Jacket Receipt - Elesean Gordon-Fuller

Elesean Gordon-Fuller is a 2012 graduate of the University of the West Indies, Mona- CARIMAC. She has a passion for excellent customer service and an interest in issues affecting consumers. Send your by emails to eleseang@yahoo.com.

Have you ever come home from a day of shopping and attempted to account for all your purchases with the use of your receipts? If you are like me who keeps receipts to track price changes or for an exchange just in case, then you would appreciate a receipt that is properly labeled. These days however, a fully labeled receipt is getting harder to come by. When the issue of ‘jacket receipts’ first came to the fore, most Chinese wholesales were accused of issuing receipts with ‘so so’ price and no description of the items.

Many persons would be surprised to know that even supermarket chains that we consider to be established entities are guilty of this and I do have proof. But again, how can I even prove to you who are reading this article that I got that receipt from a particular supermarket? Now, do you see my point? Had this been a case of food poisoning or worse I am sure that the place that I purchased from would never own the receipt. Their first defense of course would be, “It doesn’t have my business’ name on it”. Never mind that none of their receipts do.

Now can you imagine my frustration when I had to exchange an item and I made the discovery that I had one of these ‘jacket’ receipts? I heaped all of my ‘jacket’ receipts with the intent to find the owner. I went back to the store where I made the purchase and for about fifteen or twenty minutes, along with the merchant, sifted through the receipts to determine which belonged to his business. Now this turned out to be a long process. I was forced to recall all of the items that I purchased in that store on the day in question while I waited for him to try to match the item and price with the limited information on the receipt. Finally we came across the item and then I was able to do the exchange. Bingo! He was indeed the true owner of this ‘jacket’ receipt.

As consumers, we too have a responsibility to avoid making purchases at such known stores where accountability cannot be proven. But then, you’ll never know until you have that receipt in hand. No longer should businesses be allowed to operate in our country without standing by their products by owning the receipts that they issue.

Below are receipts are from three business places. Note the similarity in format. Find the owner.