.@GeneralMills changed their “Box Tops for Education” program. Instead of sending in a portion of the package, you must take a picture of the full receipt and submit it via their app.
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I’m blown away by this. It makes it harder to utilize. When you do utilize it, you are giving up all of your purchase information to General Mills. You can redact financial information, but seemingly not other purchases.
Forget the receipt somewhere? Or at a grocery store where they ask if you want one at all and forget, too bad. Throw away the receipt because you’re not going to return a box of cereal and not realize an item was a Box Top item until later? Too bad.
As annoying as it was to clip box tops and mail them in, this new system is a data grab and reduces the ability for communities to band together. My church collected box tops from the community to help out the parish school. That ain’t gonna happen now.
Only 10 cents an item and that was less than the increased price vs alternative brands, but I liked the concept and wanted to support corporations giving back to communities. Now, why buy @GeneralMills when alternatives have similar quality at a cheaper/similar price?
In an era where smartphone apps have abused permissions and data breaches are more the norm than the exception, this direction strikes me as an obvious ploy for more data.
I see the marketing folks loving to see that people who buy Cheerios also buy toothpaste so let’s cross-promote the shit ouf ot that, or whatever nonsense they’re going to salivate over.
tl;dr: Buy more cost-efficient brands and give money directly to a local school.