Sainburys, Tesco, Greggs

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68614636

FFS. BREAKING NEWS used to mean there had been a terrible disaster like a plane crash but now it appears that it's rolled out because Greggs' tills are down and they'd rather close their stores than go back to the way it was when I worked there, where we added up the price of items by hand on a spare paper bag, took cash and calculated the change in our heads.

I find it worrying how using cash is being fazed out and then you hear about the glitches affecting how we buy the goods and what happens then ?! As we can see from these recent problems, it causes chaos.
Who is doing it ?
The staff are probably very capable of adding it up on paper and taking the cash , but it's probably the company who doesn't want the hassle of it all or prefer everything to go through the tills!

This is why I always have cash. I also try to get it via bank counter staff or ATMs rather than supermarket cashback. We need to keep our options open.

It's not as simple as adding things up and taking cash. In Greggs staff will probably know the prices for everything but that's impossible for a supermarket, plus there's ever changing offers.

Modern tills don't always open when they crash, staff can't give you change if they can't get into the tills. I remember it happening when I worked for Tesco and we couldn't open the till until IT had remotely fixed the problem.

Loose produce can't be weighed because the scales come hand in hand with the till so they can't give you a price.

As annoying as it is for customers it's worse for staff because they have to feel the wrath of angry customers who can't have their shopping.

I don't think this is anything new. I worked in a major supermarket in the mid 1990s and we had glitches that would shut down all the tills - and back then we did mostly take cash and cheques.

My Tesco delivery was cancelled over the weekend, but paying cash wouldn't have helped me any, because it was a home delivery. I couldn't just hand over cash to Bob who rocked up at my door and expect change. I suppose we could argue for a system in which delivery drivers could take cash payments but what chaos would that cause for all that cash driving around in a Tesco van all day?

And GWR reservation system recently too

A bit how petrol and diesal cars took over our lives and now they want us out of them ( or to buy an electric one) the powers that be wanted us to only use our phones/ apps and online payments for everything and then are up shit creek when the IT system collapses on them
This move to kind of outlaw cash should be resisted, but how hard is it to do when everything is geared up for a non cash society and made easier by using your phone.
Don't get me started on parking apps that do not work on my phone at certain places ( no idea why and everyone has tried to get it to work !) once cash is no longer taken at my local car parks I'll be screwed for parking and then won't use the high street for any bulky shopping or whatever. Or banks who direct you to machines for most things or told to ' do it online'
Then all the local branches will disappear eventually.

Three close together is interesting 🤔

It is major news. They aren't announcing what's causing the problem and as we move everything into a digital space we need to know what causes these problems and how we, as a society work around them. Many people don't carry cash anymore so what do they do if VISA breaks one day?

Not really, not when you consider how many hundreds of thousands of retailers and other businesses there are in the UK. There won't be a day that goes by without at least some of them having a computer fuck-up.

The online world of banking and financial transactions is so fantastically complicated these days it's a miracle it doesn't happen far more often.

Fair point: but the world we live in,the thought occurred

Four if you count MacDonalds. All in less than a week.

Wonder if it's a creaking old system, hacking for disruption only, or stealing addresses/accounts.

I work at Greggs - in my (and most others in our region) store till screens were completely blank. Even if we added up prices, we physically could not open the till to take cash in or out without the 'open till drawer' button to push. Keys for the tills have been lost/misplaced over the years but I'm sure they'll quickly be sending out new sets now!