The Covid crisis then the guerre in Ukraine have come, for two years, to superinfect the stresses of consumers. Even more on the quantity and price of products and services than on their quality. The evolution of the ordinary family market, everyone can experience it in the supermarkets, in the long queues of public and private services: the human response to consumer demands no longer follows.
The consumer or user is referred to sites, QR codes, telephone messaging. Banks, insurance, post office, telephone operators, rail, EDF… And unsurpassable heights of computerized stupidity: to obtain vehicle registration documents or civil status documents, everyone is supposed to be a computer scientist! For their physical needs, the consumer discovers the increase in energy and food prices (+15%), the impoverishment of shelves, products that have not been replaced or expired, in particular the serious episodic disappearance of drugs essential.
It is in this context, so tense, that the abolition of receipts is announced. Initially scheduled for 1is January 2023, the end of automatic printing of receipts will apply, in France, from 1is April (!) 2023. This is what a decree published in the Official Journal of December 15, 2022 provides. The official communication of the government indicates that “this change is made within the framework of the fight once morest waste (sic) and substances dangerous to health”. This specifically concerns bank card tickets produced in sales areas and in establishments open to the public, tickets issued by automatic machines, bank card tickets, etc. But – we are told – to obtain a printed receipt, the consumer will now have to expressly request it from the merchant or invoke an exception such as receipts relating to the purchase of certain goods, in particular household appliances, computer equipment, telephone devices, for example (see list atarticle D211-6 of the Consumer Code). And bank card tickets relating to certain operations canceled or subject to a credit will also always be systematically printed, as well as tickets issued by machines whose storage and presentation are necessary to benefit from a product or service.
The ticket will be replaced by a dematerialization by sending by SMS, by email, a special banking application of the buyer, a QR code giving access to a Web page. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the collection of data from the buyer is subject to his explicit consent. In short, a huge muddle, an idiotic and odious measure. Idiot because there are infinitely more serious “waste” and “pollution”. And odious, because the till receipt, at a time when more and more consumers were within one euro, enabled them to check whether there had been any error in the products or the prices entered (this is happened to each of us), which allows you to make an immediate claim, at the cash desk, the only one that can succeed. The ticket is the simplest proof that there has been a purchase and therefore a contract. And this makes it possible to claim in the event of a hidden defect, including on food products, and makes it possible to effectively apply the traceability of dangerous products and their withdrawal and recall, if necessary, in the interest of the security and consumer health (according to EC Regulation 178/2002).
Impoverishing consumers is impoverishing families and impoverishing the whole nation. When a nation is impoverished, the popular classes rebel in riots which, in general, fail (yellow vests from the beginning). But when the declassed middle classes join the popular classes, then these are revolutions that succeed. But sometimes also go wrong.
