Receipt (From Penarth Times)

Receipt

IN recent weeks, there have been several occasions when I have been asked whether I would like a receipt when shopping.

My reply would normally be 'yes please', especially where the payment of larger amounts of money is concerned, and/or where a multiplicity of different items are bought at the same time from the same store.

There is of course the aspect of whether payment is made in cash, ie notes and coin, or by card.

In the latter case, my experience is that you are given a receipt as a matter of course, both a receipt for the card-payment and details of what was bought, sometimes on a separate sheet.

The arguments for economising on the use of receipts in retail stores include economies for the retail group which could, in theory, be passed on to the customer in lower prices.

There is also the 'green' or ecological argument, ones to which business nowadays increasingly pays lip-service in smaller matters, while perhaps ignoring the 'green' dimension in larger aspects.

Counter arguments include the fact that, when paying cash, you do not have proof of payment without a receipt.

I still recall an incident at a bed and breakfast in Plymouth some 20 years ago, quite late in the evening, when I paid for one night in advance in cash and without my receiving a receipt.

The following morning I was asked for what would have been a second payment, but held my ground and after some quite lively discussion I was able to establish that money was paid by me to someone else on arrival.

The incident was stressful to me, however, and left a nasty taste in my mouth.

Not only does the presence of a receipt confirm that goods in the proverbial shopping basket have been properly paid for, it also enables one to check through the prices paid for individual goods at one's leisure.

When you are in an apparently never-ending queue in a shop, there are difficulties in making such a check.

I have found discrepancies from time to time where I have been over-charged. These can then be rectified by the shop concerned.

With stores like Tesco and the Co-op, the large numbers who have 'loyalty' cards can see at a glance how much dividend they have earned.

It was by examining these details that I discovered that the local Co-op now only gives a dividend of 1p per pound, like Tesco.

Formerly, a few years ago, they gave up to three times that on their own goods.

Nor is it just groceries. When renewing an insurance policy or paying money into a bank, one is surely entitled to a proper receipt, where payment is made in cash, rather than by cheque or by credit or debit card.

I frankly find it cavalier for sections of the retail trade to abolish, even in part, traditional modes of operation whose raison d'etre must be as compelling now as ever it was.

There is the risk of one being accused of shop-lifting if no receipt was issued to the customer in question.

Not everything is bought in a corner shop run by the owner. Even then different family members may be involved at various times.

This is where the use of packaging carrying the name of the store could be seen as a safe-guard against theft as much as an advert for the retail group concerned.

But the receipt should not be discontinued, except perhaps on the purchase of an ice-cream on the promenade, or of a single newspaper.

As for the 'green' argument against automatic issue of receipts, there is much greater scope for economies here by looking at packaging, and the sometimes unnecessary packaging which is universal nowadays, individual lumps of sugar, sachets or tea and coffee etc and numerous plastic bags, which I would admit to using quite generously myself.

I have noticed how in business there is typically a lack of reciprocity when it comes to trust. We are asked to trust them, but there is no question of their trusting us automatically, and authorisation codes are standard when businesses accept credit-cards in payment.

Businesses are entitled to be suspicious, especially of people they do not know, but customers should not in my view be asked to forego what are traditional safeguards for people spending what is sometimes their hard-earned money (hard-working families, to use a current political cliche).

Michael O'Neill

Railway Terrace

Penarth