Just bought a 2m section of flexible tube for a gas stove, and the sales clerk asked first for my phone number, to which I replied “I don’t have one”. Then she asked me for my name, to which I replied “I’ll pay in cash”. She then insisted it was so “the cashier will call you by name”, to which I replied “I’m not giving you my name, I’ll pay in cash”. [Edit: she apparently got a bit upset when I refused to give info, but ended up entering “no name” according to the receipt]
Am I wrong for not wanting to give personal data for an item paid in cash, in person? No other hardware store ever asks me for my personal info.
Why do places have discounts for that number? Guessing you’re american, I have no clue what that number is.
It was a popular song in the 80’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny
I hate that’s where the hyphen is, my brain is strongly telling me it should be 8675-309
Thanks. Why would that give a discount, though?
Lots of places have Reward Points for handing over your phone number. I’ve used Jenny’s number for years to get discounted gas. Usually only $0.03 but one time I got $0.40 off per gallon… been chasing that dragon ever since, lol.
So, after that song rose in popularity, phone companies de-registered it entirely. Because it’s a number that no-one has, my guess is that some stores/businesses use it as shorthand to put a discount under for something like employee discount or for “we messed up, here’s a discount” discounts.
I local plumber chain uses that number. YEARS ago they used to run a spot where they recited it with the same cadence of the song, but w/o the notes.
Apparently it’s been used for other promotional things like a cancer helpline. I think that’s pretty cool.
Interesting.
A bit odd, because the US is specifically the one country that definitely has an area code that’s mostly reserved from civilian usage, i.e. 555. Although not all numbers in it are reserved, afaiu they aren’t given to randos anyway, and the store’s spam system could be set up to never text or call these numbers.
I once looked up if there are numbers that I could safely use for testing purposes in my country, and we only have numbers from old popular songs, which curiously were also later referenced in tv shows. But it’s a toss-up as to whether they’re definitely unregistered in any particular area code. I’ll probably have to use ‘+1555…’ instead.
+1(555)867-5309 :)
oh, that makes sense
In my area code, the number was intentinally bought by a local guy who runs a small ISP. He has it connected to an answering machine that plays the song.
Yeah. Apparently that’s a thing. But there was a rise in prank calls that caused phone companies to just remove it from public use. But I guess that doesn’t account for people or companies specifically requesting it.
Because so many people use it that it racks up tons of loyalty points.
Companies want you to associate your transactions with a phone number so they have data on who is buying what. For instance if you go to Safeway it’s common that the price of ice cream will be twice as expensive if you haven’t registered a phone number with them. But you can give someone else’s phone number that has already been registered and that will also work, or register a fake number, a number lots of people would have thought of is likely to have already been registered. At least that was how it worked last time I checked, that was a long time ago.
Oooh, not the store you’re giving the number to, but you can buy that number from a carrier as a dummy number for a discount because no one wants it due to prank calls?
Tommy Tutone had a hit in the '80s called 8-6-7-5-3-0-9, “Jenny”.
Any gen-x can sing it with no effort.
I’m not American; just gen-x.
God damn, I grew up in the '80s and I would have sworn that was a Huey Lewis and the News song.
Its Jenny’s number
??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny