Evri’s decision to switch paper receipts to digital has sparked frustration amongst indie retailers, who argue it will slow down transactions at the till, said The Fed.
The new move, revealed in emails sent out to Evri retailers, requires the manual input of customers’ details when parcels are being dropped off.
It follows a “successful trial” and aims to “improve the customer experience, reduce the millions of paper receipts printed each year, and drive us towards our net-zero target”, said an Evri spokesperson.
Mo Razzaq, national president of The Fed, said the new process would “take more time at the till point”.
“In a busy store this could cause chaos, with queues building if you have to input a customer’s email address. We have to think about the negative impact of the service we provide to our other customers,” said Razzaq.
Others said the change would cause clogged up till points and require additional labour, reported by our sister title, The Grocer.
Evri told Convenience Store it would auto-fill email addresses wherever possible, so there would be “no difference in time taken”.
It said many customers enter an email address when generating a QR code at home. “We’re implementing a solution to auto-fill the email address so there won’t be a need for shop staff to enter email addresses,” it added.
In instances where the email address does not appear automatically, Evri claimed the time entering an email address is “approximately the same as writing out the number of parcels and date on the current paper receipt”.
Moreover, Razzaq said the courier company has reduced its bonus payments for indie retailers: “With Evri announcing record profits and acknowledging the key role that retailers play in this, it’s us that are being forced to do more, for less.”
Evri commented: “For ParcelShop owners, our continued business and volume growth continues to offer them increased earning potential, as we have seen in the growth of parcel volumes they handle over the last few years and the positive impact on footfall in their stores as a result.”
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