Question about Chip & Signature credit cards
- Thread starter Mr. Laser Beam
- Start date
In the UK, despite CHIP and PIN (and increasingly contactless) being more and more popular, some debit/credit cards do still have embossed names and numbers (certainly RBS Group and Santander Group cards do, and IIRC HSBC/First Direct as well), I've hadn't seen the 'chunk-chunk' manual impression method be used 'live' in years, in fact I haven't seen the 'impressors' in about 10 years (I'll have worked in retail for about 14 years in October).
Most of my cards have the raised numbers and letters. I found it rather novel when I got my first (and so far only) completely flat replacement card... just last year.
And there's an old-school menswear store in San Francisco that still does the chuck-chuck thing with your card on an itemized receipt (for the vintage experience, I guess), though they swipe the card to actually make the charge.
Kor
And there's an old-school menswear store in San Francisco that still does the chuck-chuck thing with your card on an itemized receipt (for the vintage experience, I guess), though they swipe the card to actually make the charge.
Kor
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When it involves basic math, yes it is a problem. Just yesterday I was at a fast food place with my parents, and the bill was $4.51. My mom gave them a $5 bill and a penny, but just after the kid rang it up for just $5. Took them 10 minutes to explain to him why they shouldn't get 49 cents back.
But if we lived in a cashless society, this wouldn't even have come up at all in the first place.
Kor
Funny... I still know how to wash clothes without a machine, and I do all my sewing by hand.
It's a problem when you give somebody a particular denomination of currency and they don't have the first clue how to count out the change if they don't have a calculator handy. It's a problem if they don't know how to calculate a discount without a calculator. Customers don't have all day to wait for the calculator to be fixed so they can finish the transaction.
It looks you're suggesting that if an electronic till or calculator isn't available, the clerk just shouldn't bother making change or giving the discount. That's really not good business practice.
"You mean you're not giving me a one-cent tip?"
Have you ever read The Handmaid's Tale? Early in the book, there's a brief scene where it's shown just how suddenly a person's independence can be taken away in a cashless society if a fascist government decides to do so.But if we lived in a cashless society, this wouldn't even have come up at all in the first place.
Kor
If we had such a government, I'd be more inclined to pay attention. But neither of our countries do, so
.Yes, the future is always in question. But it's hardly likely.
Besides, if a government ever got that bad, they could just as easily interfere in an economy with cash as one without it.
In the novel there's a part where the protagonist (before she's caught and sent to the Red Centre for training as a Handmaid) tries to buy a package of cigarettes. She's got money in her account, but the card won't go through. Later she finds out from her female friend that ALL cards with the letter "F" (for female) have stopped working. Any woman with a husband or boyfriend could transfer control of her money to him, but single, unattached women were in big trouble. Suddenly they couldn't buy food, pay rent... nothing. And then later they were rounded up and sent to either the Red Centre, the "colonies" (as slave labor, cleaning up toxic waste), Jezebel's (an illicit brothel), or some older ones would have become Aunts (the women who indoctrinated the Handmaids) or Marthas (the maids and cooks). The book also mentioned Econowives, but didn't really say much about them; they were married women who were presumably male domestic servants' wives.
No, our two countries aren't like that. Yet. The way some politicians carry on, it seems they would like such a society.
Yes, well, if The Handmaid's Tale ever becomes reality, I'll be sure to stand up and take notice. But until such time I think I'll leave my tinfoil hat at home and unworn, thankyouverymuch.
My basic point is that an entirely cashless society is not a good thing.
^ It would help said point if you gave sources that aren't, you know, FICTIONAL.
Well whatever they'd like, society seems to want the opposite. Cashless currency is moving gradually away from central control, not towards it. First back substitutes like PayPal where you can store, spend and receive money external to your bank account, then decentralised 'private' currencies like Bitcoin. I'd argue that in the long term governments have greater control over cash than electronic money.
I never claimed that Margaret Atwood's novel was anything but fiction. However, the way some politicians act, they do give the impression that they wouldn't mind using the novel as a blueprint to create a society like the Republic of Gilead.^ It would help said point if you gave sources that aren't, you know, FICTIONAL.
At the time the novel was written, there wasn't one aspect of it that wasn't doable even then - 30 years ago. How much easier would it be now, when we're even more accepting of turning more of our lives over to computer-based management and control?
Are there many places in the Great White North that don't have an electronic till? I can't remember if I have ever seen a till that doesn't automatically count up the price and subtract discounts and then tells the cashier what the change would be if the customer had paid in cash.
Funny... I still know how to wash clothes without a machine, and I do all my sewing by hand.
It's a problem when you give somebody a particular denomination of currency and they don't have the first clue how to count out the change if they don't have a calculator handy. It's a problem if they don't know how to calculate a discount without a calculator. Customers don't have all day to wait for the calculator to be fixed so they can finish the transaction.
It looks you're suggesting that if an electronic till or calculator isn't available, the clerk just shouldn't bother making change or giving the discount. That's really not good business practice.
"You mean you're not giving me a one-cent tip?"
Have you ever read The Handmaid's Tale? Early in the book, there's a brief scene where it's shown just how suddenly a person's independence can be taken away in a cashless society if a fascist government decides to do so.
But most peoples wages are paid directly into a bank account, a Government could just as easily interfere in a bank preventing people from getting it's money out. During the Greek Economic crisis weren't limits impossed on how much people could withdraw?
And ow many places these days don't have an electronic register, how many places don't use barcodes for the till to scan. Sure some smaller independant shops might have an older till and use a price gun to sticker up products for manual entry but I suspect they would be the exception rather than the rule.
Exactly.
Some people do not get direct deposit. Some businesses and agencies actually refuse to do that. One that I deal with - that mostly serves senior citizens, but also younger disabled people - require that transactions either be in person, or by cheque or credit card (the credit card number given over the telephone). They simply refuse to do anything online, which is incredibly frustrating to people who are accustomed to online billing and payments, online banking, and so on. In this day and age, it seems so ridiculous to have to write a cheque for $3, but in a situation where cash isn't acceptable and you have no guarantees about how physically secure your credit card information would be there...
Anyway, my point with the example from the novel I mentioned is that the government didn't stop transactions for men. They only stopped transactions for women, to force them to be dependent on men for everything they needed to buy.
I was self-employed, in various home businesses, for many years. I never used an electronic register, barcodes, or even any kind of setup for credit cards. Everything was by cash or cheque (cash preferred). And yes, I used physical price tags when I sold my stuff at craft fairs. If I were to do that today, it would still be a cash-only proposition unless I were selling online.
Not here they don't.
And I assume you have me on ignore given your inability to answer anything I have said.
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