That a Vodafone shop wouldn’t accept cash in payment and it pissed me off?

[Inappropriatefemale]

So as the thread suggests then AIBU because a branch of Vodafone wouldn’t accept cash and it pissed me off?

I went into a Vodafone store around 4 weeks ago to buy a £20 memory card and I was aghast when the sales advisor told me that they didn’t accept cash because it was ‘a hassle’ and that paying by card was easier for the shop, it wasn’t the end of the day or anything like this where they had counted all their profits for the day.

I didn’t have my debit card with me that day so I went elsewhere to buy it but I was really pissed off, what if I was purchasing a brand new iPhone 8, or whatever the latest one is, at over £700 then would they have been happy for me to walk out their shop and spend that money elsewhere.

I have always suspected that actual cash will be done away with one day but not for a good few years at least and not in a Vodafone shop.

I didn’t look into this, I was just pissed off and wondered if any of you ladies/gents had experienced this and if so where, when and for how much?

So many people on here are saying they wish cash would be banned. It's quite a callous attitude. How about sparing a thought for all the people who can't get credit cards? Cash should be protected because it's available to everyone in a way that cards are not.

When people are getting rid of debt, the envelope and jar system tend to work better for them. You can do this electronically but for people who are visual using cash works better.

In 12 years of helping people address debt and/or manage their finances, I never met a single client for whom cash in jars or envelopes worked at all. It's too easy to dip into.

Everyone can get a debit card.
No one needs a cc

I always preferred people who paid by card rather than cash when I worked retail in my student days, it definitely is a lot less hassle. I almost never have cash, I just take my phone and use Apple Pay for everything. Cashless is the future.

There was an example recently of a young woman who got stranded at a train station because her phone battery died and she had no other way of making payment. No cash or cards etc.

There was an example recently of a young woman who got stranded at a train station because her phone battery died and she had no other way of making payment. No cash or cards etc.

And ?

There will always be edge cases. Many years ago I had an interesting discussion with someone who - having suffered a second puncture after changing their spare - insisted that all cars should come with 2 spare wheels to cover that situation.

There was an example recently of a young woman who got stranded at a train station because her phone battery died and she had no other way of making payment. No cash or cards etc.

If your only way of payment is a phone, carry a power bank🤷

There was an example recently of a young woman who got stranded at a train station because her phone battery died and she had no other way of making payment. No cash or cards etc.

Thanks for this anecdote, but I think most of us knew already that some people are idiots.

I dont agree, my dc know exactly what is happening with their money through their smartphones and the likes of Monza card/ap. They can budget on these aps really well.

My 5 year old doesn't have a smartphone. He gets a couple of £s a week pocket money. It would be very annoying is all shops went cashless.

The more rural you are the less incentive the government or big businesses have to upgrade telephone and Internet networks. They won't spend millions to upgrade old lines that benefit just a handful of people. Fibre broadband and 4G are actually relatively new in my area so the likelihood of power outages, mobile network failures and internet losses are far more likely rurally than in urban, busy areas. Wasn't that long ago that the only petrol station for 30 miles couldn't take card payments for a couple of days so they really struggled as did a lot of customers.

I'm in the East Midlands. There are hardly any places in my town that are card only, for similar reasons to the above.

I think it’s great. A move to a cashless society is a good one.
Why?

I think it’s great. A move to a cashless society is a good one.
It's not. A lot of people find managing money harder when they are not dealing with actual cash.
If you know you have £20 in your purse in Tesco, you can not spend more than that budgeted £20.
With a card, it's easier to go "just slightly over"

Sometimes cash is actually an inconvenience.

FIL has always saved his wages "under the mattress" and not in a bank. He didn't even have a bank account for most his life. These days though, that mattress is sitting about £40K high and there's almost nothing he can do with it. He already paid tax on it when he earned it and he's always had very few expenses (aka, he's tighter than a duck's arse and more than happy for MIL to pay the bills from her earnings) and now after hearing about a burglary at a neighbour's house he doesn't like having so much cash laying about anymore (he did get his DW to change any notes going out of circulation over the years) he can't do a thing with it. He's reluctant to put it in a bank because he's worried he'd have to prove where it's from and saying he never spent his wages for years wouldn't really cut it and he can't spend it in cash because he a) doesn't need anything and b) few places would take large sums of cash anyway which is the issue on this thread.

Tbh I don't know what's going to happen if it becomes inheritance one day.

yep happened to me in M&S last week!!! I just wanted a sandwich and had the money in my hand but their one cash desk wasn't working so I couldn't buy it...

@Instagrump as mentioned upthread - stupid behaviour isn’t really a justification for banning (or keeping) cash.

A lot of car parks now are pay by phone which is handy if you haven't got change but usually the phone tariff is 20p more expensive than using coins.

YANBU.

I knew that some trendy hipster-ish cafes and such have gone no-cash, but this is the first I've heard of a major high street name doing it.

The cynical part of me thinks that the Powers That Be will welcome cash going away. It will mean it's impossible to buy or sell anything without being identifed by the retailer and without being under the eyes of the government's mass surveillance.

The cynical part of me thinks that the Powers That Be will welcome cash going away. It will mean it's impossible to buy or sell anything without being identifed by the retailer and without being under the eyes of the government's mass surveillance.

There's always barter. Which I suspect would be the stuff of nightmares for a government.

Growing number of places are becoming cashless, there was an item on the local radio recently about it when the local rugby teams stadium went cashless.

Not a lot of help if your children want a tube of smarties from their pocket money or an ice cream (just imagining the ice cream van going cashless )

I noticed the tyre pressure machine at my local garage now takes cards only ... 50p for 6 minutes of air.

Using a card for £1 just felt too silly for me
Why, though?
You could look at it the other way: getting your purse out, finding the exact change, etc feels like too much work for a small purchase vs doing a quick and easy contactless card payment

FYI @Khione and @SaskiaRembrandt you are both right about Sheffield trams. According to someone I asked in my meeting the trams are in the process of changing to accept contactless. Some have been upgraded and some not so it's currently pot luck as to whether you can or not.

To be on the safe side I took the bus there and had a nice walk back.

Well it used to be the case, and still may be, that it costs a small shop 20 to 40 pence to accept a debit card transaction, which is why they often won't accept a card for under £5-10.

Credit cards tend to work on a percentage with no minimum so they'd actually prefer a credit card for small purchases and a debit card for large purchases, but it's possible that not everyone who works in a shop knows this and they're probably not going to check everyone's card to make sure, hence the minimum.

"The merchant account and payment processing industry in the UK makes it very difficult to compare rates & fees. In terms of fees, you basically have two approaches.

The first are variable rates and fees based on card type, business type, transaction volume, etc. These tend to come from established merchant account and payment processing companies. For businesses processing decent volumes of transactions, they almost always work to be cheaper than the second type.

The second approach is charging much higher flat fees in a very transparent manner. For many small businesses these companies can work out to be better simply because they generally do not require a contract."

From this website which has the costs set out: merchantmachine.co.uk/compare/

So if a small shop says it will only accept cards, presumably its number of card transactions will go up and accepting card payments therefore becomes cheaper. Economies of scale etc.

Like any industry I guess, the payment systems world is developing and changing and, with the increase of card payments, having to become more competitive. Things change...

That website also gives an example of the money a shop will keep from a month of transactions. One example is with £1000 turnover, using Izettle, the shop will keep £982.50. Assuming a shop assistant is working for minimum wage, that's just more than 2 hours' worth of loss. I assume shop assistants spend more than 2 hours cashing up and visiting the bank, so surely it's more affordable than running a cash-taking business?