Always demand a full proof of payment from a service provider, especially if you intend to claim a refund from a third party later. And no, it’s not legally acceptable for a retailer to insist on emailing it to you.
“Many retailers refuse to give out receipts and now will only email after capturing all your data — surely this is illegal?” I was asked on X recently. “I have no guarantees of my data protection and surely they should by law provide an actual receipt?”
Yes, says Queen Munyai, CEO of the Consumer Goods & Services Ombud. “The Consumer Protection Act states that ‘a supplier of goods or services must provide a written record of each transaction to the consumer to whom any goods or services are supplied’.
“So unless a consumer consents to receiving a receipt electronically after the transaction has taken place, the supplier is required to provide a written or printed receipt at the time of purchase.”
When I hear people in shops declining a receipt or see them drop their receipt into the nearest bin I want to scream: “You’re throwing away your right to recourse!” That’s because I receive a steady stream of emails from people whose right to a refund or some other form of recourse has been dashed because they don’t have any proof of when or where they bought the product in question.
It appears that Pedro played into the hands of fraudsters posing as official Qatar agents to get credit card details from passengers seeking refunds.
Pedro of Cape Town has a receipt story with many twists and turns. Two years ago, a Qatar Airways flight he was on was delayed, touching down at London’s Heathrow airport more than two hours late, so he missed his connecting flight on another airline. At Qatar’s help desk he was told that as all the hotel rooms that the airline uses for delay-related stayovers were already taken, he should find his own accommodation and transport and then claim those expenses from the airline later.
“And they gave me what turned out to be the wrong email address for that purpose,” he told me. Having searched for the “correct” address, he said, he was asked to supply his card details and receipts, which he did. But months later he was told that without “proper” receipts, he could not be reimbursed, hence he lost out on R11,000.
“I implore you to warn other naive travellers out there who find themselves in the same situation, to demand that the help desk finds accommodation for you,” he said.
Pedro told me he was no longer seeking compensation, but I contacted the airline to ask whether it did sometimes expect passengers who had missed their connections and were forced to overnight at their transit hubs to make their own arrangements. And, of course, I also wanted to know why Pedro hadn’t been refunded his expenses.
Turns out it was a far from straightforward query. Qatar’s public relations person asked for more time to investigate as there were many irregularities in the email correspondence. When I finally got a response, it was extremely short and didn’t answer my questions: the email address that Pedro had found — qatarairwayscomplaints@gmail.com — was not an official Qatar Airways address.
“Qatar Airways is in a direct dialogue with the customer and is working to address this matter. [The airline] complies with industry practices and regulations relating to international air travel, and as with other airlines, also has its terms and conditions of sales and conditions of carriage policy,” the PR said.
“Qatar Airways urges customers to send emails only to official email addresses — an @qatarairways.com address.”
It was then that I had another look at the emails Pedro exchanged with a woman whose signature claimed she was a Qatar “senior customer service agent”. Apart from that red-flag Gmail address, the language was off. “We sincerely apologise for the inconveniences faced. Your complaints has been checked and confirmed for a reimbursement (sic).”
And then he was asked for all his credit card details, including the CVV code. It appears that Pedro played into the hands of fraudsters posing as official Qatar agents to get credit card details from passengers seeking refunds. Armed with a CVV number, they can make purchases on a card.
The real Qatar Airways has offered to refund Pedro his taxi fares — about R1,000 — but not his hotel accommodation, as he hadn’t asked for a formal receipt and only had his credit card statement as evidence of payment. But Qatar has also offered him a $200 (about R3,800) voucher as a “gesture of goodwill”, valid for a year.
In similar vein, a Discovery Health member contacted me to say that the medical scheme had refused to reimburse her the medical costs she incurred after breaking her wrist while holidaying in Portugal late last year, because she was only issued a receipt and not a formal invoice by the hospital in Cascais.
“I phoned Discovery before my departure to ensure that I was adequately covered and the consultant assured me I was,” she told me.
Discovery Health’s chief commercial officer Deon Kotze told me the member’s R2,100 international claim was settled, but she was only refunded R133 because the international travel benefit rules make members responsible for the first €100 (about R2,000) of an international claim. So this receipt-related complaint also prompted an unexpected consumer warning. As always, the devil is in the small print!
• Contact Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via email consumer@knowler.co.za or on X (Twitter) @wendyknowler
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