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Comment by themafia | Hacker News Reader

I'm seeing a few stores here and there which have a "round up to donate" option. I guess I'm a bit of a sucker and I always use that option. My groceries are always a round number as a result.

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Ive always suspected that this is all of a tax dodge, a money spinner, and a pr exercise "we gave xxx to charity" - no, your customers did.

Just set up a direct debit to your favourite charity.

> Just

the point of these drives is to get more people to give to charity. Then you use a lullaby-word as if setting up a charitable donation is as easy as saying "yes" when the checker asks if you want to give a small donation.

Well, my point was that maybe it actually isnt "to get more people to give to charity", maybe its actually something else.

Its actually very easy to give £5/month direct to a charity. Takes about 2 minutes, just gotta do it.

You're overthinking this. There's a publicity element to it, but the money just gets given to charity, like they say it does. It's not a conspiracy or a tax accounting trick.

How can you tell? And is this definitely universally true or just true of the 1 instance you happen to have personal experience with?

Same way I can tell that my next door neighbor isn't poisoning my water supply or that Tesco doesn't have a secret chemical weapons program. That major supermarket chains are running scam charity appeals just isn't a hypothesis worth entertaining in the absence of any evidence for it.

Because the risk of fraud is too great for major corporations. They have accountants and businesses people who would report it.

The risk with charity money is not the companies collecting a few cents but the charity itself.

Agree - I don't think a giant multinational should get the cumulative charitable donation through their "Gavin Belson Foundation", and frankly it coming while you're checking yourself out, and navigating all dark-pattern "share your email for an e-receipt?", "want our deal of the day?", "enter your loyalty card?", "fill out this poll?", "are you collectioning stickers?" nonsense really grinds my gears. I just want cheaper groceries!

ah, thanks for introducing me to this business model! :-)

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