It's legal tender

[iwoulddoanything]

I'm sure by the title, you can guess where I live

Every day, without fail, I get asked for English notes back in change (manage a large store but often have to jump on tills). Or if I'm in England (actually where I'm from btw), they won't accept my money. I just don't get it. It is legal tender but people still refuse it (when I pay) or don't want it in change (when they're visiting Scotland ). It actually has sterling written on it when English notes don't as far as I'm aware. I just don't get it. And people wonder why Scottish people are fed up of being part of a union which seems our money (the exact same as 'english' money) as less than, or a phrase I hear every few weeks, 'monopoly' money. AIBU?

So technically no shop has to take anything as it's not paying a debt as such.

Is paying a restaurant bill for a meal you've already eaten classed as paying a debt?

I entirely understand your point OP, it is just unconvincing. Yabu to equate disagreement with understanding.

It isn't necessarily that Scottish money is more likely to be forged, simply that a person unfamiliar with it is less likely to be able to tell, especially as the pens aren't 100%. You're essentially saying that private businesses must take on increased risk of being paid in forged currency because of the union. That is ridiculous. If I were in Scotland I would probably now want to vote for independence, but on the basis of the government's antics over the past few years, not because of people taking entirely legitimate and sensible actions, that they are totally within their rights to do, in order to protect themselves from forgery.

It's for the same reason shops can refuse English £50 or £100 notes - staff are less familiar with them, and so it's harder to spot forgeries. There's no legal obligation on any shop to accept any note, regardless of whether or not it's legal currency which can validly be used in this country.

I'm Scottish and honestly I don't care that much. It's annoying but I'm not going to go postal at some poor lassie who's refusing a note because if she accidentally accepts a fake it'll come out of her wages.

Ah yes, all the very clever people jumping in to crow "aaaaackshully it's not legal tender."

OP is clearly using legal tender to mean sterling. It might be technically the wrong expression but it's a very common mistake and it's obvious what she means so maybe can we all not fall over ourselves to prove how clever we are for nitpicking a word.

The fact that she used the wrong word doesn't invalidate the point she's making which is that it's still sterling and that just because shops technically can refuse or accept any payment they want doesn't mean that it isn't shitty and annoying when they unfairly target Scottish notes.

I've had trouble getting NI notes accepted in England before. Is that unfair targeting?

Can you imagine the outcry if Scottish shops refused Bank of England notes ? TBF we Scots know that a lot of English people have never seen a Scottish Bank note so we make sure we only take English notes South of the border

Wellbuttermyarse, yes. I'd argue that it is.

I know that retailers can technically refuse any payment they like but in practice, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if people work in retail then I'd say they have a responsibility to familiarise themselves with the basics of what money looks like in the UK.

Why should retailers pass that inconvenience back onto the customer because of their own ignorance?

It starts to become a less convincing argument about targeting when it's applied to multiple categories though. Scottish, large English, NI. But by all means exercise your rights too and take your business to places you agree with, they aren't the only ones who get a choice here.

FWIW I for one wouldn't give a shit if Scottish retailers chose not to accept English, and they already don't all take NI notes.

I work in a shop in the south east and we don't accept them although we offer to go to the babk next door and change them up. We don't often see them so wouldn't be able to easily spot a forgery (we have had a few) and apparently our money checker pen doesn't work on Scotish notes.

Wellbuttermyarse, I think that if someone is running a business in the UK and accepts cash but is selectively excluding non-English variants of sterling then I'm not sure what else you'd call it?

It's also absolutely batshit the mental gymnastics that people go to in justifying it. Like "oh they're not familiar with the notes so it's ok".

So a person can work in a job where they are being paid to handle money and still be so arrogantly anglocentric that they are willfully ignorant what the full range of UK banknotes look like and this is somehow considered totally normal?

This is so funny. I grew up in Corby, northants. It was a Scottish enclave due to the steel workers.
We used Scottish notes freely. Go to Northampton though and thry got refused 😂

I must admit that the argument that there are too many notes for shop workers to be familiar with them all to be a bit of a strange argument, seeing as shop workers in Scotland and N Ireland can manage OK with English notes.

Ahhh I do love this topic! Technically no, it's not legal tender and they don't have to accept it, but in my experience a lot of places do. PiLs are Scottish and moved back to Scotland a few years ago. Whenever they send money to DCs for christmas/birthdays they go to the bank and withdraw English notes. MIL always says she'd hate for DCs to try and spend a Scottish note and be told no. DD (12) told her 'if they don't accept it I'll tell them I'm taking my money elsewhere'

I've only ever had an issue spending a Scottish note in Whsmith, almost everywhere else I've used one has been happy to accept, although younger staff usually call a manager over. I actually find English 50s harder to spend than Scottish notes. If in doubt though, I've discovered the self service machines at supermarkets always accept them. Just feed it in and away you go.

I work in Scotland for an English company and we bank our takings in an English bank. There have never been any murmurings of it costing more to bank Scottish notes, so whoever told the pp that above was talking complete bullshit.

I agree. I volunteer in Scotland for a large charity, head office is in England. We have a few "cultural" issues such as instructions to run a thank you teacher promo in the middle of July when we;ve all been off for three weeks already.

I regularly do the banking. All notes get counted together, we are not asked to sort the notes, they all go through the machine at the same time and treated the same. We don't see many Northern Irish notes but they go through the same process. The bank has no problem with it at all.

DH travels a lot to the south coast of England for work and has had issues with people refusing Scottish notes. He's done the "well it's all I;ve got so take it or leave it" approach too.

Yes it's irritating. Yes it makes you angry when some spotty youth in a supermarket is telling you they can;t take your "foreign" note and treating you like a master forger. But we don't use it to bang the independence drum because we're not that petty and narrow minded.

«It's for the same reason shops can refuse English £50 or £100 notes

Please point me to a shop that will take a £100 note, I have my John Bull printing set ready

I've had trouble getting NI notes accepted in England before

I wonder if that was me, back in 1987 ;) I had a Saturday job in Woolworths and someone gave me a Northern Irish note. I did check I could take it as I wasn't sure at first sight if it was NI or Ireland. I knew I could take Scottish notes though.

I've also never had a problem using Scottish notes in England - where on earth are you all shopping? I understand independents possibly being a bit silly about it but not the big chains.

I have to use up the Channel Islands notes before I come home as they are not accepted in England, despite being sterling.

I've never had a £50 note. Why do we actually have them if shops won't accept them? It seems quite normal to have large denomination euro notes.

The reality is that there just aren't anywhere near as many Scottish and in particular NI notes in circulation, and thus the opportunities to become familiar with them simply aren't there across the whole English retail sector. I can see that if you're working in retail in Berwick upon Tweed, for example, or somewhere that sees a large number of Scottish visitors, or airports, you will do. But a little corner shop in the middle of an estate where hardly anyone who isn't local ever visits, they're just not likely to get that opportunity. In the same way they won't see a lot of English £100s either. For you to be calling people who are typically minimum wage workers or not much more, in the service and hospitality sectors that tend to be disproportionately migrant anyway, arrogantly Anglocentric, that is what is batshit Agnes. And frankly rather gross.

Isabelle, it isn't an argument about too many. It's an argument about unfamiliarity. Scottish and NI shop workers tend to see English notes more often than the reverse, because of the numbers involved.

I once tried to pay for something in Argos down here in Devon with a Scottish £10 note and they spent ages trying to figure out how to put it through their till as foreign currency. Did make me giggle. 1st place they've ever done that!

Anyone recently tried spending Jersey £1 note in England?

It's not racism. It's protecting against forgeries when you don't see many of the notes. Just like a £50 note.

Isabelle, it isn't an argument about too many. It's an argument about unfamiliarity. Scottish and NI shop workers tend to see English notes more often than the reverse, because of the numbers involved.

I'm not sure about Scotland but its fairly rare in N Ireland to see English banknotes. Certainly if you withdraw money from an ATM then you usually get the notes from the bank that operates the ATM.

Haha no berlin more recent than that! I was a wee slip of a thing in 1987 and would probably have chewed a bank note if give one then!
I've tended to find the NI notes are accepted in the city centre but not so in more outlying areas. I expect our Pakistani local shopkeeper is being grossly anglocentric...

agnesnutterwitch are you not reading the thread?

It's been explained many times why shops are choosing, quite legally, to take sensible measures to protect themselves from fraud. I could go to my local town and try to spend an English £50 note now and probably have it refused in at least half of them.

It's their right to do that, if I choose to shop somewhere else they lose out, hardly an issue to get so het up about imo.

You usually get Irish notes from the bank machine isabelle but I must disagree about it being rare to see English notes in NI per se. I have frequently been given them as change, and I visit Belfast lots. That said, I don't know how it is in rural Tyrone for example. Might be an urban rural thing, especially as Belfast gets shitloads of tourists.

This happens all the time with NI banknotes. We accept English and Scottish notes without batting an eyelid but I once remember nearing getting thrown out of a Morrisons in the Midlands when my dad tried to pay with a plastic NI £5 note...the manager was called and said he didnt believe it was 'real' money

I'm not sure about Scotland but its fairly rare in N Ireland to see English banknotes.

Also disagree with this, having worked in several retail outlets in both rural NI and Belfast...they're not even remotely rare.