Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

To think if your debit card is rejected/not autherised whilst doing a fairly big shop

54 replies

b584 · 11/09/2013 19:10

That you do not tell the person serving you to please wait 2 minutes whilst you get money/another card from your car outside and then just piss off.

I had this twice today, £40 to £50 pounds worth of shopping, Once it has gone through my till I cannot serve anyone else unless I have a supervisor or manager come and void the whole transaction, I am stood there with people waiting to be served, Obviously had to call for another staff member to open another till.

The second one did come back 15 minutes later and was pissed off that they had to queue up again and that I had to scan all the shopping again,

Why do people do this?

OP posts:
ivykaty44 · 11/09/2013 20:40

Surely the problem is your till - why not have a till that you can use if this happens? Then you could just carry on serving

SeaSickSal · 11/09/2013 20:42

At Morrison's they can put the transaction 'on hold' and hang on to all your bagged up shopping while they serve other people.

When the person who's card has been declined comes back they simply have to wait till the end of whatever transaction is going through, the cashier can recall the transaction then the customer pays and picks up their bagged shopping.

It's a great system and convenient for everyone involved and saves embarrassment I don't know why everybody doesn't use it.

I have to say I feel sorry for someone who's card has been declined and then they've gone to the cashpoint and realized they have no money to buy food. They must have been incredibly embarrassed, I'm not surprised they didn't come back.

AmberLeaf · 11/09/2013 20:44

MNHQ Im using mozilla firefox [up to date version] on my laptop.

Bloob · 11/09/2013 20:48

My card is declined all the time I have no idea why. Always plenty of money in the account. I just assume the machine is playing up. It usually works the next time, or i try another one. In actual fact, my bank (hsbc) say they always honour transactions (like most other banks) as people don't like to be embarrassed so being declined is almost always a technical difficulty.

Maybe if its just a card / bank issue there's nothing they can do and they can't come back?

jacks365 · 11/09/2013 20:51

I've never had my card refused but my dd has twice despite knowing full well that she had money in her account. Sometimes these things happen because of a bank issue or even the shops equipment. If someone is trying to find an alternative method it can take time to find a working cash machine for example so yabu to complain if it takes longer than they hoped.

Ilovemydogandmydoglovesme · 11/09/2013 21:08

This happened to my friend in the Co-op. She genuinely forgot her purse and offered to go home and get it if they would just pop her fresh and frozen bits, still in their carrier bags, in a chiller till she got back. Would take her about ten minutes. They said no, they'd have to void it off and put everything back on the shelves. She said you do that and you've lost a customer. They said sorry but it was the rules. She walked out and went and did her shopping, all over again, somewhere else. Shock

Jolleigh · 11/09/2013 21:30

I think working un a shop, you should probably suck it up as part of your job. It's unfortunate for the waiting customers but it does happen and can't be helped.

Maybe next time, check and see if there's any 'kid' food in the person's shopping. If there is, it may be the case that the person went to the cash point only to find that they can't afford to feed their children. They'd definitely have bigger priorities than to come back and tell you.

Also, please don't underestimate how hard the embarrassment of not being able to feed yourself does hit. It's unfortunately happened to me before when I had been made redundant and was seriously struggling. It's a horrendous feeling that I definitely wouldn't have shared with anyone other than my mum, who I rang crying.

Footface · 11/09/2013 21:30

I did this once.

It was very embarrassing. I felt ashamed that I couldn't pay, while all the other people behind me stared at me for causing a hold up to their day.

I also wanted to cry.

BrokenSunglasses · 11/09/2013 21:37

Twice I've been into Waitrose and been unable to pay. Once I'd left my card at home and didn't realise until the crucial moment when you have to pay, and the other time my card was playing silly buggers.

They press a button, suspend they transaction and then you pay and collect the shopping from the customer service desk. They were very helpful and lovely about it.

Ilovemydogandmydoglovesme · 11/09/2013 21:42

The jobsworth at the Co-op nearly made my friend cry. Hmm

OlympicSleepingChampion · 11/09/2013 21:55

This happened to us the other week in Pets at Home. Cue lots of eye rolling and smirking from the others queueing behind us and on the other three tills as the assistant told DP loudly that his card had been declined.

And then it happened to everyone else trying to pay by card. Cue lots of embarrassed shuffling and complaints to the shop assistants. Their system had gone down so everybody's card was declined. DP paid cash and we left a quite ill tempered group of customers who didn't have enough cash on them giving the sales assistants a rather hard time.

nancy75 · 11/09/2013 22:02

Some of you do make me laugh, "why not have a till that does this that or the other.." the op works in the shop, its pretty unlikely that she either chose or designed the till they have.
Op those that just ditch & run are probably using a cloned card, it is annoying for other customers, but unfortunately when you work in a shop you just have to get used to their bad day being your fault! Just smile and nod

ChaosTrulyReigns · 11/09/2013 22:26

OhEmEm, did you just lowercase me?

SIFOB!

LackingEnergy · 11/09/2013 22:27

It's worse when you've filled up with petrol, go to pay and find that

  • The card readers have just broken, all of them...
  • Their cash machine is out of cash
  • You have no cash on you, only your card
  • You're not allowed to leave until you've paid as they will ring they police
  • You're stuck just off the A1 for hours with a small child waiting for a family member to bring you cash. If it had been in town I could have left the car and walked to a cash point.

That was no fun for staff and customers alike. They ended up asking customers if they were paying by card, if they were they were turned away

Jellybeanz1 · 11/09/2013 22:30

This happened to me in Sainsburys I was mortified) but they made me feel it happens quite a lot and they had a system in place. They put the whole shop into the chilled area out the back whilst I popped home to get cash (1 and 1/2 hours shop wasn't going to go through that again).

mignonette · 11/09/2013 22:33

I'd have told them to call the police Lacking. After all you are not refusing to pay. They are unable to take your payment w/ no notice given of this prior to your filling up. The Police would likely have sympathised with you.

How awful for you Lacking. Guess they lost you as a customer in the future.

MNHQ
OliviaMMumsnet · 11/09/2013 22:35

@ChaosTrulyReigns

OhEmEm, did you just lowercase me?

SIFOB!

Whoops
Sorry about that chaostrulyreigns Grin

NoComet · 11/09/2013 22:38

My Tesco card is barmy 10x £(small amount) in one day it freezes.
£1000 oil bill the next day it works perfectly.

At first I just thought M&S food hall had it in for me. Eventually I rang them up and they explained 10 things in a day and you got asked security questions.

Just happened, twice, I end a day at the shops getting chilled lasagne for tea.

ChaosTrulyReigns · 11/09/2013 22:51
Wink
LackingEnergy · 11/09/2013 23:13

ette It was around last Xmas on the way back from visiting relatives sort of half way between their house and home so not a place I'm likely to go back to thankfully. They couldn't call the police until I'd left and I wasn't prepared to be chased down by the police so we were at an impasse.

We did get coffee and a drink and a snack for ds free while we waited. We weren't the only ones stuck there either :(

Babybunny88 · 11/09/2013 23:36

My card was declined once at a shop and I had no idea why and actually felt frightened. I had to tell the cashier I would come back up and pay. I had to drive home and life money out of my savings box- thank god I had it! Luckily I only live 2 mins away from the shop and they were very nice about it.

Rang the bank up to see what the problem was and they told me they put a block on it as they noticed suspicious activity! They asked me to confirm recent transactions and they were all correct. I was off work that week and had been busy spending with my card so they thought someone had stolen it and was using it! Wish they had have rang me and asked instead of putting a block on it. Would have saved me lots of embarrassment!

flatmum · 11/09/2013 23:42

nationwide do this to me all the time it really pisses me off. They randomly block my card without telling me because they notice suspicious activity. usually because I have travelled abroad and used it or bought an expensive item online - both things which I do fairly regularly. Luckily inhave another current account in sole name so I just use that but you feel everyone staring at you pityingly until it goes through. bizarrely they only do it to my car even though it is a joint account to if DP is there I just get him to pay.

flatmum · 11/09/2013 23:43

card

KatyPutTheCuttleOn · 12/09/2013 06:51

Lacking that's awful, what are you supposed to do if you have nobody to phone?

RoonilWazlibWuvsHermyown · 12/09/2013 07:21

YABU. Your shop needs a better system. If this happens, you don't sit and wait. You tell the customer politely that you can't hold up the queue while they get their money but you'll have the shopping put to one side while they nip out, get the manager to void it and serve the next customers. Sucks for them that they have to queue up again but if you explain it rather than sitting like a lemon while they dash off then they have the choice not to come back if they don't want to queue again.

Swipe left for the next trending thread