To be fed up with shops demanding my email address for no good reason

[Levie]

I am so sick of this in shops! I just want to buy something, pay and walk out with my shopping. I don’t want to share my details with you. I don’t want to have my name & details put into your database. I don’t want to receive details of special offers.
I just tried to use a gift card I’d been given as a present. The sales assistant asked me for my email address. I asked why she needed it- ‘it’s so we can send you an email to say you’ve used the voucher’.
Me-‘that’s fine. I know I’ve used it so I don’t need an email’.
Her-‘if you don’t give me your email address then you can’t use this voucher’.
If I’d thought more quickly I’d just have given a made-up address. I will definitely do this next time! It doesn’t sit right with me that businesses are increasingly refusing to provide goods or services unless customers hand over their data.

Same here

I just say I don't have email.

Reading all the New Look love, I remembered it was in fact New Look who said I couldn’t have a receipt unless I gave them an email address, and I’ve just checked whether they did in fact ever email it to me. They had, and lo and behold, in the small print it says the following:

How we use your information:
When you make a purchase in store, you have the option of choosing a paper receipt or a digital receipt.If you choose to get a digital receipt, we will ask for your email address, so we can send this digital receipt to you.

I’m in the thick of the New Look years with my DD, and I’ll be quoting their own policy at them Every Single Time. Hope it helps someone else too.

My mum doesn't have email. There are some things she apparently "can't" do now, like booking a premier inn, without one. She deals with this by giving them mine. But does this mean if she didn't have that option she would not be able to book?

I think this very often too. Older people must have to work very very hard to keep up. It must be frightening and frustrating.

I never give my email but it not an issue. I just say no thank you.

Very very occasionally they offer a sign up discount but I just use a disposable email or a 'hide my email' address.

I agree that it's truly nasty and othering, the way that elderly people are now often treated by society. I love the many options that the internet opens up to us in modern life; but it should always be a choice.

Plenty of old folk are not just being obstinate; they just cannot fathom the internet and how it might (or might not) change their lives - and they often just don't want it. Learning radically different new things is harder, the older you get. Yes, there are plenty of older people who have embraced it, but very few are as confident or find it as natural as younger people.

If society were a walk in the woods, we aren't just deliberately leaving older people behind, so that, by the time they get to a bench for a well-earned rest, everybody else is ready to move on again, having had their rest; we're actively pushing them off the sides of the paths and into the prickly hedges. Utterly nasty. We'll be elderly one day too - I wonder what 'delights' our grandchildren's generation will have devised by then that alienate us by design?

I agree on how irritating it is and how it's excluding the elderly. I just say no thanks to the email address every time. I've never been told they don't do paperless anymore but I will be prepared to say they legally need to provide a receipt.

Another bug bear for me is sales staff holding the card machine the wrong way so you pay blindly, when you ask to see it they act like you are being difficult

I find this pretty offensive actually. "Older people" being the age who invented the internet, for a start! Unless you're talking about the extremely old, who need assistance for all kinds of thing, there's nothing about being older that excludes you from being au fair with modern tech. I don't know anyone under the age of 85 who doesn't have an email address and Facebook, I work with a 92 year lady who can't leave Instagram and twitter alone.

I also work with older people, in a healthcare organisation that essentially requires them to use the internet to access it. We have provision for those who don’t, but it’s made the exception rather than the rule. Some older people find it confusing and excluding, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Others manage fine. No offence meant, I find it astounding that you managed to take any 😂

Really? You lumped all "older people" into one infantalised group who are frightened and frustrated by being asked for an email address, and you can't see any offense?

And you say you work in healthcare for older people ...I do hope not.

Say no thank you, paper please or no need for a receipt.

Complain to the company, instead of the retail staff.

When I worked retail, the retail staff were graded on the percentage of email receipts they have to do per shift and it was brought up during appraisals.

I understand wanting a paper receipt, at the same time, there is the issue of people losing them and wanting to get their money back, and can’t, and some want to blame the retail staff over them losing it/throwing it away.

There is also the issue of the email address being written in incorrectly but at least you can contact the shop, inform them and they may be able to find you in the system and send a new receipt (was able to do this when I worked retail).

Sometimes these individuals are just performing for their own little hierarchical pecking-order imagination.

Had one ask me my DOB in Boots a couple of years ago, walked out and across the road to Savers.

Some shop workers are all right, some aren't. Some are all right some of the time. All their managers suck though.

If I could 'thank' this post 100 times I would. 👏

Brilliantly put @Levie

If you do give a fake email address, give a short one, you dont have to stand there for so long while they type it in.

If they ask you for a post code or phone number, say you live in America, China or Ethiopia etc, so it wont work. That usually moves things on.

Ive also said that my husband wont let me give out that information, they dont usually have the confidence to debate that statement 🤣

My husband just refuses. I don't in Claires accessories as I get points etc

I suggest you print a copy out..

As I said, “others manage fine”. Stop now, it’s boring.

Check out mailinator.com!

You make up any address (e.g., mumsnetlevie(at)mailinator.com, or <nameofstore>sucks(at)mailinator.com) and it just works. You can log in without a password and pick up the receipt, then you can just forget about it. The address and the mails are deleted within a few days. Give it a try and you'll see what I mean.

It's secure enough for your one-time receipt because nobody is trying every address including sainsburyssucks(at)mailinator.com on the off chance that you've included your PIN code in there, and you can make up the address on the spot.

If I lose the receipt and therefore can't return something, I've lost out through my own negligence. The only person I can blame is myself, with the exception of situations where someone steals my wallet and the receipt in it and probably the receipt isn't my biggest concern there.

I can't do anything for staff entering my details incorrectly. In other, non-email situations, I've had people type in my name wrong when they were getting it from a document where it was clearly indicated in print. I've had people get my name wrong when they were replying to me in an email and my email address gave my name. This isn't up to me. I can't ensure the receipt is ever sent to me.

This is all beside the general issue that this is invasive of my privacy, that they do not need any identifying details for a face-to-face transaction, since I am right there in the shop!

It is annoying. Just politely say...... "No"!

They’re asking you for an email address that you don’t have to give so how is it invading your privacy for asking a question?

Again, you don’t have to answer it or give it. You can say no!

Literally said that in the beginning of my post.