Good. Please tell me they still need my address for a pack of batteries.
People like you used to drive me crazy.
Ya see, back in the 80's, I used to manage a Radio Shack. Back then Radio Shack's prices were VERY competitive. One of the reasons was that they only spent 5% of revenues on advertising. That advertising was, primarily, monthly mailers. They would often contain such awesome deals that I would arrive at my store first thing in the morning and there would be a line waiting to get in to take advantage of the sale. This advertising was great in a couple of ways:
1. It directly featured and described the products on sale.
2. It gave the customers something tangible that they could bring into the store and say "I want this!"
3. Finally, and most importantly, it was only targeted at existing customers.
Yep, they made us collect those address so they could mail you their flier once a month.
They were so serious about this program that if an employee didn't have verifiable, correct addresses on over 95% of his tickets, they would get one warning and then with a second occurrence, employment termination. They would also fire you for writing down fake addresses, or putting a real address that wasn't the customer's on a ticket.
Yes, this was draconian and annoying, but it worked. When they finally installed computerized checkout terminals, you would only get asked for your last name and zip code, unless this was your first time in a Radio Shack and they didn't have you in the system already, then they would ask for your full address.
The mailers were killed off by increasing printing and mailing costs. It got to the point where it was so expensive, that they might as well run TV commercials like everyone else. Oh yay!