20 Free Perks Stores Used To Give Away Before Self-Service Took Over

The Pedoscope allowed you to see your bones glowing inside a shoe for free when you purchased a new pair at a store between the 1920s and the 1950s. It was advertised as being precise and scientific, but in reality it put customers, children, and shop attendants under repeated exposure to unshielded radiation. The Pedoscopes were gradually banned by health authorities between the late 1950s and the 1970s.

The uniformed attendant at a mid-century gas station would wash your windshield, check your oil on the dipstick (a rod that measures oil level), inspect fan belts, and check the tire pressure, all at no extra cost when you bought a fill-up. That labor was included in the price of the gas. Eventually, self-service stations took over. Nobody was paying for the service; they were paying for the gas.

In 1914, Gulf Oil gave away its first free retail road map. It distributed 10,000 copies of a road map of Allegheny County, PA, at its service stations. The concept was the brainchild of Gulf Oil advertising manager William Akin. Cartography companies Rand McNally and Gousha started printing full-color, folded maps for oil companies across the country, available to anyone who wanted one, free of charge, with no purchase necessary. By 1972, oil companies were handing out about 250 million of these maps annually.

Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago had a supervised nursery for children ages 3 to 10, as did Crowley’s department store in Detroit. Parents, particularly mothers, were able to leave their children there, with a nurse or attendant watching them, while they shopped. The stores didn’t charge any fees.

Back in 1895, the Cincinnati-based retailer Smith, Kasson & Co. started offering free shoe shines to prospective customers in order to attract shoppers. The shoe-shine men who were normally paid to shine shoes on the street organized the Cincinnati Bootblacks Protective Association in January 1898 and went before the mayor to demand that store owners stop giving away the free perk.

When Barney Pressman opened his eponymous store in Manhattan in 1923, he built the business on a simple promise: free alterations. Free tailoring was especially alluring to working-class buyers unable to afford the bespoke suits they wanted. Many other department stores and clothing retailers provided similar incentives, though their free services were available only for items purchased from them. You got the alterations gratis, not the suit.

In the 1920s through the 1950s, hardware stores, drugstores, and electronics stores had self-service consoles that let you test your radio’s vacuum tubes, those glass things that used to go inside old radios and TVs, for free. When a tube burned out, you paid for the new tube, not for the test that revealed the problem.

In 1909, the London department store Selfridges opened its Information Bureau, which had as many as 11 full-time employees throughout its almost 40-year existence. They helped shoppers plan their trips, gave them tips on the city, and booked tickets for theaters and transport at face value, with no service fee added. The tickets cost what they cost. Planning was free.

Grocery delivery used to come in a wagon or truck. You called, and they came to your front door. Department stores and local grocers had their own delivery trucks and wagons, usually horse-drawn at first, but always free to customers. In 1950, 25 percent of U.S. grocery stores were still offering free home delivery, according to a survey by the Super Market Institute.

In department stores, shoppers gave up their coats, umbrellas, and packages at attended checkrooms and received a numbered ticket. They could retrieve everything free of charge as often as they wanted. What a relief it was to go about your business inside a large store on a long visit without carrying a single thing! Empty hands made for easier shopping.

On every gas station apron, the asphalt expanse in front of the pumps, there was always an air hose and a water tap or a bucket of radiator water, available for use by any motorist, regardless of whether or not they filled up that day.

You’d go to a haberdashery, a men’s hat and clothing shop, and buy a felt hat. And your experience didn’t stop when you put it on. They would do free steam reshaping, brim blocking, and cleaning for as many years as you had that hat, as long as you bought it there.

Go down to the hardware store with a blunt kitchen knife or a pair of scissors and they would sharpen them for you free of charge. You could also go in and purchase some glass or wood, and they would cut it to size for you free.

Department stores and specialty shops would add a complimentary monogram, embroidery, or engraving to any item bought in their stores. The shopper didn’t pay a cent more for it, but the gift seemed a lot more costly than it actually was.

The grocery chain A&P even put commercial electric grinders at its Eight O’Clock Coffee stations so customers could buy whole coffee beans, then have them ground to any desired coarseness at the store counter at no charge. Since the 1920s, the smell of fresh grounds was part of the sale, not an extra charge.

The personal shopping bureaus of Macy’s and Marshall Field’s became formal operations in the 1920s. Sales staff would pull garments and other items from various departments and bring them to a private dressing room, without any consultation fee. There was no charity here; personal guidance generally resulted in a more generous purchase.

Before home phones became a necessity, department stores installed phone parlors where people could make local calls for free. If you went on a long shopping excursion, you could call from these booths to arrange a ride home, let the family know how things were going, or even check to see if your package had been delivered. Long-distance calls, however, still cost money.

Auto supply stores such as Western Auto, as well as service stations, offered free hydrometer tests, which checked a battery’s charge by measuring the density of its fluid, and basic electrical diagnostics for any motorist who drove up. It was like vacuum tube testing: the test was free. The new battery was not.

When Paris department store Le Bon Marché opened a Salon de Lecture in 1872, customers could enjoy the use of a quiet room complete with stationery embossed with the store’s name, pens, desks, and copies of the day’s newspaper, so they could write their personal correspondence while shopping. And, best of all, it was free. Shoppers merely paid the price of the stamp at the store’s post office counter.

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, there was a pianist at every music store, a song plugger, who would sit down at the piano and play any tune you might be curious to listen to before you purchased the sheet music version. George Gershwin himself worked as a song plugger early in his career, long before he became famous. You didn’t buy a song without hearing it first.

This content was created with the help of AI.