Charity Muggers ("Chuggers") have dumped their clipboards and got mobiles

Butter me in Scotch and call me Kevin!

The Charity Muggers (“Chuggers“) on Oxford Street have recently upgraded their equipment. Previously, they’ve been using clipboards featuring the picture of a (no doubt) needy child looking straight into your eyes.

They’ve changed their tactics though. The clipboard, it seems, has been dumped for better technology — the mobile phone.

Anyone walking down Oxford Street, one of the central shopping streets in London, knows to avoid people with clipboards at all costs. Clipboards mean bank account details. That’s the main objective of a Chugger — to get you to fill in your bank details and get you paying a tenner a month for the next few years until you can pluck up the courage to cancel it (“think of that poor little wide eyed child”).

They do serve a need — otherwise Charities simply wouldn’t tolerate their activities on their behalf. However it’s mega annoying having to negotiate their advances. Every sodding morning and evening, too.

They’ve dumped the clipboards though. So they look a lot less threatening. The writing was on the wall for this because I’ve often witnessed the cunning Chugger standing in the middle of the street, bright-eyed, lots of smiling, stopping people in the street to ask a question… only to produce their clipboard from behind a piece of street furniture. You see their target visibly wilt right-away.

Some people don’t have the balls to say no. I do. I do it politely though.

It was thus, with some interest, that I saw the Oxford Street Chuggers have swapped to using mobile phones to enter the address and bank details of their trapped prey:

I didn’t want to get too close — so I wasn’t able to figure out the model that they’re using. I reckon it’s Windows Mobile (from the styluses) and the sizing. Maybe the HTC Touch?