to expect most places, especially touristy ones, to take Visa debit card?

[UnquietDad]

So here is what happened. DD and I decided to go up in the Llandudno cable-car while DS, DW and my mum got the tram.

They were halfway up before we even got halfway in the queue - there were a lot of people. It was a bank holiday weekend. We expected that. After queuing for 40 minutes in the hot sun we finally got to the ticket office and I presented my Visa debit card for the not-inconsiderable sum of ten quid for a return for me and DD.

"Sorry, it's cash-only."

WTF????

Had no cash. had to go bacik down into town and have a miserable lunch while the rest of them enjoyed themselves up on the Great Orme.
I was

No signs. No notices. Nothing on any of the brochures or websites. You'd think there would be something on the steps up to the ticket-office to alert you to the fact that they only took cash.

Cash!!
In 2007!!!

Twenty years ago - even ten - you'd expect to look for the Visa sign to check they took cards. These days, you expect it to be the default - don't you? The ironic thing is that, in the days before card-swipers, they could have done it with one of those little hand-held manual things where you signed a long slip.

So - I ask for the first time on here - am I ?

YANBU.

I rarely carry cash myself, mostly because I spend it.

Sorry but for something like that I think I would have checked before queuing. Depends on the size of set up and what the ticket office looked like I suppose.

we went to Eden Camp in Yorkshire a few weeks back (brochure touts "tourist attraction of the year" etc) but they were cash only - admittedly it did say on the leaflet but I didn't read it properly and had to be subbed by my mum for entrance and coffee and lunch. Bank charges are pretty high though, and if a place is run by a smallish charity/volunteers, then they need to put their entrance fees up to recoup the charges, which might make them "uncompetitive" as an attraction in their local area. I did find it weird though, as I very rarely have any more than a few pounds in cash these days.

If there had been somewhere to ask, I would have done - e.g. if the ticket office had been at the foot of the hill. But the queue was up the hill for the ticket office, which is at the side of the cable-car building, and then you walk right up inside and you're in the hall where the cable-cars pass through to be filled.

Depends how much they charge, might cost them oo much in charges.

That occurred to me afterwards. Maybe I've led a sheltered life, but I've not been anywhere in the UK in the last few years which has a high volume of tourists coming through and which only accepts cash payments.

YANBU, I would expect a sign that they took cash only. But on the other hand I never have less than £20 in cash with me just in case of unexpected things like this.

Normally I'd have cash, but I didn't on this occasion!

debit card, no charge, sounds abit out of date TBH.

There should be signs to say before you entre a long que on Bank Hol Monday. Or someone going up and odwn the line to tell folk!

how crapmungus for you!

The doubly crap thing is that we are not going to visit mum again until October half-term at the earliest, and it is touch and go if the cable-car is still running then (it only runs in "season") so we may not get the chance now until NEXT summer! It's only just re-opened after being closed for repairs for ages.

doublecrapmungus then!

YANBU. I had the same surprise recently when visiting an open farm which didn't take cards. It was very lucky that I did have cash with me, as my mum (with me at the time) had none.

YANBU. Was DD disappointed? How frustrating! It was closed due to weather when we were there last September. I hope you get an Indian summer at half term.

YANBU
I hate when places will accept credit cards, but not debit ones. That really gets my goat!

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well if they're not going to accept cards they could at least have a cash machine! if small newsagents have them then it is obviously cheap and probably a money spinner.

no, YANBU!

We don't accept them at our computer business due to the fraud and the costs involved. I have to admit that I would never assume that a small place like the cable car would have a machine

YABU

When every last place on earth takes card payments, it will be a sorry time. The charm of holidays IMO is going to very small places and little, individual and/or family-run businesses need to keep costs down to a minimum to survive. Pay cash = support small business = counter the destructive effects of corporatism

it doesn't cost a lot to accept debit cards. £23.50/month for payment service and 39p per transaction.

yes but that is a lot to some smaller businesses- plus there's bank charges, and the fact that there are thresholds for downloading funds, so they may only be able to recieve the money from the cash payments every other month which will affect cashflow, things are different for very small businesses and charities etc!

£23.50 per month doesn't soudn a lot on its own but added to all the other running costs of a business plus the percentage per transaction plus the frauds committed with cc where the business totally loses the whole value of the transaction

For small businesses, it's actually really expensive to have credit card facilities. You have to pay the bank for service, pay them extra to rent the the machine the card goes in, which requires a dedicated phone line which is yet more expense, and each transaction then costs the business something like 17p + 1.5-2.5% of the value of the transaction. So for a business which has lots of low value transactions, it is just too expensive.