Strange Receipt Problems?

Hello!
Recently, a friend of mine moved to a new computer, and didn’t save his Scrivener receipt/code/etc. He talked to a Literature & Latte staff member to try and retrieve his information, and asked me for help since I’m the one who bought it for him. I purchased it, then just gave him the receipt. (This was in July last year) Strangely, neither of use could find anything, anywhere. We looked for it in our gmails as well as through the feature in “General Support” to look for your info via email. We looked through/for his email, both of my emails, and my parents’ emails just in case (both each email’s archives as well as the “info via email” feature for each of these email addresses). Nothing. I eventually found the chat where I gave him the receipt, so now we have this receipt (code blurred for forum, but I can give the original privately to a moderator): [link removed by moderator]

Unfortunately, this seems to be all the evidence we have of any purchase, which is VERY strange, considering that I both purchased it for myself (I can give a screenshot of it open if needed, or any other screenshots that may better prove that I own it) as well as for him, yet any email confirmations or receipts are all just gone. I ALWAYS save my receipts in a folder in my email, but it just seems to have disappeared. We both have gmails, so we thought it might be a problem with that, particularly considering I was looking for another email conversation yesterday that I KNOW I have in my gmail, but it wasn’t anywhere either. While I think we’ll be able to get his code back (which is great), I would like to figure out where my Scrivener information went, since I love Scrivener and will definitely want to be installing it again the next time I get a computer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you
-Ann E. Nordman

I couldn’t speculate on where the email went in your Gmail accounts, I haven’t had a Gmail account in around ten years and it was markedly less complicated back then.

But I can say that even if you do lose the email you can always try and retrieve it from the system, or failing that, contact us for help directly through our tech support address.

As for what I do, I keep a database of all my software purchases (using a program called 1Password), including order numbers, date of purchase, the registration info I provided, everything needed to unlock it and so forth. Email usually has that stuff, but as you note it’s not a stable storage mechanism, especially when it is all stored online through a site that can change how it files e-mail as time goes by. And if that gets lost, not every company will have a way of getting in contact for retrieving purchase information, never mind those that disappear over time, having gone out of business or whatever.