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anonymous
Q: Old ladies who want your till receipt in supermarkets
Regularly, I encounter the issue of people (almost entirely old ladies) who, after observing me buying food at a supermarket checkout, aggressively pester to get my till receipt. I don't have enough Chinese to ask specifically why they want it. I assume that they can use it to get store loyalty points or similar, but I'm not comfortable either with the pestering behaviour or the idea of leaving myself open to identity theft using some of the details printed on the receipt. Does anyone have any insight or suggestions?
It depends on what kind of receipt it is. Some of the Fa Piao have a part that you can scratch and have a chance to win some rmb.
They use receipts (fapiao) to claim reimbursement for expenses from an employer or as expenses to offset business income.
Scandinavian:
most likely the old women are just pawns in the fapiao scheme. they resell the receipts they get to someone who needs them for reimbursement.
bill8899:
True, but I think Scandinavian offered the best explanation.
Most supermarkets have some kind of loyalty points system, so this is most likely what they are after. However, if you pay by card you should not give away your receipt. Maybe look into getting a membership card, some of them will offer a discount, although most of them you save points and then you can get a bottle of cooking oil or something at the end of the year.
some supermarkets have flour for the dumplings on sale once a week and a 8 in the morning, the old folks line up and have a limit of 2 bags , 3 bags , whatever, but if they have a purchase of a certain amount dated for that day, they can buy the limit all over again,
the older customers make their own dumplings and make their own noodles , cheaper and the way they learned to cook.
so they want your receipt for that day, as stated above sometimes its not flour or wheat flour but cooking oil or soy sauce.
That's happened to me occasionally, also. Recently, it hasn't happened at all. However, I still get the bottle collectors that come around and ask me for my bottle that I usually keep stored on the side of my bag.
SoFresh:
I hate to admit this but when I was inbetween jobs for awhile and money was tight I would go to the garbage cans on every floor of my apartment and collect bottles then turn them in for money.
You should have seen the look on peoples faces when they saw a foreigner grabbing bottles out of the garbage.
But hey, it helped me get a few free meals each week when I was hurting for money.
Yep, one lady asked me for my receipt. When I asked what she was going to do with it, she said she will get a bottle of dish-washing liquid for free. I doubted that & asked her to lead the way to the counter where I could get it. She didn't lie, I got a free bottle of dish-washing liquid & gave it to her.
It's for tax deductions or reimbursement from a company.... or they are working for one of the many companies that provide people with fake receipts/invoices for the same reason.
there's no personal information on those grocery receipts though. i always give it to someone if they ask, i see no reason not to.
my wife's family owns a business, anytime I go to a restaurant or a large store I always ask for a fapiao with their company name on it so I can give it to them when I see them. They use it to save on taxes.
I work at a foreign owned company and even at our office when I received a bonus for helping find a new employee they told me to save up the money in reciepts and give themt hat and only then would they give me the cash bonus.
I have no problem with these type of things because it's not hurting anyone...except possibly the government, which I really don't have sympathy for.
