You may also often experience it but never thought about what this is done or lazy to ask. Do you know if the reasons behind it turn out to be less fun? According to The Independent, viewing boarding passes before shopping transactions are applied so stores can reap more profits.
Martin Lewis, author of Money Saving Expert conducted research on this policy by visiting a number of shops at the airport. According to him, a number of shops have different rules. When visiting duty-free outlets it is said if boarding passes are needed to control the purchase of alcohol and cigarettes. While in other stores, buying alcohol and cigarettes does not need to show boarding passes.
It is said if giving the boarding pass to the cashier is not a mandatory rule. But this is done by many stores to see where buyers will go. According to The Independet, a number of stores such as Boots earned VAT as much as 20% on customers who will travel to Europe. It is not known if this rule applies to all airport shops.
"The reason they asked you to show boarding passes and you went outside the EU is so they can claim their VAT back now I believe they should tell you about it but they do not do it," Martin said.
This fact is not realized by most people. Therefore, enough customers are angry when knowing if showing boarding pass is not mandatory and can be done for the benefit of the store itself. Knowing that, some customers at Heathrow London airport were rumored to have protested in front of the store because they are reluctant to show boarding pass.
Now that we know this fact, we know that handing over the boarding pass when buying items at the store is not an obligation or for security reasons. So you can refuse if you're really bothered by the procedure. It is also suggested Martin Lewis in his book. According to him, it can be one way to change the wrong system that is now running.