CVS Receipts
13CVS is notorious for their ridiculously long receipts. In particular, this happens if you have their ExtraCare card and you get all the coupons printed out. This is last night’s receipt. There is literally one purchase on this, a prescription I picked up. The receipt is 51" long. Yes, 4 feet and 3 inches worth of dead tree pulp. Shall we make it a contest to see who can get the longest receipt? (To note: I went into the app and changed it to email receipts only from this point forward.)
- 16 comments, 41 replies
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Did you honestly just post an image of a receipt with your personal information, including prescription number? Please, please, tell me that it’s not so.
@Shrdlu if you can read any of that information, your CSI “enhance” mojo is really working.
@djslack Because it’s one of my favorites (it makes me laugh every single time I see it):
@djslack @Shrdlu Exactly. Not only is it too blurry to read, but they don’t print the entire numbers on there. I’m not sharing the printout that actually came with the script.
@cinoclav @djslack @Shrdlu
/giphy enhance
@cinoclav @djslack @Shrdlu
One of our first aid folk could mark up the pic to cover any info that ought to be private.
Hey now:
@narfcake
@thumperchick
@ignorant
@RiotDemon
you’re an all-star
@cinoclav @djslack @f00l @Ignorant @narfcake @Shrdlu @Thumperchick I don’t think there’s any way to get any information from that at all.
@cinoclav @djslack @Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon @Shrdlu @Thumperchick
The DOD or the NSA could resolve the image into sharpness if they cared to.
Well-equipped hackers also, prob. If they cared.
Much of the personal info on the receipt is prob publicly available elsewhere to anyone who really cares enough to want it tho.
@cinoclav @djslack @f00l @Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon @Shrdlu @Thumperchick
Well now, just let me have a look see.
@djslack @f00l @Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon @Shrdlu @Thumperchick No worries. Had I been concerned, I would’ve shaded it. It can’t be read.
@cinoclav I don’t know about that.
Romper, stomper, bomper, boo… Tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic mirror, tell me today. Did all my friends have fun at play?
@Barney @cinoclav
Something’s 25% off. I can tell that much.
@cinoclav @djslack @f00l @Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon @Thumperchick
Oh. My. God. That is one LONG line of names, but you all deserve to be included. I actually retrieved information from something even blurrier than that, in the long ago days when I used to get paid to do things. The actual cost, considering computer time, people time, and general annoyance fees (because that kind of work is BORING, and we didn’t want to do it), was approximately 12k. Yes, that’s what I said. Twelve. Thousand. Dollars. That was in 1998 terms, too.
On the other hand, I’ve had some absolutely priceless fun reading through the responses that Meh was kind enough to send me. You guys are a serious good time, and thank you.
@Shrdlu We enjoy you, too.
@djslack @f00l @Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon @Shrdlu @Thumperchick There’s actually nothing personally identifiable on there.
@cinoclav @djslack @f00l @Ignorant @RiotDemon @Shrdlu @Thumperchick
I still zoomed in. Between the inherent blurriness and my eyesight …
/giphy nothing but fuzzy text
@cinoclav @djslack @f00l @Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon @Shrdlu @Thumperchick
Nah.This is definitely well into the realm of serious information loss due to low resolution and jpeg compression. Nothing serious is coming back from this. The “interesting” information is not preserved. He has fewer than 40 pixels across the receipt-- even without compression that’s too low to get anything useful.
I’m more interested in where the image was taken.
@Limewater I’m a Nuclear Medicine Technologist. It’s hanging on the back of my department door. That little bit of paper you see on the wall is a copy of the patients rights and responsibilities. So there you go, a little insight into my life. Here’s part of my stress test room.
/image cvs scarf
No need to but toilet paper this week!
@mikibell
@mikibell butt?
@lseeber freudian typo?
@TheFLP whhhhaattttt?
@mikibell Nothing Freudian about it.
@mikibell
The receipts are not exactly Charmin-soft, shall we say. And I don’t even wanna think about paper cuts on my butt.
Dammit, you made me think about it.
@lseeber @mikibell That’s not a Freudian slip. A Freudian slip has lace and is worn under a skirt…
Jimmy Kimmel use to complain about the CVS receipts on his show…I guess they didn’t listen.
@tinamarie1974 nobody watches Kimmel.
@RedOak clearly I do
Didn’t measure them, but this too is the result of buying a single item.
Adding to the silliness, the following text was somewhere in that pile:
@RedOak Ah, but the two on the left are from the coupon kiosk… not the register.
@todaresq I have no idea what that would be since I detest CVS/Walgreens/RiteAid (spouse doesn’t) but all that paper was in the bag with the lonely single item.
I kind of want to go to CVS and buy a pair of scissors just to cut the actual receipt from the rest of it and give all the crap back to the cashier.
“In January, California Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) introduced a law barring retailers from printing paper receipts unless a customer requests one. Otherwise they’d be required to provide proof-of-purchase receipts ‘only in electronic form.’ The bill has cleared its first hurdle in the state Legislature on Monday as it passed the Nature Resources Committee in a 6-3 vote, despite concerns from some industry groups that say the switch should be driven by the market, not a government mandate. The Los Angeles Times reports:”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-bill-eliminates-shopping-paper-receipts-20190325-story.html
*The paper receipts are also known by the State of California to cause cancer.
@cengland0 California causes cancer.
@cengland0 @lseeber As much as folks joke about California’s disclaimers, it has made more folks aware of some of the things sold – like formaldehyde in wood products and items that contain lead. Like dinner plates. And diaper rash ointment.
@narfcake Most items used to contain lead in the solder being 60% tin, 40% lead. That’s inside the product and not harmful to the consumer.
Now the solder is lead free and very brittle. Many product failures are due to lead-free solder joints going bad so the ROHS standards have reduced the time products are usable.
@cengland0 For the record, RoHS is European directive, not California. Even without a mandate here in the US, the manufacturers have been complying anyway as they wouldn’t be able to sell their products in the EU without the certification.
California did have low lead standards in plumbing components and fixtures well ahead of the Federal standards, though. Just as it was with the formaldehyde laden plywood and sulfurous drywall, non low-lead plumbing products that weren’t even legal to sell in China was sold in the 49 states because there was no EPA restrictions at the time.
@narfcake Regardless of where RoHS originated, it is still bad for consumer electronics. As a consumer myself, I would prefer to have longer life out of my equipment if it needs to have a little lead inside.
Disclaimer: I’m a hobbyist electronics engineer. I did have 3 years of electronics training but I never had a job using the education I was given.
The solder joints with lead-free solder all look cold and brittle and are not shiny. They can have high resistance with intermittent disconnects caused from temperature fluctuations. It’s very difficult to troubleshoot a repair issue when all solder joints look bad. People like Youtuber Louis Rossmann fix macbooks by replacing lead-free solder with leaded solder to guarantee it’s not the solder causing the problems.
When you design products like phone and laptops where flexing the board is likely, lead-free solder is going to be a problem – guaranteed.
I see no problem having lead inside of consumer electronics where it is contained and not expected for someone to swallow it. Even things like smoke detectors have Americium-241 which is radio active but allowed in detectors because the chances of someone eating it is slim. (There are photoelectric versions too that rely on scattering beams of light when smoke enters the chamber).
Why do they allow car batteries to contain lead but not consumer electronics? The car batteries can leak or produce gas that is toxic. Very strange to me.
My supermarket came out with an app to electronically clip coupons. They now print any unused coupon on EVERY receipt! I thought the idea of the app was to save paper.
@callow The idea of the app is to send you notifications without asking you for your email or phone number (many people are reluctant to give out that info). If you install an app for a retailer, chances are they will set up some frequent notification system to let you know what’s on sale or items you should buy.
If I need to install an app for some benefit, like Target to get cartwheel discounts, I go into the settings and turn off all notifications. Otherwise I would get bombarded by them. I suppose they hope some people don’t know how to turn off those notifications so it’s a free way for the company to advertise to you and track you. I doubt it’s a way for them to stop printing coupons.
@medz Ha! But wouldn’t that be the anti-family pack?
That’s like the credit card companies stuffing the envelope with all sorts of junk with your bill (yes… I still want the hard copy mailed). I pay online generally but, sometimes I take all their little commerials they mailed to me with the bill and mail them all back to them. Just because. I especially do it if it’s in a post paid env.
If you go online to CVS.com and indicate emailed receipts you won’t get that long receipt anymore.
@nicoled You can do it in the app also.
I picked up pills for my dog- 47 inches.
@sammydog01 That’s a big dog.
@mehcuda67 @sammydog01 I was thinking they’re some damn big pills.
OK. I dug a recent one out of the trash — it’s 54" long including receipt. For a single prescription.
Am I winning?
6’ tall receipt…
Trick or Treat’er in the store… cashier was able to scan the receipt for the ExtraBucks number.
@todaresq This guy fucks.
For me, the most annoying thing about those receipts were that the coupons were almost always for something I just purchased a month’s supply of and they’d expire in, like, 5 days.
Like they were purposely designed to be useless.
What made me quit CVS in a huff, though, was the fact that they either couldn’t or wouldn’t honor repeated requests to opt out of their harassing automated phone calls.
I tried every method, some repeatedly - pushed the “no” button at check-out, called the phone # the recording tells you to call if you no longer want to receive calls, asked the clerk who went into “the system” to flag me for removal from automated calls.
Occasionally made it a few months without the calls before they started up again.
Finally went in, asked for the pharmacy manager, told her my story and that they had one more chance…
If I received one more automated phone call, I’d be taking my business to the Walgreen’s up the street.
Needless to say, I now do my pharm business at Walgreen’s, and I’ve never gotten an unwanted phone call from them.