A question for the masses…

Let’s see where this takes us.

“Overall, 88.9% of all households owned a personal computer, and 81.4% of all households had Internet access.” (2005) ¹

If 81% of household computers have Internet access (and we can assume this number is higher as of today), we can also assume that a very large percentage of U.S. households also have at least one e-mail address. E-Mail is as much a part of daily life for the average American today as snail-mail was 20+ years ago.

A good portion of brick and mortar retailers now collect personal information, including e-mail addresses, to “better serve their customers.” Online retailers require an e-mail address to complete a transaction.

So, my question is..

Why haven’t brick and mortar stores gone paperless unless by request?

Near the end of my time working in retail the company I worked for stopped keeping paper records internally but still gave out receipts to the customers - a half-assed step in the right direction.

E-Mailing a receipt to each customer seems not only more responsible, but also more convenient. It would allow less room for lost receipts while saving paper.

How say you?

[Semantic side-note - Generalizing, there are two groups of e-mail users: tech-savvy and not tech-savvy. Many tech-savvy users will set up a second e-mail address that they use for questionable sites (e.g. sites that will more than likely sell the address to “spam” lists). The non tech-savvy users don’t usually care and assume that it’s just “part of the job” of having an e-mail address. I mention this since the techie users will immediately complain about the likelihood of spam … I say set up a second e-mail address for receipts using a service like GMail. Report spam if you get it, bozo.]