Bob Young on Nostr: There is still a good reason to get paper transaction receipts for in-store purchases ...

There is still a good reason to get paper transaction receipts for in-store purchases when doing any sort of electronic transaction: tap-to-pay, chip, whatever. This weekend at a national retailer I bought a phone case for my new phone. In my car in the parking lot I tried to put it on the phone, and realized I’d bought the wrong case. That’s my mistake, not the store’s fault. Then I walked back inside to exchange it for the correct case, and that’s where the fun began.

When the clerk asked me if I wanted a paper receipt or email, I said, “Email is fine.” But the email address I use for that store is one that I hadn’t set up on the new phone yet, so I had no receipt.

The clerk used my name to look up the account, but there was no record of the purchase. Next he tried using my credit card to bring up the account. Still no record.

He wrinkled his face while scrutinizing the screen and asked, “Did you use this card to make a $340 purchase yesterday in California? Because that’s the most recent transaction I see.”

I get almost instantaneous bank alerts on transactions. I knew that there was no way my card had actually been used for a purchase in California. Either this major retailer had a badly messed up database, or the employee was repeatedly pulling up the same wrong account.

I asked him if he could have a manager come over to sort it out. That involved a wait of several minutes, but eventually they found the transaction record and I was able to make the exchange for the correct item.

There are many unrelated factors at play in this example: lack of access to the email receipt, an inexperienced store employee, my own inattention when picking the part off the display rack… but simply saying “Yes” when I was asked if I wanted a paper receipt would’ve made the process go a lot smoother.