Tesco Returns - Proof of purchase

user1977

p00hsticks said:

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

 Say you bought a £20 toaster along with £100 of groceries. Bank statement then doesn't prove you bought a toaster at all.

They can usually track the sale on the retailer's sales system. On there it'll have a breakdown same as the receipt. 

Many years ago when I worked in retail I could track them off the date and total amount quite easily, unless there was a lot on that specific date on the same total price. Even then they presented as a scroll down list and you could usually find it off the last 4 card digits too. Or you could search for sales on the product code and date, that would pull them through also.

Some used to have the items scanning on the till overlaid over the cameras facing the tills too in real time so you could check everything down to non scans so if it was recent sale or an item scanned that they didn't recognise on the receipt you could usually figure it out for them usually with cctv. 

I can guarantee this isn't down to technology or inability to check sales which has no doubt progressed but for some other reason. 

That maybe so but if every customer with a return had lost their receipt and relied on Tesco to do this there would be a considerable overhead in staff time which ultimately has to be paid for somehow!

Even more so this day and age. If Tesco can send you emails in January telling you what were your top purchases for the previous year and exactly how many of each item you bought, why aren't they using the same technology to digitally hold your receipts in the same account and avoiding issues like this? They're retaining and using data digitally from your purchases when it suits them and relying on scraps of paper like its the year 2000 when they might need to give money back out. 

Surely all that that relies on you having and using a  club card though ?

I expect they can/do track customers' use of credit/debit cards too? Or at least, if a customer says they spent £49.67 with a card in a store on a particular date, it shouldn't be too difficult for a supermarket to find the remaining details of that transaction.

Forwandert

If someone pays with the same card for numerous transactions they can pull through all your transactions, been able to do that for at least 15 years. All itemised receipts.

I wouldn't like to shop in Tesco without a club card. I've had £100 shopping bills drop to £55 before. Asda have started something similar with whatever system they're now using for discounts so they're all moving towards it, all the data collection is already in place. 

I recall as part of management training with one of the big 4 in the early 2000's they had calculations of what each customer was worth profit wise to them in their lifetime if they retained them as a customer. It was used as a guildeline when deciding on if something went wrong or caused a customer issues instore, even leakages that caused issues with customers cars etc on how much to pay to resolve the situation. (it could be quite high, pretty cash payments approval without going above store level where a lot higher than you would expect) if they knew that in the 2000s, data has been available for quite a while and technology has improved.


All I'm saying is this reliance on receipts makes no sense in this day and age. You're already giving most of your data of you're shopping and paying by card. If you're shopping online you're giving practically all of it.

The amount of people now simply paying cash for everything and avoiding giving any data to anyone is minimal. With that in mind why are we still relying on paper receipts? why is that the one thing that hasn't really changed? and now they're regressing to not even accepting bank statements.

The most obvious reasoning is it doesn't suit the supermarkets to help with anything which means money going out rather than in. 

CardinalWolsey

If only people had something widely available that could permanently record an image of the receipt that they could store at the point of purchase and would be referenceable should they need to in the future. Something like a camera. On a phone.

Any receipt that I think I might need to locate later I take a photo of. Google photos will usually find it by typing "receipt" into the search box, otherwise I have to scroll back to that point in time.

eskbanker

CardinalWolsey said:

If only people had something widely available that could permanently record an image of the receipt that they could store at the point of purchase and would be referenceable should they need to in the future. Something like a camera. On a phone.

Any receipt that I think I might need to locate later I take a photo of. Google photos will usually find it by typing "receipt" into the search box, otherwise I have to scroll back to that point in time.

That still leaves the question of whether Tesco would consider a photo of a receipt as being adequate for their purposes - such images can be edited and whenever I've returned items to stores (not specifically Tesco necessarily), they've wanted to annotate the paper receipt.  As with some of the earlier posts, this one isn't about the legalities of what constitutes proof of purchase for statutory purposes but discretionary retailer policies beyond those....

DullGreyGuy

eskbanker said:

CardinalWolsey said:

If only people had something widely available that could permanently record an image of the receipt that they could store at the point of purchase and would be referenceable should they need to in the future. Something like a camera. On a phone.

Any receipt that I think I might need to locate later I take a photo of. Google photos will usually find it by typing "receipt" into the search box, otherwise I have to scroll back to that point in time.

That still leaves the question of whether Tesco would consider a photo of a receipt as being adequate for their purposes - such images can be edited and whenever I've returned items to stores (not specifically Tesco necessarily), they've wanted to annotate the paper receipt.  As with some of the earlier posts, this one isn't about the legalities of what constitutes proof of purchase for statutory purposes but discretionary retailer policies beyond those....

Not sure about Tescos explicitly but many places use thermal paper for receipts. In theory they should last 7 years and so beyond any rights but printing on thermal paper can go much quicker than that in higher temps or humidity (eg in a wallet in trousers). 

Photos can be edited but so can you print a fake receipt and as mentioned before, with most items there is no proof that the item being returned is the one purchased on the date of the receipt... it could be years old and the one purchased last week is sitting at home.

I'm sure they'd prefer a paper receipt but would hope most would accept a photo... increasingly merchants are emailing receipts rather than giving paper ones too.

Exodi

Undervalued said:

p00hsticks said:

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

 Say you bought a £20 toaster along with £100 of groceries. Bank statement then doesn't prove you bought a toaster at all.

They can usually track the sale on the retailer's sales system. On there it'll have a breakdown same as the receipt. 

Many years ago when I worked in retail I could track them off the date and total amount quite easily, unless there was a lot on that specific date on the same total price. Even then they presented as a scroll down list and you could usually find it off the last 4 card digits too. Or you could search for sales on the product code and date, that would pull them through also.

Some used to have the items scanning on the till overlaid over the cameras facing the tills too in real time so you could check everything down to non scans so if it was recent sale or an item scanned that they didn't recognise on the receipt you could usually figure it out for them usually with cctv. 

I can guarantee this isn't down to technology or inability to check sales which has no doubt progressed but for some other reason. 

That maybe so but if every customer with a return had lost their receipt and relied on Tesco to do this there would be a considerable overhead in staff time which ultimately has to be paid for somehow!

Even more so this day and age. If Tesco can send you emails in January telling you what were your top purchases for the previous year and exactly how many of each item you bought, why aren't they using the same technology to digitally hold your receipts in the same account and avoiding issues like this? They're retaining and using data digitally from your purchases when it suits them and relying on scraps of paper like its the year 2000 when they might need to give money back out. 

Surely all that that relies on you having and using a  club card though ?

Indeed.

Like any loyalty scheme you are choosing to opt in to a system that gives them vast amounts of information about you in exchange for certain benefits.

Alternatively you can forgo the benefits, pay cash and not reveal anything about yourself (apart from what is recorded on any CCTV) if you so choose.

Is that truly the reason why?

I'd have thought that it would be relatively easy to compile the similar vast amounts of information by card number instead of clubcard number. In a sense there's little difference between clubcard number 1234567890 and debit card number ending 1234 (that said, I'm not sure of the legality in collecting information by card number in this way).

I also appreciate the retailer loses the ability to effectively market to these people (e.g. clubcard vouchers on specific items, opt in email marketing, etc).

I always thought the goal was always to encourage loyalty. E.g. 'i have 50 supermarket points, if I spend another £50 here I get enough points for a free tin of beans, woohoo!'.

DullGreyGuy

Exodi said:

Undervalued said:

p00hsticks said:

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

 Say you bought a £20 toaster along with £100 of groceries. Bank statement then doesn't prove you bought a toaster at all.

They can usually track the sale on the retailer's sales system. On there it'll have a breakdown same as the receipt. 

Many years ago when I worked in retail I could track them off the date and total amount quite easily, unless there was a lot on that specific date on the same total price. Even then they presented as a scroll down list and you could usually find it off the last 4 card digits too. Or you could search for sales on the product code and date, that would pull them through also.

Some used to have the items scanning on the till overlaid over the cameras facing the tills too in real time so you could check everything down to non scans so if it was recent sale or an item scanned that they didn't recognise on the receipt you could usually figure it out for them usually with cctv. 

I can guarantee this isn't down to technology or inability to check sales which has no doubt progressed but for some other reason. 

That maybe so but if every customer with a return had lost their receipt and relied on Tesco to do this there would be a considerable overhead in staff time which ultimately has to be paid for somehow!

Even more so this day and age. If Tesco can send you emails in January telling you what were your top purchases for the previous year and exactly how many of each item you bought, why aren't they using the same technology to digitally hold your receipts in the same account and avoiding issues like this? They're retaining and using data digitally from your purchases when it suits them and relying on scraps of paper like its the year 2000 when they might need to give money back out. 

Surely all that that relies on you having and using a  club card though ?

Indeed.

Like any loyalty scheme you are choosing to opt in to a system that gives them vast amounts of information about you in exchange for certain benefits.

Alternatively you can forgo the benefits, pay cash and not reveal anything about yourself (apart from what is recorded on any CCTV) if you so choose.

Is that truly the reason why?

I'd have thought that it would be relatively easy to compile the similar vast amounts of information by card number instead of clubcard number. In a sense there's little difference between clubcard number 1234567890 and debit card number -1234.

That said, I'm not sure of the legality in collecting information in this way by card number.

I also appreciate the retailer loses the ability to effectively market to these people (e.g. clubcard vouchers on specific items, opt in email marketing, etc).

I always thought the primary goal was always to encourage loyalty (hence the name). E.g. 'i have 50 supermarket points, if I spend another £50 I get enough points for a free tin of beans, woohoo!'.

The main issues with payment card numbers is firstly most people have more than one and so they cannot associate the different purchases together if you use AmEx one day and your Visa Debit the next. Secondly, card numbers change so when you use your new Visa Debit you'd effectively be a brand new customer to them and it would appear the old one just stopped shopping there. 

Having a loyalty scheme firstly solves all those problems but also enables you to use the data to target marketing to that person... if someone is buying all male/for men toiletries for the last decade your mail shot promoting Tampax's new ultra comfort range probably aint going to generate too much take-up. But best of all, you can test your marketing theories and see the response rates to further refine future targeting.  

The point of them is to drive sales be that because someone wants to get the next free tin of beans or targeted marketing getting people to buy additional or higher level products

baser999

Forwandert said:

Undervalued said:

 Say you bought a £20 toaster along with £100 of groceries. Bank statement then doesn't prove you bought a toaster at all.

They can usually track the sale on the retailer's sales system. On there it'll have a breakdown same as the receipt. 

Many years ago when I worked in retail I could track them off the date and total amount quite easily, unless there was a lot on that specific date on the same total price. Even then they presented as a scroll down list and you could usually find it off the last 4 card digits too. Or you could search for sales on the product code and date, that would pull them through also.

Some used to have the items scanning on the till overlaid over the cameras facing the tills too in real time so you could check everything down to non scans so if it was recent sale or an item scanned that they didn't recognise on the receipt you could usually figure it out for them usually with cctv. 

I can guarantee this isn't down to technology or inability to check sales which has no doubt progressed but for some other reason. 

But it really shouldn’t be down to the retailer to prove you’ve bought it. Keep the receipts. You want it replaced or your money back, then prove you bought it