Customer demands to charge her phone at supermarket

[Jdot]

She came into the supermarket wanted to pay for her shopping on Apple Pay but her phone is dead. I saw her talking on the phone in the store.

Supermarkets and other places that people pay for products and services - restaurants, retailers, leisure places etc are NOT responsible for people’s mobile batteries and them not carrying their physical cards on them.

Seriously? You know us women were perfectly capable of travel before mobile phones existed right?

Maybe she has a faulty battery. My last phone dropped from 30% to 1% suddenly.

Personally, I never left the house until they invented the mobile phone.

No, because you can carry some cash elsewhere and your wallet won't hold all your phone contact numbers and whatever else highly phone-dependent people might keep on their phone. If you lose your wallet, you still have your phone to ring your bank and cancel the cards and to phone anyone you might need to come and help you.

If you lose your phone, but still have your wallet, you have the means to get home or buy anything you need. I personally keep a couple of emergency phone numbers inside my wallet as well.

Can’t say I worry about any of that tbh on a day to day basis. If I lose it/get it stolen I’ll get another one. If it gets damaged, it gets damaged. Not the end of the world, just annoying but given how much I drop mine I know from experience they are pretty robust! I even accidentally put mine through the washing machine- came out unscathed!

can’t think of anywhere in the UK where I have had absolutely no signal or no WiFi. you can make payments using you phone without any connection whatsoever.

I found worrying about my wallet and the implications of the admin loss of all my cards/ driving licence etc was far worse.

I do carry a power bank on me if I know I’m Going to be out for a long time. I rarely get caught with lack of charge but it can happen rarely.

My engine seized on a trip back from the supermarket recently, would've been in trouble without my phone. I do carry a power pack in the car but lots don't.
Given the huge profits supermarkets make and the fact someone needing to charge their phone there & then is probably a rare occurence I honestly think helpfulness over 'computer says no' from the store should be the way to go.

The voice of reason.

Unfortunately retail staff are not supported enough for it to be easy to say no. Which it should be, and consistently.

If you cannot plan ahead to have a charged phone for your visit to the supermarket, you should have to go through the inconvenience so you don't forget again. If you are repeatedly forgetting, I am not sure you should be driving.

How did we live before the year 2000?!

I didn't exist before mobiles (i am very old enough to remember those days) and I take a chaperone everywhere ans can just about not hyperventilate when my battery is low funnily enough

Liability risks? Really?! I mean, there’s a risk I may hit by an asteroid this morning, but it doesn’t impact my life…

I agree. What difference does it make to you? Why the animosity against her?

Well people didn't use their phones as a means of payment and generally carried cash/cards, and public phone boxes were 10 a penny, for starters

But OP doesn't anything about it being the end of the evening either.

Some retailers may have policies that they can’t use their own chargers on the shop floor. As the ones you plug into the mains require testing. Plus limited to what they can have on them. As when I worked in retail, I was only allowed my locker key, a pen, a pack of tissues and a cutter for undoing cases.

You would still have been in trouble with your phone? Would you not - your phone didn't stop it happening - you were able to call for help - which I presume you could have done anyway - by opening your mouth and asking?
Pretty sure if you're holding up traffic - someone would come to help??

I travel all over the place and never carry a phone, have been doing this without any consequences for nearly sixty years. If there are 'safety implications' it's amazing I've survived unscathed.

That only works if you have a cable with you!

I am clearly not cut out for customer service, as my first thought was that the sort of person disorganised enough to completely flatten their ‘phone battery and then demand to use someone’s charger is exactly the sort of person to blame the other person, or store, if the charger doesn’t work, is incorrect and damages the phone!

God alone knows. All those 90s muggers waiting around outside Tesco's!
Although if you'd have told me in Y2K that my Nokia 3210 would one day be able to pay for my shopping (assuming it was charged) I think my mind may have melted.

How far do you travel to get to a supermarket? Unless you live in rural Scotland, surely the worst that could happen would be having to walk an hour or so to get home?
Not having a phone would have been inconvenient, but not dangerous.

Are you always this melodramatic?

You wouldn’t cancel your cards if you lost your phone?! I would.

I always keep a small wallet with my main cards in it in my bag as well as have them on my phone.

And I never use my phone to tap in or out at the station - it’s always people using phones to do that getting stuck and causing hold ups for everyone else. Use a card, people!

Heck, I've been taking risks for years then, only got my first basic phone when the kids finally left home in 2019 😳Now I'm on an iphone but don't use apps for anything, probably will in about 10 years time though, I'm an old fashioned girl with modern tech, don't really see the point of a lot of it but there you go...

Women are safe on their own without phones. 🙄