Has anyone noticed that store receipts are getting longer? Yesterday I purchased toothpaste and mechanical pencil lead and my checkout receipt was 16 inches long. Maybe I should feel privileged that my local drug store is offering a free 8×10 digital photo if I spend $20.00 or savings points to use on more than twenty seven hair care brand names. However, the irony has not been lost on me that stores are using voluminous amounts of ticker tape to send messages promoting responsible recycling and earth-friendly products.
Using the medium of checkout receipts to communicate with the consumer is nothing new. Thanks to National Cash Register’s technology – that enabled stores to print on both sides of the register tape – merchants have been putting advertisements and coupons on the back of their receipts for years.
PCC Natural Markets, a Seattle-based organic grocery store and co-op began using registers just over two years ago that print on both sides of the receipt tape and reportedly cut their grocery chain’s use of receipt paper by up to 35 percent. That amounts to hundreds of miles in receipt tape each year. Chalk one up for communication ingenuity and a great use of resources and available white space. While I may grumble at the price of fresh produce during the winter months I can turn my receipt over and be consoled by the coupon for a $5.99 car wash or a buy-one-get-one-free tanning session.
Large conglomerates have taken communication to the next level by printing additional information on the bottoms of their receipt. Case in point: besides the date, time and items purchased my cashier –Whitney – was happy to serve me; I have the opportunity to win a Caribbean cruise; I’ve been invited to participate in a valuable survey; I am pre-qualified for a credit card; I may call the store manager with questions or comments and my opinion counts. Still, something must be said about waiting longer for a two-foot receipt to wind its way out of the cash register than it does to ring up the handful of items purchased in the first place.
To be fair, not every retailer is bombarding their clientele with lengthy receipts. Digital gas pumps still ask to print receipt at all. A ‘yes’ answer results in a tiny summary of purchase not much bigger than a standard business card; no hype, no gimmicks. Other companies have set a paperless precedent with online billing. With a few computer clicks the customer can remit that same bill online. Not a scrap of paper ever exchanges hands. It would seem that supermarkets, pharmacies and the like would follow suit and phase out physical receipts but that concept is still easier said than done. Aside from the fact that not everyone has access to a computer is the monumental task of devising a way to email a great volume of store receipts securely so as to safeguard the consumers’ personal data. And what of the customer who prefers to pay with cash?
In the not-too-distant past a stray register receipt might have slipped out of someone’s bag and fluttered around the store parking lot like a displaced goose feather. Now a discarded serpentine receipt writhes its way across the asphalt until it reaches a grocery cart and coils around the wheels like a boa constrictor. Considering the dumb luck that at least one out of four shopping carts has wheels that are already dysfunctional, jamming them up with paper just adds insult to injury.
Heaven forbid that same receipt should encounter a rain storm. I once rushed across the parking lot from my vehicle to the grocery store in a downpour and began shaking off my umbrella when a woman tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” she began awkwardly. “I believe you have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”
“Really?” I craned my head around to look behind me. A first glance it certainly did look like TP on my heel but a closer look revealed a soggy advertisement for a $1 savings on a dozen doughnuts. I took the receipt into the store and held it under the powerful hand drier on the bathroom wall. The doughnuts were delicious.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/retailreport/2004474358_retailreport13.html
http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/why-paper-receipts-wont-die/
