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.

He served the next customer. It was only a few bits so he rescanned them.

in supermarkets you can suspend the transaction and come back to it. So nothing to stop the next customer being processed.

Surely if you were in the situation where your phone was out of charge when you got into the car, you would put it on the charger immediately? So chances are that it would have charged enough to call emergency services by the time you broke down.

At an electric socket?

I worked in a supermarket and we let a bloke charge his phone during lockdown, the café had plug sockets that anyone could use, but that was closed when this happened. He wasn't even trying to pay for his shopping! He needed his phone to get home though.

I’d rather have my phone to call for help, or share my location, than not.

Meanwhile I wonder if shops and other public places should have charging stations for phones like some places have them for EVs. It would be useful!

This seems a tad OTT! What percentage of lone women come to harm travelling to do the weekly shop?

I would let her plug it in enough to pay though if she had been polite

Never said it was dangerous. I travel a fair way. I could've walked home but it would've meant abandoning the car & most of the shopping. Having a phone meant Green Flag was able to sort us out quite quickly. 'Opening my mouth' to ask for help wasn't an option as there was no one around.
I spent years as a young adult sans a mobile phone and yes i survived. But the world is now geared towards people using a mobile, and having access to one can make some circs much easier.

Safety implications 🤣

What rainbowandstars is referring to is that most commercial insurance insists that all equipment has safety checks before being plugged in

Whilst she shouldn’t have been rude I’m surprised supermarket’s don’t have some facility to address this issue precisely fir circumstances such as this. I know when my son has travelled by train and his battery died unexpectedly (dodgy phone) they had a charger at the barrier where he was able to charge his phone enough to shown his ticket and get through the barrier.

@Jdot

This needs more detail to decide if she was being unreasonable

How did the exchange do down when she approached the staff? Exactly what happened?

I agree with this. And some stores run promotions where you have to have a mobile phone on you, not just a physical card (e.g. Sainsbury's Smartshop). Supermarkets benefit a lot from the data they get as part of these systems, so I think that some opportunity to charge a mobile phone briefly in a supermarket is probably a good idea.

That's good because it panics me with online train tickets that if your phone dies you are stuffed. I took a power bank with me the other day for a day trip out but hadn't realised it wasn't fully charged. My apple watch died during the day due to using it for directions so much. My phone died.

Luckily I had a plug and cable and had to go and sit in a museum using a socket so I had enough charge to get through the barriers at the train station using the ticket qr code.

Yes, it is. It’s a sad state of affairs that people will lie to snatch your phone off you too! But the upside of living in a city is that you’re less likely to be stuffed if your car breaks down.

The point is she shouldn’t have been rude or entitled not that she shouldn’t have needed a charger.

All this ‘badge of honour’ over not using a phone is bizarre though. Like it or not everything is managed on them now.

Managed on my phone currently -

All payment cards and Tesco style club cards
Car key - I start and manage my car settings on my phone
Both children’s football team schedules are on apps
Swimming club schedules and updates all on Whatsapp
School comms on Arbor app and email
School dinner selection on app
Payments of all holiday clubs on app
Work - Teams, email, phone updates
Family calendar
Most school friends parties, play dates, updates

I could pretend that these things aren’t on my phone and I live a wholesome life without my phone but that’s not the reality. I am a working mum married to a working dad with a busy life and having the efficiency of a phone to manage admin gives me more time with my children to skip through fields, wild camp and do strawberry picking etc :-)

this is the way of the world now right or wrong and establishments will have to take into account mishaps in charging if they want to be competitive.

I don’t drink coffee so don’t use Starbucks or Costa but I have used them when travelling when my phone has very occasionally run low. Win win I guess.

Well obviously 🙄
I don’t recall seeing random sockets dotted around in supermarkets that aren’t being used for tills/freezers etc.

How do you mean? I have my cards in my wallet but also the banking apps on my phone. (I am a total Luddite though so happy to be educated here!).
I think I would still cancel everything to be on the safe side.

We get a lot of lost tourists in our shop (which is quite rural and the only spot open at night for 50 miles). They are often desperate, they need their maps app to get where they are going and they are usually VERY polite and quite stressed. We always charge their phones for a few minutes to give them enough power to get to the next big town. AND they spend money in the shop while they wait!

If they are rude or entitled or less than appreciative - well, it's odd but that day nobody has brought a charger in with them...

Sometimes being kind and a bit flexible can make a huge difference to someone's day. We have all been caught out without charge before. Yes, in an ideal world we would plan our day so that this doesn't happen, but sometimes it does, and that's life. Letting her charge it enough for a few minutes to give it a scan to pay and get her on her way is so much EASIER all round for everyone than making a big fuss, her being without her shopping, and putting it all back.

I have a cardholder like this. It’s just a bit bigger and thicker than a credit card and fits easily in my pocket. It’s all I usually take to a supermarket, along with my front door keys which have all my loyalty cards on the keyring, and carrier bags. I do have my cards and loyalty cards on the phone as well but the wallet is less bulky than my phone.

If this is real then I could take a dud phone in, claim the stores charger broke it, and involve them in a costly exchange of letters that would far outweigh the profit on my shopping.

The safety implications of driving or walking home from a supermarket while temporarily being without a phone?

How on earth did we manage for hundreds of years!?

I work in a popular clothes store, we get asked all the time if they can charge their phone to pay!! We aren’t allowed to charge our phones for insurance reasons so we are not going to let a customer.