Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpfu
theverge.com
theverge.com
The first was very recent when I visited a Whole Foods in-person (the reason was because the online Amazon had more-or-less deliberately forced my bank to fraud-lock my debit card.) When I checked out at the register, data on the customer-facing display whizzed by me as I became dizzy, and a dialog asking me "How would you like your receipt" vanished within 300ms, and a paper receipt was spit out.
I challenged the checker who said "gee sorry... that's just what we default to." but it should've been customer choice (I wanted an electronic receipt in the app.)
The checker insisted they couldn't back up and issue an e-receipt so I asked for a full refund. Having secured the refund, I said "OK ring it all up again!" and sure enough I got all the goods with an e-receipt, and my preference was locked in (but I did not endear myself to any staff at that juncture.)
The other receipt weirdness was years ago. I'd made a large purchase from Amazon online in the normal way, and I had reason to go back and find my receipt. For some reason, had no access to that account where I'd ordered it, but I thought to myself, "self, surely there is a receipt copy in my email, which I never delete!"
Sure enough, my email notifications had extremely scant details on any order, and no "receipt" level of data was to be found. I reprimanded myself for losing access to the account, and I resolved that all big-ticket purchases required a print-out and download of the receipt so that I could pry it out of Amazon's hot little hands before I needed it.
This is just iterating on a theme, and the theme is walled-garden lockins. The more they can entice us back into their app/website, the better for them.
The most peculiar thing is that the "return receipt" and the final receipt did not match the ground-truth of the items I actually arrived home with. Because I actually did need to come back and return an item that was completely defective, and careful scrutiny of the two receipts indicated that the two store managers had not correctly rung me up on that second round. And the discrepancy directly affected one of the items I had intended to return.
I was so livid about that. I don't know if that was an honest error or some kind of "screw you guy" move on their part. I decided ultimately to take the loss, and donate the unwanted, non-defective stuff.
The entire sequence left a very bad taste in my mouth, and I know they don't really want me back, and I don't want to return anyway. The manager did offer to '86 me because I'd argued so vociferously. When I called into my bank for a calmer chat, I told the bank lady that IMHO, the entire haul was stolen merchandise, because Whole Foods didn't want my business, and I should never have taken their goods, even if I paid for them, they were obtained unfairly and I should've walked out, empty-handed. I nearly donated all of the shelf-stable food on that grounds, but I was hungry.
I spent quite a long time at home in my bathroom just shouting "BEZOS" into my toilet...