Friday, October 23, 2009

Chuggers back on the street

They're back on the street, those annoying bouncy folk that want to get your bank details for charity. One of the Gurnmeister's neighbours complained of one of them standing in front of her as she exited a shop. Should they be banned?

4 comments:

dr-grigor said...

you hit it on the nail there "those annoying bouncy folk"
would i be right in saying that these folk make a commission ?
I am totaly against any form of what can be described as " high street cold calling" charity or not !

Graisg said...

Two years ago one of them admitted to me (he wasn't working for the charity in the picture) that he was on £8 per hour. If you give them your details remember that, your first £8 coming out of your account could be paying the wages of the person that got your details off you!

Anonymous said...

It is actually the case that many charities do offer commissions on new member sign-ups, and a number of them do offer affiliate programs online - which means if you link to a participating charity, and someone clicks through and then signs up online, you would earn a commission - anywhere around £10-£40 depending on the charity.

The charity probably has the average "Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)" already worked out - ie, than the average member signs up for 24 months at £10 per month, meaning the CLV is £240 - therefore any costs less than £240 to create a new customer means profit has been made, which then goes into the actual charity's work (after admin costs).

That's why I don't sign up with the charity hawkers - it is still a business they are involved with, but one that often tries to inject a sense of guilt into making people sign up into paying for that business.

2c.

- Brian

Bill said...

I find these charity hawkers pretty objectionable and would never sign-up in the street to any organisation, charity or commercial. Similarly there was a phase a few years back when electricity and gas salespeople would cold-call people on their door-steps to get them to switch to whichever company was paying them - when I asked them to leave literature so I could study it at my leisure they always scarpered fast; basically they wanted a signature then and there. Something I would never contemplate agreeing to, but presumably there are a lot of suckers out there who do fall for this tactic.

Only slightly less odious are many of the charities which are allowed by Somerfield to offer to bag your purchases - basically 'guilting' one into contributing a pound into their collectioon bucket, as it's usually a school-age person doing the collecting/bagging. I do often contribute, if the charity concerned seems local and genuine, but I still don't like the technique.