Chuggers – And how to avoid them

Over the last few years, a new pest has been infiltrating Sydney – charity muggers, that have also been ingeniously called chuggers. In case you don’t know who or what I am talking about, I’m not actually referring to people who jingle-jangle a coin bucket in front of your nose around Christmas time, nor to people selling poppies or daffodils or pens that don’t work (as annoying as some of those people are), but more specifically I’m referring to people who, in the name of a charity, stand on street corners (particularly in the city) mugging other people of their credit card details (usually by getting people to fill out monthly direct debit forms for Charity X).

If you still don’t know who or what I am talking about, then you may as well stop reading this post altogether, as a series on how to avoid something you have no idea even existed will be rather pointless, and it may in fact have the opposite effect in that you now notice something you had never noticed before. For the rest of you, I am sure it is already clear from my tone that I’m not a huge fan of chuggers, but the fact that companies / charities have persisted in this way of collecting money means that it must be successful. Now before I begin my Top 5 ways of avoiding chuggers, I want to make it perfectly clear that in no way is this series an out for greedy selfish people as I do not, in any way, want to discourage people from giving money to charities either directly or through chuggers. Furthermore I do not want to encourage impolite or hooligan behaviour towards chuggers no matter how tempting or appealing such behaviour may be.

Now that the legal disclaimer for any incitement to violence is out of the way, what follows are my top five ways of avoiding chuggers, spread out daily in order to give you time to try each method out on some poor unsuspecting chuggers.