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Annoying. Wasteful. Excessive.
According to about 50 UMaine students who responded to a questionnaire on FirstClass last week, the credit card applications and advertisements placed inside bags at the University of Maine’s Bookstore are irritating and unnecessary.
“Last year I counted and I’d gotten somewhere around 350 [credit card applications] during the course of the school year, and that doesn’t count being annoyed by the booths in the Union when they try to get you to [sign up for] one,” Joy Sinclair, a fourth-year psychology major, said.
But despite their effect on students, the “stuffers,” as they’re called by the Bookstore, help lower the cost of bags and that is why UMaine’s Bookstore participates in purchasing the bags with the stuffers already inside them.
“We’re not even sure what comes inside the bags until they come,” Bookstore Director Bill Hockensmith said. “I basically check them to make sure there’s nothing in there real shocking.”
This saves about $800 each year, Hockensmith said. The Bookstore purchases more than 50,000 bags each year from Regal Poly Pak bag company, totaling $3,000.
Credit card companies, magazines and other businesses pay the bag companies for advertising their products though the stuffers. The bag companies are then at latitude to offer college bookstores discounts on bags.
“The stuffers of bags are fairly common,” Hockensmith said. “Virtually every college does it. There are three major bag companies and they all stuff [bags].”
Hockensmith said this is common in retail and that stuffers will become more common in the future.
“We get a choice in the matter. We can choose to go with the more expensive bag or go with the ones with the stuffers to help defray the cost,” Hockensmith said.
He said UMaine’s Bookstore has always chosen to use stuffers.
The $800 saved by the reduced bag costs with stuffers is spent on donations of bags to university organizations for various functions or conferences throughout the year, according to Hockensmith.
Hockensmith said he was shocked to hear of students’ complaints, because stuffers have been used without complaints for all of his 15 years in the college bookstore business.
Before hearing of the grievances, Hockensmith mentioned the three factors he took into account when deciding whether to keep the stuffers. Those three factors were the same three complaints students mentioned.
“The first thing I looked at was the appropriateness of it,” he said.
Hockensmith said the Bookstore’s staff is concerned with promoting credit card use to students. However, he said it is not his place to preach to students and if they want a credit card, they have the right to sign up for one.
“I figure our students are adults and they are expected to behave responsibly, but if we’re going to be handing out the applications, then we’ve requested applications of how to spend credit wisely,” Hockensmith said.
He said Students Credit 101, an informational brochure by Citibank with tips on how students can manage credit card use sensibly, will be at the Bookstore counters next year for students to pick up on their own.
“I do think that it would be nice to educate the students about the proper way to use a credit card and to establish credit,” Jennifer Gray, a second-year nursing major, said. “We need to have knowledge of them before we open them.”
Hockensmith has discussed with the Bursar’s Office ways to post information in the Bookstore’s window displays about smart credit card use without the Bookstore or the university promoting use.
Hockensmith said he is concerned for UMaine students.
“About a third of our transactions are by credit cards during rush [at the beginning of each semester], if not more,” he said. “I’m worried about our students trying to pay off thousands of dollars when they don’t have a real job yet.
“I do think the Bookstore has a responsibility to promote some understanding among students on how to use a credit card, and that information is coming.”
Beyond the credit card factor of the stuffers, Hockensmith took into account the general annoyance factor.
“I agree it’s annoying,” Hockensmith said.
The third factor was the environmental impact the stuffers have.
“I do think it is a waste of paper,” he said. “Apparently the credit card companies don’t because they continue to do this.”
“I do get a little upset at how much waste is being produced by putting so many extra advertisements in with our purchases,” Lauren Marshall, a third-year English major, said. “Many students already get plenty of phone calls from credit card companies, so I don’t see how it can be boosting the credit card company’s sales enough to make it worth wasting that much paper.”
“If the University Bookstore chose not to participate in the bag stuffer and pay the higher cost, just as much paper would be wasted. It just wouldn’t be at UMaine. It would be shipped to another campus,” Hockensmith said.
Hockensmith came up with an idea about stuffers after hearing students had complained.
“We never really thought about it from that point of view,” Hockensmith said. “We were looking at a way of making an operating expense cheaper.”
Hockensmith said if it is a sincere concern of students, he might request his night shift workers to manually take the stuffers out of the bags. He also offered to perhaps bring the paper to the recycling department on campus.
“If it bothers people, sure, we might take them out on slow Saturdays or something like that,” Hockensmith said. “I’d rather do that than pay $800 more for bags.”
