When will the paper receipt end?
Asked by
hominid (
7357
)
October 23rd, 2014
When shopping at Whole Foods, you’re at least asked if you would like a receipt. But when you shop at most grocery stores or pharmacies around here, you’re handed a huge receipt.
There are huge problems with paper receipts, including paper waste, BPA, information disappearing on thermal paper, non-digital, etc. But what are the alternatives? In 5 years, when we tell stories about the “paper receipt”, in the way we talk about pay phones, what will have taken their place?
While I don’t accept a receipt from Whole Foods, it would be nice to have it instantly sent to my email, so I could view it on my phone immediately. And if other stores did this, there would no longer be concerns about losing a receipt. But in order to implement a system like this, there would likely have to be buy-in on a large scale, and ideally it would be standardized.
What could and will take the paper receipt’s place, and why?
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19 Answers
It’s already starting.
Micro-Center, Chilis Restaurant, Home Depot, and my local public library already send me email receipts when I purchase something (or in the case of the library, check out books).
There will always need to be an option to get a paper receipt, for tax and/or return purposes. To say nothing of proof of purchase so you aren’t accused of shoplifting.
But I think that the leading edge companies and services are already doing this on a small scale.
[Pharmacies have different obligations. Receipts have to show tax deductibility and whether something is medicine or not. The pharmacy also has to give you medicine information and instructions. I’m not sure that will ever change.]
I’d love to have all electronic receipts. I document and account all of my purchases, so I keep the receipts for the month in envelopes. The envelopes get jammed by the end of the month. The grocery store ones are the worst because you also get those ads/0.000001% off coupons tacked onto the end.
I’d love for them to somehow be online on a database thing. I’m thinking there’d be a website where you’d have an account that tracked all of your purchases. When making a purchase, you’d enter in your account info so it can register the transaction, and you could add the receipts up or look at the details of them anytime with the click of a mouse.
The last thing I want to do is give the store my e-mail address so it can be added to even more spam lists.
@Darth_Algar: “The last thing I want to do is give the store my e-mail address so it can be added to even more spam lists.”
But you would presumably receive from value from receiving the receipt via email, right? Spam died in 2004 (I received my last spam in early 2005, actually). So, that’s not really a thing any longer. What you are likely referring to is getting on a mailing list for the store, right? If so, you could just click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the first email and not receive any more.
But more to the point – it seems that there is a huge opening for a provider to act as a service between stores and customers. Ideally, it wouldn’t just be a bunch of services competing for each other, with Lowes using ServiceA and HomeDepot using ServiceB. I’d like to see the ability for receipts to be sent to my email address(es) and/or cloud services (Dropbox, etc), and that it could be entirely configurable on my end. The store would have no knowledge of where the receipt is going. It would submit the receipt to your ServiceA account, and you’d get the copy/copies sent to wherever you had defined.
@hominid @Darth_Algar I’m thinking of a program unrelated to e-mailing and drop boxes all together. No spam, no mailing lists. What about something that’s its own program? It could even go on a smart phone as an app.
I wonder if it has already been invented. If not, we could call it “EZ-Receipt” ”“Receipot” or something else that’s catchy and creative.
@dxs
The company will still have your e-mail address however. What’s to stop them from selling it.
@hominid
It’s good that you live in a realm where spam doesn’t exist. Most of us in this realm, however, still get spam daily.
I most certainly am not giving my email address to retailers so that they can send me receipts – the few newsletters I receive are already bad enough. As to “spam died in 2004”... are you kidding? There are all kinds of spam, and no filter is enough to catch everything. And then what do you do about the receipts that you don’t want to look at now, but vitally need in 6 months, only to find your spam/junk filters has kindly “taken care” of them for you?
Many retailers here produce a receipt only upon request. I think that’s sufficient for the moment. I mean, if society changes to an extent that we’re all on a database and identified with every consumer transaction – sure, then send my receipt to my account. But personally, I already fight against everything that such a system would rely on. I give fake names and addresses for loyalty cards; I create fake email addresses for online accounts; I turn off location-finding tools and search histories wherever possible. So, having a retailer “follow me home” in any way is out of the question.
@dappled_leaves “I give fake names and addresses for loyalty cards”
I’ve found that for many places (well, many grocery stores at least) you don’t even need to do that. When they ask you have a loyalty/rewards card just say that you do, but don’t have it with you, and they’ll grant you whatever applicable discounts anyway.
@Darth_Algar Why would they have your e-mail? I said it was unrelated to your e-mail.
I’m curious as to why I (and apparently @hominid, too) never get spam even after using the same e-mail account for years while others do. I give my e-mail address out a lot and the worst I get are monthly ads, which stop showing up in my inbox after I flag them.
Am I just lucky?
@Darth_Algar I don’t know of any that operate that way here – you have to either present your card or read off your number from memory.
@dxs You may just be lucky. I never, ever, ever received a penis enlargement offer until about 5 months ago, and now my spam folder is refilled with these on a daily basis. I used to think they were some kind of urban legend.
^ Exactly. Half a year ago, I received maybe 10 spam e-mails a month. Then, one day, that changed. I now get about thirty – daily.
@dxs
Can you really imagine any kind of consumer program that operates online and doesn’t require an e-mail address?
I’m game if you are. There’s no snow here, though – so I might have to join you there.
Sounds like a plan. There’s room on my iceberg.
If you’ve used something like PayPass or Tap and Go you wouldn’t need the receipt because your purchase is recorded and accessible via your account or statement. So there are already mechanisms in place to avoid having to accept paper receipts.
As to the email account issue, I wouldn’t want to give my email address to retail organisations. Too many places already have my email address but my organisation must have a good spam filter. Perhaps we all need to establish a ’‘shopping” email through Gmail. An email we can give out when required but that we don’t care if it gets filled with spam.
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