I'm sure they are now talking about how sucky I am.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

"I actually had someone refuse to sell me a pack of batteries at Radio Shack when I told him I wasn't giving out my details."

Yeah, I'm sure that Radio Shack is so setting the world on fire with their sales they can blithely turn away customers, right? What an idiot! You probably should have done the Standard Sucky Customer thing and demanded the guy's manager. I would have still not purchased batteries from them, but I would have let the manager know what his idiot employee was doing.

Ask sometime what they need that info for next time you get the question anywhere. You'll get all sorts of half-assed excuses, but not a ONE of them will admit they sell it for marketing purposes. Oh, that's what it ultimately is for, but they would rather have their toenails pulled out with pliers than admit it.

[MadMike]

From what I've seen, the Radio Shacks in my area stopped doing that ages ago. I remember them asking for all kinds of info years ago, but it hasn't happened recently.

Guess the realized that pissing off customers was actually a bad thing.

[Gurndigarn]

From what I've seen, the Radio Shacks in my area stopped doing that ages ago. I remember them asking for all kinds of info years ago, but it hasn't happened recently.

Guess the realized that pissing off customers was actually a bad thing.

IIRC, they actually advertised (on TV?) that they stopped doing that.

[Ree]

I understand that people are protective of their phone numbers, but on our old computer system, we used the phone number to help serve our customers better, and for no other purpose.

The phone number wasn't mandatory, but sometimes, if I knew they were a regular customer, I would set them up in the system as a customer using their phone number.

We did not sell phone numbers, and they never went any farther than our in-store computer database.

We often had customers coming back with an item and no receipt, while it was still under warranty, and all we had to do was enter a phone number to find their transactions, and the receipt for that sale.

It was actually very handy.
We also do special orders and all rainchecks for items actually get held for the person, so using a phone number is a great way to track those as well.

Also, sometimes we would find, after the fact, that a cashier had screwed up on a cash sale, and having a phone number attached to the transaction meant that the customer could be contacted to give them back their money.
With a credit card, we could just do a credit to the card using the number on file, and with a cheque, of course we took a phone number, but with cash and debit card, there was no other way of tracking to fix an error, other than by phone number.

So, that's just another side to the issue. Businesses aren't always up to no good when they ask for that info.

[MadMike]

Ree, thanks for shedding some light on that situation. This is probably the first straight answer I've gotten from anyone from any company.

Still, even though your company does not telemarket or sell numbers to telemarketers, I'm sure there are plenty of others that do, but won't admit to it.

Somewhat related -- this one company I had a credit card with mispelled my first name as "Micheal", and my middle initial as "K" instead of "R." Interestingly enough, shortly after I received the card, I got avalanched with junk mail, with the same mispelling. Worse yet, some of the stuff I got was an outright scam, so apparently they didn't care who they were selling their info to.

I didn't do anything about it, but now I kind of wish I had called them to complain. I'm sure they would have flat-out denied it, until I pointed out the misspelling common to both the card and all the junk mail I was receiving.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I give my telephone number out as CApitol 7-2007, which technically is correct*, seeing as we still use the old exchanges in this city. Using the old exchange confuses anybody who's asking long enough for me to make my escape.

You know, you can buy telephone directories organized by number rather than name, with which you can look up someone's address by their telephone number. Or you could just use Google.

*Not really my telephone number.

Or, if you really want to confuse them, give them BR-549.