1 in every shop adds up.

Even worse when you're not spending much (maybe can't afford very much and have carefully budgeted for it). Actually, not even worse - just as bad, as your expensive purchases still might be essential for you and have maxed out your carefully-planned budget or available funds.

Also, it's their chosen charity and not yours. You might have serious reservations about the motives or methods of the charity - or simply prioritise other causes; but if you say you won't today thanks, they look at you as if you've personally gone and set fire to the hospice or cats' home.

At least it's entirely optional when eBay does it, with no person to look disapprovingly at you if you don't; but what are the chances that they'll offer your own favourite charity to make an extra donation to? And if they did, you probably already give what you can anyway.

They've changed it now, but at our local petrol station, when paying by card, the machine used to ask you "Add 25p for charity?" and force you to press the green button for yes (yes, the same colour as the 'enter' button that you're already conditioned to be used to pressing) or the red button for no. No attempt whatsoever to tell you what the charity is, just a lazy way of upselling. What's the betting that everybody's 25p donations suddenly become the company's £XXXXX donation to their chosen charity (assuming it's all legit) and are offset against their tax liability anyway?

Incidentally, there's absolutely nothing stopping them setting up their own charity for something morally questionable (or where they have an active personal interest) but which technically qualifies as allowed charitable aims and just skimming off an extra 25p for their own pet project from all these customers.

Even assuming they don't do this, it's great PR for them; but when you see the likes of Sainsburys and Welcome Break handing over a (literally) giant cheque on Children In Need night, it's always 'our fantastic friends at XXX who do so much to support us' and little or no credit given to the customers who actually gave the money.

There was a twitter thread a few weeks ago by lush employees. I’ve never bought anything in there and I won’t now!

They are forced to do what they do, they have no choice. It’s ridiculous.

Constantly being mithered about buying insurance when buying an electrical item, even a small one. I bought a £35 printer the other day and the shop assistant was trying to sell me insurance for £10.99. £10.99 for a £35 bloody printer ffs.

I hear you, @Whatisthisfuckery, and raise you being pushed insurance on a £4.99 'vintage' Nokia from Carphone Warehouse.

Nothing annoys me apart from Lush and their store assistants pestering you from the second you get in the store with their aggressive selling techniques. I feel so strongly about it that I actually emailed their head office. I now no longer shop in there and I actually used to spend quite a bit in there, it was my go to for birthday and Christmas presents for aunties, cousins etc.

tillytrotter, is a reduction of 25% from £40 to £30 not accurate when a shop advertises 'up to 50%' sale prices?

You are not going to get a discount of more than half the original price when they say 'up to 50%' off.

Maybe I need to go to bed.

I've just remembered - the shop I worked for wanted us to ask every customer if they'd found everything they were looking for.
This lasted precisely one week as a friend of mine asked a customer who then proceeded to completely go off on one about how she couldn't find an item as we didn't sell it and how that made us all totally awful, plus a few more insults.
She told the manager she wasn't asking any more as she refused to be spoken to like that. We all agreed as it caused nothing but trouble. People either said "Yes?!?" and looked at us weird, or if they said no we had to go and get what they couldn't find. This caused terrible queues at the till due to the delay, which made the manager cross.

I deliberately leave items in online baskets for a few days now to see whether they will try and lure me back with a discount.

I also simply mark any retailer as Spam and unsubscribe as soon as I have my delivery. I just unspam them if I decide to order from them again.

I hope a big retail boss is reading this and knows what customers really want in terms of service!

When they ask if you found everything you were looking for as you pay

And/or when you phone up and they ask "is there anything else I can do for you today?". Like I had waited till after all the thankyous and started on the goodbyes before thinking to ask about the one massive thing I really wanted to know.

Last week I asked a young man at a credit card company if he could come round and fold my laundry or wash my car.

I went to Clarkes a few years ago with one of my children in a very tight budget half the shoes were labeled and the others weren't but I found a pair I could afford. The sales assistant measured their feet and said that they didn't have that style in stock but would find something else. She came out with two boxes I asked how much they were and she said she would find out after she checked they fit. She then proceeded to tell my child how one had toys in it etc and before telling me the price asked them which they wanted (toys obviously). I asked again how much they were and she went and found out they were alot more expensive than the original so I said no. She then tells my dc "ohh mummy won't let you have them insert fake sad face" . The other pair were the price I originally wanted to pay but I walked out with nothing but a screaming child.

These days I'm now a single mum so Clarkes is out of the question at least in shoe zone you don't get people trying to guilt trip you into more expensive shoes.

Paper receipts - I take a view depending on what I've bought.

Mundane groceries only a small spend, no receipt
Groceries plus clothes, electrical goods etc, I get a receipt in case I need to change or return anything, or faulty goods
Larger groceries eg £100+ I sometimes get a receipt to spot check the prices.

They can't make accusations of shoplifting - there's an audit trail at the till where the transaction was done even without a paper receipt

Has anyone noticed the ridiculous posters in Clarks with Freida Pinto?

I walked in the other day and was bombarded by huge black and white photos of the woman on every wall, with her described as a "Humanitarian".

I go into a Clarks to buy shoes, it would help to see photos of the shoes on people's feet that helps me decide whether to buy them or not, not some painfully arty photos of a relatively small-bit actress looking down on me as if they think she's Mother Bloody Theresa.

Last week I asked a young man at a credit card company if he could come round and fold my laundry or wash my car.

This is EXCELLENT Blobby.

I aam going to dd it to my repertoire of "Things To Say On The Phone".

(My latest is to pretend that I am the Eastern European cleaner when I get a call in a foreign accent saying there's something wrong with my computer. Works a treat! I've "been" French or German before, but this one gives my the chance to insult myself in accented English ("Lazy cow - still in bed! I get her for you. Make her shift her lazy English arse"), rather than straining my small Fr/Ger vocabularies.)