[time4tea]

Well, my point was that maybe it actually isnt "to get more people to give to charity", maybe its actually something else.

Its actually very easy to give £5/month direct to a charity. Takes about 2 minutes, just gotta do it.

[foldr]

You're overthinking this. There's a publicity element to it, but the money just gets given to charity, like they say it does. It's not a conspiracy or a tax accounting trick.

[jstanley]

How can you tell? And is this definitely universally true or just true of the 1 instance you happen to have personal experience with?

[foldr]

Same way I can tell that my next door neighbor isn't poisoning my water supply or that Tesco doesn't have a secret chemical weapons program. That major supermarket chains are running scam charity appeals just isn't a hypothesis worth entertaining in the absence of any evidence for it.

[gosub100]

Because the risk of fraud is too great for major corporations. They have accountants and businesses people who would report it.

[kshacker]

The risk with charity money is not the companies collecting a few cents but the charity itself.