Source : THE AGE NEWS
I’m waiting in line at JB Hi-Fi Albury to buy a cord to connect my phone to the car so we can listen to podcasts on our road trip. “I’ll just grab your phone number so we can send you a digital receipt,” the cashier says. “Um, no thanks,” I say.
The cashier looks at me as though I’ve just told her I’m into harpooning whales. Who would turn down a simple opportunity to save the world (and whales) through one less printed receipt?
They’ve got your number … unless you refuse to give it to them. Credit: Getty Images/iStock
I used to be liberal with handing out my number, like some female Lothario, at whatever shop I patronised. Loyalty card? Yes, please! Here’s my phone number, address and blood type.
But as an ever-increasing wave of advertising finds its way into messages, emails and sometimes even calls, as well as the slew of privacy concerns such as cyberhacks and facial recognition technology, I’m warier than ever.
If not handing my phone number out to every shop where I make a $20 purchase is the hill I’m going to die on, then call me Napoleon. I get it: digital receipts are better for the environment, not to mention my inability to locate a given receipt at the bottom of a million shopping bags.
But the whole greenwashing thing gets my goat. We know by now that our personal information is gold to retailers. Without them explicitly acknowledging how they’re using that information, you know they’ll be texting you relentlessly tailored advertisements aimed at your predilection for portable karaoke machines.
PwC’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer survey found that 96 per cent of people said protecting consumer data was the most critical factor in building confidence in a company. On the other hand, consumers have become far more interested in companies making positive changes around environmental concerns such as climate change, so it’s a double-edged sword.
“Saving the environment” by sending you a digital receipt is a sneaky way of turning transactions into “relationships”.
Maybe I’m just getting old and cagey, but I don’t want to start a relationship with retailers; I can barely commit to the same toothpaste brand. Haven’t they learnt from random dudes at PCYC Blue Light discos that asking for your number off the bat isn’t the sexiest way to get things going?
A relationship with a retailer is not a normal relationship anyway, unless your partner intermittently announces ways they can improve your life and/or wardrobe at a 40 per cent discount.
You know they only want you for your hard-earned bucks, so it’s no wonder trust has eroded. I want to play hard to get, not give it up in every transaction in-store. Social media already knows me better than I know myself, sending ads for local skin cancer clinics before I can Google: “Mole, shaped like Australia, normal?”
Maybe I would be more receptive if they printed warning labels on receipts about the dangers of excess rubbish choking up the waterways, a beached whale slathered in discarded receipts. But I need to know that they’ll delete my number immediately and not text me like some desperate date asking how I think they performed today.
Boundaries are important in a healthy relationship: being able to say “no” without getting the stink eye from the 21-year-old cashier.
I get it: retailers have needs, too. They need loyal customers to maintain their bottom line. But retailers, especially the large ones, would do well to get better at wooing us. Relationships take time and effort, and above all, trust. Show us how you’re personally campaigning to save the whales instead of demanding my number at the cash register.
We all want the same things in life: the occasional USB-C cord, more whales, and not being pestered in texts and emails to secure our ongoing commitment. We’ve all dated people like that, and it never ends well.
I walk out of JB Hi-Fi without a receipt, digital or otherwise. And, as if in some caper-filled romcom, I’m stopped and asked for one at the exit. I should have told them I can’t stop because I’m off to harpoon some whales.
