A friend of mine told me the other day about an incident that she found extremely irritating — and rightly so: a store where she is a frequent customer, with an account and loyalty card, asked her for the receipt of an item she wanted to return.
The whole thing sound so clumsy as to be offensive: we all know that shops collect every bit of data they can about us: assigning us a socio-demographic profile, address, shopping habits, and of course, everything we’ve ever bought… so why on earth would a store need a receipt, the kind that fades after a while? What do they think? That their customers are trying to palm them off with goods bought elsewhere? Come on: it’s really easy to check the records of previous transactions to confirm when the item was bought.
It’s as simple as that. Why needlessly force customers to keep receipts? The practice sounds like companies want to eat their cake and have it: they can send us promotions, offers and all kinds of marketing… but when we need something from them, we’re made to prove that we’re not cheats.
The same question has already been raised with regard to the personal data held by our governments and state institutions: why force us to store all kinds of data and documents, when that data is already on file? Why do I have to carry certain documents with me, such as my driving license, if once I can prove my identity with any other, the authorities can quickly check that I have a driving license and what state it is in?
Let’s be clear about this: we should no longer be obliged to provide data or documentation that whoever we’re dealing with already has in their possession. The days of queuing up at the counter with a folder with our documents for a stern official to tell us that this or that is missing ended some time ago.
If as a society, we’ve been able to make our slow, bureaucratic and all-powerful administration see sense, how is it possible that stores are still in that phase of “do you have the receipt?” And what if I don’t? It’s no small matter: the shop might not accept you returning an item (which normally has a two-year window, much longer than most purchase tickets last in print) or they’ll only allow you to exchange the item for another.
In the days of CRMs, customer files that know what we have for breakfast, loyalty programs… isn’t all this a total anachronism? If government and its bureaucracies — at least in Spain, where I live — have learned to use their own files and adopt an attitude of making life easier for the user, what are stores doing asking me for a receipt?
The answer is simple: they are artificially introducing friction into the system. They know we have the right to a refund, to exercise our warranty or to get our money back within reasonable limits. But if I ask for absurd requirements to do so, such as keeping the purchase receipt in your wallet (wallet? another anachronism, if most days I leave the house with only my smartphone in my pocket!), it will dissuade some people, and the scales will tip in their favor when it comes to reducing returns. Some manager in some office will rub her hands together, take credit for having reduced the rate of returns, and pocket her annual bonus. As it is so painfully typical in management, a problem of having the wrong metrics.
In practice, asking us for the receipt is like asking us to do a handstand and jump twenty times in a row on one foot if we want to make a return: just to slow things down. You have my information, you use it to send me everything, you know everything I’ve bought over time… but for any request from me, when I really need you to provide a two-way service, you refuse to use all that information, and demand that I keep it and prove it myself.
What we should do as customers is simply refuse. Tell stores that if they want our business, they should treat us properly, which is not just giving us good service when we want to spend our money, but the whole time. If I come to return a product, as if I come to claim anything related to its use or its warranty, as if I come to be taught how to use it: I am the same person you treated wonderfully when I bought it: remember that, and act accordingly.
If a store has my details, it should use them for everything, not just what suits it. Or else, it can keep my data, but forget about me buying anything.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
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