Shops that ask for your email

[Shiningstarr]

So many shops now ask for your email address when you pay, so they can email you the receipt, and / or add you to their mailing list.

I usually say just the paper receipt thanks, but does anyone else find this mildly annoying? Something I've noticed, everyone else in the queue then knows your personal details, especially if your email has your first and second name in the address...

I was thinking of making up an email specifically for shop receipts, something like stopaskingmeformyemailaddress @ outlook.com

AIBU?

It is dishonest. They say it's to email you the receipt but they add you to their marketing list without consent. New Look are bad for this. Which is why I always ask for a paper receipt btw.

Information is everything. Of course someone somewhere is going to link your email from Zara to New Look, purely to watch your spending habits and target you accordingly.

I've never been asked face to face. I'm guessing my local Asda hasn't caught on yet. That said, they do have my details on their offers app. I've just never bothered to buy their 'offers' or indeed give a shit about fumbling with my phone at the checkout.

I feel a bit put out now. [email protected]

Your ilk seem to be more interested in pushing the green agenda (amongst many others) than customer satisfaction, loyalty and the consequent repeated business

I don't actually believe that they genuinely care about the green agenda any further than they think it makes them look like they do and translate it into good PR.

Asda is a perfect example of this: where they will make all kinds of proud claims of what they do to help the environment on one hand, whilst persisting in selling bananas (you know - those things that nature already provides good protective wrapping for) in utterly pointless single-use plastic on the other.

Its against gdpr rules to take someones email for a receipt and then use it for other motives such as marketing.

I always ask (nicely ( for a paper receipt. It's never been an issue.
What I find annoying is trying to return something. They want your name, address AND signature in most case. Why? Most retailers don't give a damn who you are when you make the purchase provided your card taps or chips and pins. I've been told that it's for audit purposes but I 50 years of shopping I've never been contacted by a retailer after getting a refund .

The paper's not being wasted. It's serving a use.

Absolutely. It's fascinating how much they care about not 'wasting' a thin scrap of sparsely-black-printed paper when it comes to providing a legal record (and customer rights protection) of the transaction that they've already secured; but don't care in the slightest when it comes to churning out bulky full-colour A4 pamphlets by the 100,000 when they're hoping to gain prospective new sales.

I actually dont work for a retail store so the company i work for doesnt ask for emails for receipts.

I prefer email receipts as i dont want to waste paper when im more than capable of having it sent straight to my phone.

Its against gdpr rules to take someones email for a receipt and then use it for other motives such as marketing.

I wonder if they would argue that this is a cross-platform 'consent' in the same weasel way that they already do online with the duplicitous 'legitimate interest' concept.

However, some of them deliberately get their staff to quietly slip in a few innocuous-sounding words - the verbal equivalent of the tiny print - which they doubtless use to claim that you've consented. In fact, as it all is verbal, they could very easily have a 'script' that includes the 'and are you happy for us to spam you too?' bit, but which is never actually used.

After all, if their employees are threatened with the sack if they don't get people signed up, they're highly likely to 'forget' to mention the bit that will make most people decline. Then, in the unlikely event that the companies are ever pulled up on it (and how can you categorically prove what was or wasn't said? Nobody is recording it), they can 'discover' the 'concerning news' that 'not all of their employees have been following their clear training' - and then sack them anyway, as handy scapegoats, before lessons will be completely ignored learned.

I prefer email receipts as i dont want to waste paper when im more than capable of having it sent straight to my phone.

Modern methods of sending and storing data/files are often more convenient and preferable in many ways; but let's not kid ourselves that the energy used to send/read/store an email in the Cloud is any less harmful to the environment than that used to produce a one-time print on a small slip of paper that can then be stored and referred back to endlessly, with no further environmental impact.

Like with these electric cars that are vaunted as being emission-free (at the point of being used) - and people actually believing that translates to the production of all the electricity that they depend on to work.

I work in retail. We don't have the option of not asking you, it's part of our job, we get a bollocking if our store hits below a certain % of e-receipts. Believe we don't always like asking and we don't do it for fun. However, you should only be sent promo emails if you actively opt in, we ask if you would just like your receipt or would you also like to sign up to hear about offers, if you say no, we click no, we would be breaking the law otherwise

I have an email address just for this… something like receipt123@…

Yes i do mostly because they can't spell/understand my name

Doesn’t need to be that complicated. They could have a tablet at the till facing the customer, they display the receipt on there, the customer takes a photo of it. No need for any email address.
I do work in app design. Not retail though.

It could be easily forged

Makes checking your bank a lot harder too if you have to faff looking for emails.
I want my receipt as soon as I have finished paying don't want to wait to check its actually come through on email.

I just sat no thank you, to both. My receipts only go in the bin anyway, so unless it's something I'm not used to buying that I might need to return, I don't need it. I pay by card and have a record of it on my banking app

I just say no.

I did have one cashier who said he couldn't sell me an item without taking my email and postcode. It was an expensive item so we were at a bit of an impasse as no way was I giving them those details!

Funnily enough the requirement for me to do so evaporated as soon as a manager was summoned.

Blimey!

I worked in a shop and one of my targets was how many email addresses we managed to get, so we always had to ask. Just say no, I hated asking as much as people hated to be asked

Put a bar code or a QR code or something in it. If the one the customer produces doesn’t match the one issued, no refund.

Very soon you'd have a black market of QR codes