Inescapable charity fundraising

Gurth

Remembering there’s a book I want to buy, I thought I’d head over to Amazon. The front page has this over the real content:

No matter how many times I click the “No thanks” or “×” buttons, it won’t go away. The only thing that works is the “Pick a charity” button — they really want to donate money to charity on my behalf.

DogsB

Tax season coming up?

I always thought it was funny they didn't have a round up for charity.

Your order has come to £3.93 would you like to donate 7p. Kind of like what I do when I pay cash for a paper and there is a charity box nearby because I don't like carrying pennies.

Thank fuck I have contactless now and I actively avoid places that don't have it. Fuck charity! =(

loopback0

Is "The Taxman" one of the choices of charity?

PJH

@DogsB said:

> Your order has come to £3.93 would you like to donate 7p.

No, I'd prefer you deduct 93p off the total...

accalia

@Gurth said:

No matter how many times I click the “No thanks” or “×” buttons, it won’t go away.

just pick Kiva.org, then ignore it. kiva will get money from amazon and you don't need to do anything else.

:-D

Shoreline

I've seen paywalls served from the frontend. I realise the UX is the other way around, but technically the solution is the same for people who know their way around the frontend: delete the element in the browser.

David_C

Amazon Smile has been around for a while.

It's just like their affiliate program (where purchases you make via an affiliate's link will pay money to that affiliate) only this time the money goes to a charity you select.

I'm surprised the popup isn't going away for you. I saw it once many months ago, checked the "do not show me this again" box and dismissed it and it hasn't come back since. I assume that's a bug.

Dragnslcr

You don't explicitly mention it, but you are checking the "Do not show me this again" checkbox, right?

@Gurth said:

Inescapable charity fundraising

Expected about escaping strings. Was disappointed.

AlexMedia

Sounds like a bug, indeed. It could be that they've added a clicktracker to that button and your adblocker has blocked the JS which makes it work. I suspect there's something like this in Amazon's Javascript code:

function charity_noThanks() {
    omniture.logEvent("charity_dismissed");
    $("#charity").hide();
}

function charity_pick(){
    setTimeout(function() { window.location = '/pick_charity'; }, 10);
    omniture.logEvent("charity_pickClicked");
}

Gurth

@Shoreline said:

the solution is the same for people who know their way around the frontend: delete the element in the browser.

The thought did cross my mind, but then I decided that I might as well have them donate some money, since either a) the evil megacorp will be making a bit less, or b) the evil megacorp will have raised its prices by ~~more than~~ the amount it’s donating and so the additional money I paid might as well go to charity.

@David_C said:

Amazon Smile has been around for a while.

I order something from Amazon on average once every four years or so, I think (you can just see the number 2000 in the screenshot, which is when I signed up).

@AlexMedia said:

It could be that they've added a clicktracker to that button and your adblocker has blocked the JS which makes it work.

You’re not telling me this would be accidental :)

Fox

It has no effect on the amount you pay, as far as I know.

Gurth

Of course that’s what they’ll claim. Smart stores raise their prices a bit before introducing this kind of scheme (In this country, CDs almost invariably used to cost 39.95 guilders through the 1980s and ’90s. Ca. 1999, the largest music retailer raised its prices to (as I recall) 43,96. An odd number, but not if you realise that retailers weren’t supposed to raise their prices [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro]in early 2002[/url].)

Captain

Not today, but it will in the future. They'll track how much you pay, versus the cohort that doesn't do smile, to measure that cohort's consumer surplus.

Fox

@Gurth said:

Smart stores raise their prices a bit before introducing this kind of scheme

Yeah, but what I mean is that whether you are on smile or not does not affect the prices. Smile itself has already affected the prices, if it ever did, so you might as well sign up so at least some of the extra you pay now goes to charity instead of Amazon.

blakeyrat

How awful. You might have to *shudder* give money to the less fortunate!

Dreikin

@blakeyrat said:

How awful. You might have to shudder give money to the less fortunate!

Evil Man - Return to the Steampunk Studio – 03:43
— abneypark

antiquarian

It's a good thing I don't need any more chess books, or this would be really annoying.

Lorne Kates

The one and only reason companies do charity fundraisers is so they get the tax credit. They may get some pittance from PR, but it is always about the tax credit.

You get to make a charitable donation, and they get the tax credit.

The spend $0, you spend $1, they earn $1 back on their taxes. There's probably also some fuckery involving administration fees.

That's it. That's the entire reason. Never participate in "would you like to add $1 to your bill" bullshit. Everytime you think you want to do that, put $1 in a savings account instead. Then come year end, take out all that money-- plus all the interest it has earned-- and donate directly to your favorite charity. You will be giving money directly to a cause (by-passing the admin fees)-- and YOU will get the tax credit for doing so.

Fuck corporate charities hard with every ounce of hip-thrust you can.

Weng

FWIW, Smithsonian Institution is in there.

Weng

There's at least one bank that has a debit card option that does precisely that - rounds up all your transactions and transfers the excess to savings.

Lorne Kates

@Weng said:

There's at least one bank that has a debit card option that does precisely that - rounds up all your transactions and transfers the excess to savings.

I think my bank offers that. They even make it variable-- round up to the nearest $5, for example.

Lorne Kates

@Weng said:

FWIW, Smithsonian Institution is in there.

https://www.si.edu/giving/donate-now?s_src=Z0000PWSWF

However, fuck that. Their website is one of those antipatterns that goes on pageload: "here's the content... now here's all the content malformed... now here's all the content hidden behind a spinner that doesn't work. Now I die BLEH"

Weng

Eh, by doing it through Amazon, I help Amazon cheat on their taxes, and that money then goes to a thing I wish the government spent more money on as opposed to going to all the things I wish the government didn't spend money on. Flimsy, but whatever.

It's money that I was going to have to give to Amazon in exchange for goods anyway, since it doesn't affect pricing, so the "donate directly instead of through a middleman" argument doesn't hold water.

brotherelf

Huh. Thought this would be about the fruity company's music app, which now sometimes displays a undismissable splash screen ad. (The dismiss button is loaded from teh webz, it appears. Or not, if you're not online enough.)

Surely subscribing to a fruity streaming service saves the turtlenecks and is therefore charitable?

Fox

So is CARE, the usual charity of choice for my home furcon.

powerlord

No Repro on Windwos 7, Chrome 48, and uBlock Origin... clicking No Thanks¹ causes it to go away.

¹because I'm at work and not actually making purchases

PleegWat

Ah, so that's why my employer likes doing 'match your donation' schemes after large disasters.

Lorne Kates

@PleegWat said:

Ah, so that's why my employer likes doing 'match your donation' schemes after large disasters.

Yup. If they're going to just match whatever you donate through your own means, whatever. At least they're donating. If they'll match whatever you'll allow them to skim from your paycheck: scheme.