Sometimes at Walmart, I see employees attaching sample packets of laundry dryer sheets, or Fabric softener with a rubber band to bottles of laundry products. Just as often, I see people taking the product samples off the bottles without buying the laundry detergent. While they're not actually taking the products themselves, taking the free samples seems kind of sketchy. Attaching the samples to the laundry detergent implies that if you buy the detergent, you get the sample as a reward. Have you every taken these samples? Do you think that people who remove these samples from the products are taking cheapness overboard and doing something unethical?
Yes it's unethical, but that's not going to stop them from doing it. These are the same people that ask for like 10 packets of sauce at the drive through with their meals, and stock pile them because they are too cheap to buy a $1.50 bottle of BBQ sauce for themselves (which they could easily afford if they weren't going out to eat so much). A friend of mine does this everywhere he goes, he empties out all the freebies and condiments, napkins, straws, everything. I'm surprised that Wal-Mart employees are attaching the freebies themselves though, I usually see them shrink wrapped to the package or something like that so they cannot be easily removed. I used to frequent the cologne counter at Dillard's department store a lot and the sales people there loved me because I was always buying stuff from them so they would hook me up with tons of samples every time I stopped by. Funny thing was I would see other people walk up and ask if they had any samples, and they would tell them "no, sorry, all out" then turn around and stuff fist fulls of them in my bags, lol. One that I'm sort of surprised hasn't caught on are the PayPal card readers they sell at places like WalMart and OfficeMax. There are $15 rebates inside all of them, so you essentially get them for free when you buy one at the store. However it would be very easy for someone to just steal them and cash in the rebates.
Haha that is new that people just take the samples and leave the product behind. They should enforce a law that says that you buy the product then you get the sample not the other way round. That is how it is supposed to work.
It's not the store's employees that attach these free samples. They work for a different company and sometimes get sent these samples to be attached to a certain number of products. It's unethical, but you can't get in trouble for taking free samples. I take one if there is something new I want to try, but I never "stock up" on free samples. Couponing makes a lot of my stuff free or very cheap anyway
Here those bonuses are taped very tightly and I've never seen anyone taking the samples. I think it's okay to some extent since the samples' purpose is to get it in the hands of consumers but you're right in that they probably want it to land on the right consumers. I think it's bad practice but it should be more the supermarket's responsibility to keep track and prevent this because they were the entrusted distributors, or if not then it should be the manufacturer's responsibility to ensure the packaging is well made enough that people couldn't do this.
