Working in Kings Hill on Thurs, posh area, fancied a cold drink on the way home, saw a 'little Waitrose'.
Can of posh fizzy orange 70p. Two checkouts, one broken, one with an elderly couple who were obviously feeding the 5,000.
Spotted the self service checkouts that were empty, all six of them.
None of them took cash!
What genius thought that one up?
I doubt there are very few if any typical Waitrose customers who don't carry plastic nowadays.
It's a matter of personal choice but I never go out of the house without plastic, although I also carry cash as a back up in case the card facility is unavailable. The only time I've ever used cash in self service checkouts in for breaking up ?20's out of ATMs.
Cash checkouts can be a bother as they need emptying and topping up and so increase staff costs and the note slots can catch people out - who ever designed the ones in Morrisons and ok'd them must have been drunk or on drugs at the time.
michael adams
...
The Morrisons' machines are the crappiest machines next to B&Q - except for one feature:
The have a coin hopper on top that you can dump handfuls into at once - it's a great way to get rid of all the accumulated changed and you get
100% return on value unlike the coin-changers that some places have in the entrances.
I think the official line is that the checkouts are more reliable if they don't have to handle coins and notes. But I have long suspected it is an indirect way of discouraging some people from shopping in Waitrose. People who want to use cash might well be happier in another store - eg Lidl where they simply don't accept credit cards?
And I've not been to Kings Hill* but doubt it's really posh as I know from family that there's an ADSA there :)
*well not unless you count RAF West Malling for free barbeques and baseball from the USAF and later for flying gliders
but who wants to get out their credit card to pay for their lunchtime sandwich and drink?
which IME makes up the bulk of users of self serve supermarket tills, regardless of the colour of the advertising material
tim
They do in Scotland, as do Aldi.
Regards
Syke
They certainly accept my debit cards in england
Do Lidl not take cards?
Our nearest Lidl (Wilmslow, Cheshire) won't accept credit cards but debit cards are OK.
They take debit cards in Scotland.
IME debit yes but credit no
Very possibly something which varies with location. I've not taken a census but my impression is an awful lot of people use cards when buying their lunch in Waitrose in Stratford and the majority at Canary Wharf and Oxford Street. Same at M&S. And increasingly with contactless cards (probably helped by the way they are accepted on tubes/trains/buses, with capping, so people are switching from their Oyster PAYG cards). Even Tesco in Hackney seems to see no shortage of people using the self-service tills which are "card only" when (as is often the case) the cash counter/reader is borked :)
Me - it's as easy as getting a note out, and means no faffing with change. If ICBA to do contactless, it would be even easier.
YCBA to do something easier? Strange...
On 28 Mar 2015, "tim....." grunted:
Honestly, I can barely remember the last time I used cash in a supermarket. I just hand over the plastic every time. Even if it's a low value transaction - I'd then almost certainly be using the self-service machine anyway.
Well why not, TBH? Who wants to have to get their wallet out to find a fiver, and then end up with a bulging pocket full of shrapnel? The only reason I wouldn't hand over a card for small amount is that you feel a bit of a tool for asking, and some shops don't accept it anyway.
I get paid by bank transfer, so any cash I need comes out of a machine. When my wallet's empty, I have to go back to an ATM, so I'd rather pay using plastic whenever I can. (No doubt TMH gets paid in cash a lot, hence the different way of looking at it).
I'm sure cash transactions will become increasingly unusual as contactless payment systems become ever more widespread. Personally, I'm not there yet; seems a bit dodgy to me and I won't use it. But my kids call me a luddite...
Think you'll find that changed some months ago. But they always took debit cards - which take just as long to use.
Contactless ones should be just as quick as paying cash and getting change.
Ta. That'll save me having to remember to pull out a debit card (and increasingly every little bit of memory counts).
An ex transport for london manager perhaps? Brian
Well if I get cash out it means I will have to make a special trip to somewhere with a cash machine later, far easier to use plastic.
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