Bah, humbug

[firecat]

I’ve got a Scroogey mood going on for three reasons.

My dad got a refund from Xfinity in the form of a one-time Mastercard. Why can’t they just send a check? I don’t want to deal with a bunch of cards for $68 floating around so I donated the whole thing to the Alzheimer’s Association. I clicked through all the “please share” (I don’t usually share when I donate) and “can you match your donation” (nope, I’m retired) messages after I did.

24 hours later I get an email to the address they required me to put in, asking me again to check if the gift could be matched, and it wants me to check a box telling them the reason if it can’t or I won’t.

Wow, I really resent that. I know it wasn’t a lot of money but please just give me my tax receipt and shut up.

~~~
I’m a member of Flickr Pro, not because I use Flickr a lot but because that turns off ads and I haven’t done the research to find a better site to share my photos online. They raised the membership price by $22 in 2021 and now they’re raising it another $13. I haven’t decided whether to keep the membership. But in the meantime they sent me an email asking me to donate to their foundation. As far as I can ascertain their foundation’s goal is to lay claim to a lot of public domain photos? I’m sure archiving photos is of historical importance but — bad timing, folks.

~~~
I donate to Wikipedia thru a donor-supported charitable fund every year. Mostly this fund is great because I can donate anonymously and then the charity doesn’t spend my whole donation sending me mail asking for more donations. But in this case it means Wikipedia thinks I’m a deadbeat non-supporter so I have to log in and give them $3 more to make the begging on their pages go away and then have to stay logged in to keep it that way. I don’t care about the $3 but I’d prefer to use Wikipedia without logging in. I’m sure they need money and I am boggled at how not-all-that-sucky Wikipedia is, and I use it dozens of times a day. But grr.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Yes! I donate to you regularly, please stop begging me for more! Especially the ones who I have signed up for emails only and send me extra letters through the mail just to ask for something extra for Christmas. Presumably it works on someone, though, or they wouldn't do it?

[firecat]

Yes I dislike it when they cross the streams like that.

Aso, I have about 15 unsolicited wall calendars. There’s not enough wall space in my whole house!

[minoanmiss]

Truly annoyi ng.

[clawfoot]

UGH. Yes. This exactly. I donate to four charities on a monthly basis. I've set up a "subscription" type thing where it just automatically goes on my credit card. I do this because a) it's a predictable amount of money they can count on every month, and b) I don't overextend my purchasing power by donating it all once a year in a lump sum. I STILL get phone calls, texts, paper mail, emails, constantly from all four organizations asking for more.

I mean, I understand that they're far more likely to get more money from someone who has already given them some than someone who hasn't, but... UGH.

[firecat]

Yes, I have this experience too! Although I only get additional requests from the bigger ones. But the smaller ones don’t send as many requests in general.

[silveradept]

It is truly aggravating how much donating gets you on a pathway of being constantly asked for more.

GIP

[jesse_the_k]

In earlier days when I had the energy, I would write actual paper letters saying I’d donate more if I could check a box so they didn’t solicit me.

One org actually took me up on it.

Another old person shouting at clouds!

Re: GIP

[firecat]

I think I did that a few times back in the day…there’s something to be said for giving most of your donation budget to organizations that are small enough to have a live person handling the correspondence.

Bah! Humbug!

[ravan]

I have a policy of not donating to orgs that text me, or spam me, etc. I am willing to give sometimes, but not if they're always going to be asking for more, more, more. I have a budget, I stick to it, if they want to stay on my list they need to respect that.

Re: Bah! Humbug!

[firecat]

I’m thinking of doing the same thing