Brandane
Legendary Member
- Location
- Costa Clyde
I feel for the shop staff who had to then replace trolley loads of refused shopping back on the shelves!I feel for those who did their grocery shop, bagged up then were refused.
I feel for the shop staff who had to then replace trolley loads of refused shopping back on the shelves!I feel for those who did their grocery shop, bagged up then were refused.
I can remember the "double crunch" noise that those made. I knew something was missing in my life.Most staff would never have seen one, yet alone know how to use it.
The carbon copy was always terrible anyway.
We're so vulnerable to a failure in the technology we us and criminals are getting so good at catching us out you are without a doubt right.
It's a radical solution, but I think it might just work.
A mate of mine has fallen victim to criminal activity on his TSB account twice this year - including the recent and apparently on going frauds following their IT update that don't seem to be getting anywhere the media coverage you might expect.
He's only just got his money back from the last time and then couldn't use his card on Friday. He now carries some actual money, just in case!
Could this still be going on? I had my MasterCard refused at Tesco at lunchtime today. Fortunately I'd twenty quid in my pocket for cover.
I feel for those who did their grocery shop, bagged up then were refused. Yes they could go to a cash machine but the queues were probably long and frozen stuff warming up which is not good.
A related IT/Tills anecdote.
My wife used to run a visitor centre that was hooked up to the main offices 50 miles away. All the tills, computers, EPOS systems and what have you were controlled centrally. One day she was told IT were doing a systems update overnight and the centre must not, under any circumstances, switch on their computers or tills until expressly told to do so by IT. Next morning they opened up at 8 and waited for IT to give them the all-clear. By 9, with the first tour buses arriving, there was still no word so the first of many telephone calls were made but the people in IT responsible for the work were unavailable. All that could be done were cash sales with staff writing each sale in a book, writing out manual receipts where requested and using the cash drawers only. Finally, around mid-day after almost 800 visitors, she managed to get through to IT -
"Can we switch our computers on yet?"
"Of course, the update was finished at 4.30am"
"Why didn't you inform us?"
"We did"
"You didn't"
"We did"
"You didn't"
"We did, we sent you an email"
Long pause.
"You silly sods"
That exact scenario happened just a few weeks ago downunder, Australian Woolworths (they're half of our supermarket duopoly!) tills went kaput nationwide. Nobody could pay anything whether you held cash or not, everybody got shooed out of the stores and the shutters came down.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/woolworths-outage-tills-shutdown-across-australia-39895644.html
I've still got my coupons from, if I remember correctly, 1973. They are identical to the WWII ones.Pah, you are just a child.
I remember the issue of petrol coupons in the Arab Israeli war in the early 1970s.
They were given out as a precaution, but people were never asked to use them.
When ours arrived, an elderly relative nipped upstairs and returned with some coupons he'd kept since the Second World War (or just after).
Crafty old bugger was hoping they would still be valid and he would get twice as much petrol.