We’re told over and over by the bank, credit card companies, insurance companies and so on to "go green" and have our statements, billing notices and so on all delivered via email instead of traditional postal paper mail, and many people do (not so much for the ‘green’ reason but rather because it’s just easier to deal with that stuff in email).
The short answer as to whether email legally counts as official documentation is no, but with a condition.
Email itself does not count as official documentation, but the information contained within it does.
Confused? I’ll explain.
You buy an item from an online vendor like Amazon. Right after the purchase you realize you bought the wrong thing, and request a refund. You get the refund. However during this whole process, never once was any paper sent to you and everything was electronically handled.
The emails you receive confirming the purchase and then refund afterward by themselves do not count as official documentation, but the order and transaction numbers contained within those emails do.
When you placed your order, you received an order number. If you paid with PayPal, you received a transaction number (and possibly another order number) from them as well. On refund, the vendor will state the order is canceled for the same order number, and PayPal will send another transaction number stating the money has been sent back to you (when you paid, that was the first transaction, and the refund back to you was the second transaction).
The order number and transaction numbers are the things that count as official documentation.
With the Amazon order number, that can be tracked back to the company, to your name, to when you bought the item, to whether you received it or not, etc. The PayPal transaction numbers tie in directly to your bank or credit card and can be tracked that way as official proof that you paid for an item and received a refund afterward.
Order and transaction numbers are how businesses talk to each other these days. You can’t just call up a business to complain and say "I received this email on X date and [blah blah blah]…" Stop right there, because that doesn’t count. Instead, you should have said, "Yes, I’d like to inquire about an issue concerning order number [order number here]." That gives the company you’re calling something to work with, look up, and service you correctly.
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Good Factoid and a good call on the legal distinction.
After all, an email is just a Document– and anyone with Word can create a Document.
Never delete an email until you are sure that everything works.
Same applies when you make a payment (Like your Mortgage or a Credit Card) Keep Track of the TRANSACTION #’s In some cases, the Transaction/Confirmation Number ONLY appears on the website when you do the PAY transaction– but NOT in the email confirmation. The email just tells you ‘Thank you for your Payment’.
If something goes wrong and you never recorded the Transaction #– the Customer Rep will Not Help you because their system works/searches by Transaction #.