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Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 21.04
by cwathen
Martin Phillp wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 13.47
gottago wrote: Wed 16 Jun, 2021 19.45 One thing I’ve never experienced before today at a Sainsbury’s Local - none of the tills were accepting contactless, you had to use card and PIN and it would take ages, best part of a minute, for the transaction to go through post PIN. The transaction’s still yet to appear on my bank account which makes me wonder if card payments were actually down and they were saving everyone’s card details locally or something to eventually upload when their systems were back online. A modern replacement for the old having to take a print of your card when everything went tits up? I’m sure someone on here knows!

There was a printed out sign at the kiosk saying contactless was down yesterday at my standard Sainsbury's. I just assumed the contactless reader was faulty.
National problem then. At mine the now permanent door greeter was telling everyone in person. Went early evening when it was busy and the delay after entering my PIN took so long that the software timed out and reported that it had no communication back from the pin pad. Tried a second time and it happened again. The assistant then logged in and authorised the transaction through. Not sure if I've paid once, twice or not at all. Still doesn't show as pending more than 24 hours later.

I wonder if they were doing offline transactions why that would cause the delay? Back in the old days when big supermarkets ran floor limits rather than authorising every transaction the transactions under the limit were notable in that they went through instantly. Unless modern software doesn't expect to work offline and is waiting for a response it never gets before logging the transaction offline.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.12
by m-in-m
How wonderful a store that told people on entry. Sadly my local store didn't. It was left to the poor person handling Smartcheck and self service tills to advise it wasn't working and try and find an answer for people. Unfortunately for me that involved phoning someone and asking them to bring a card with them as I only carry my phone now. Annoyingly the security guard decided that she was best serving customers by staring at them wherever they moved. If only she told people it would have saved staff dealing with baskets being handed to them full and customers leaving empty handed.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.57
by cwathen
m-in-m wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.12 Unfortunately for me that involved phoning someone and asking them to bring a card with them as I only carry my phone now.
I think that underlines why it's probably a bit too early to trust your phone to everything and not carry anything else with you. If I've travelled from my house I do still feel the need to have physical cards and if I've travelled by train, paper tickets. Putting all your trust in a battery powered device with a glass screen and leaving yourself with no backup when you're out and about seems just a little bit mental tbh.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 23.14
by Joe
I don’t know, I think it depends on the type of errand I’m on. If I’m walking ten minutes into town to buy some bread or have a coffee, I’m perfectly happy to just have my phone. It saves carrying a bulky set of cards around and it’s very low risk – I don’t recall a time in the past 18 months when I’ve not been able to do what I want, and very rarely before that, with just my phone. Of course if I’ve schlepped it to the next town by bus to pick up my car that’d just had £200 of work done on it, I’ll take my wallet. There’s more to lose. But ‘showing off’ by using a phone is probably overstating it – it’s just a bit handier.

Edit: oh, you seem to have deleted the showing off line.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 23.18
by all new Phil
Out of interest how much does it cost to process a card payment these days? I would guess at pennies given how much more prevalent it is now. We have done away with cash completely in my work. There’s naturally a slight impact through those who insist they only ever pay cash, but we more than make that back through increased productivity through not having 2 people tied up counting and banking the money at the end of the night, not having to pay for cash collections, no loss through till variance and fraud, quicker and easier transactions…

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 23.30
by WillPS
all new Phil wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 23.18 Out of interest how much does it cost to process a card payment these days? I would guess at pennies given how much more prevalent it is now. We have done away with cash completely in my work. There’s naturally a slight impact through those who insist they only ever pay cash, but we more than make that back through increased productivity through not having 2 people tied up counting and banking the money at the end of the night, not having to pay for cash collections, no loss through till variance and fraud, quicker and easier transactions…
There is no one price, a lot will depend on volume.

Typically debit cards carry a per transaction flat fee of about 15p and a tiny % of transaction value, credit cards (other than Amex and international cards) have a lower or 0 flat fee and a transaction value related fee of somewhere in the region of 1-2%.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Fri 18 Jun, 2021 00.36
by Martin Phillp
Joe wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 23.14 I don’t know, I think it depends on the type of errand I’m on. If I’m walking ten minutes into town to buy some bread or have a coffee, I’m perfectly happy to just have my phone. It saves carrying a bulky set of cards around and it’s very low risk – I don’t recall a time in the past 18 months when I’ve not been able to do what I want, and very rarely before that, with just my phone. Of course if I’ve schlepped it to the next town by bus to pick up my car that’d just had £200 of work done on it, I’ll take my wallet. There’s more to lose. But ‘showing off’ by using a phone is probably overstating it – it’s just a bit handier.
I only use my debit card physically for a once a week transaction at a railway station TVM which doesn't have a contactless reader, otherwise everything from shopping to a local hop on the train/bus is on my phone. Luckily one of the independent convenience stores I also use doesn't have a minimum limit of card transactions, so can easily spend a couple of quid without having to root for change.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 13.53
by gottago
cwathen wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.57
m-in-m wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.12 Unfortunately for me that involved phoning someone and asking them to bring a card with them as I only carry my phone now.
I think that underlines why it's probably a bit too early to trust your phone to everything and not carry anything else with you. If I've travelled from my house I do still feel the need to have physical cards and if I've travelled by train, paper tickets. Putting all your trust in a battery powered device with a glass screen and leaving yourself with no backup when you're out and about seems just a little bit mental tbh.
That transaction was the first time I've used my card since the pandemic began, everything else has been through Apple Pay, including all my loyalty cards and most train tickets. The battery on my phone is very good so I've never had an issue with worrying about not being able to pay due to no power. I can understand there'd be more to consider if your phone has a rubbish battery. Pre pandemic I used to find it really cringe using my phone to pay for things for some reason but it's so much easier that cards and I just don't bat an eyelid any more. I've bought a phone case that has space for three cards built into the back just in case but the phone alone works really well for me and there's nothing mental about it IMO.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 14.09
by Pete
I used to cringe paying with my watch but it's second nature now. Not least bc it doesn't need FaceID or the pin.

Just wish more retailers would update loyalty cards to work better. Nectar for example needs the phone, won't work on watch. Only Nandos have bothered to enable the contactless loyalty card feature, despite Tesco making such a song and dance over their contactless clubcards.

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 14.47
by cwathen
gottago wrote: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 13.53
cwathen wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.57
m-in-m wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.12 Unfortunately for me that involved phoning someone and asking them to bring a card with them as I only carry my phone now.
I think that underlines why it's probably a bit too early to trust your phone to everything and not carry anything else with you. If I've travelled from my house I do still feel the need to have physical cards and if I've travelled by train, paper tickets. Putting all your trust in a battery powered device with a glass screen and leaving yourself with no backup when you're out and about seems just a little bit mental tbh.
I've bought a phone case that has space for three cards built into the back just in case but the phone alone works really well for me and there's nothing mental about it IMO.
Well therein is the key - you have a backup just in case, even if it never gets used. That's a bit different to trusting everything to your phone with nothing else up your sleeve if the retailer's contactless failed (as demonstrably can happen given this discussion) or anything happens to your phone. The other thing with no cards also means no access to cash if you're not already carrying it (I don't think retailers doing cashback allow this over contactless do they, nor does any bank allow contactless to use a cash machine?). This is admittedly much less of a problem now than it was a few years ago, but there are still businesses around which either don't take card or still have quite high minimum transaction levels (my local Chinese takeaway will not take a card below £15, with my regular order being slightly under that so I have to take cash out specially for them).

Re: The Unofficial Sainsbury's Thread

Posted: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 15.05
by gottago
cwathen wrote: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 14.47
gottago wrote: Mon 21 Jun, 2021 13.53
cwathen wrote: Thu 17 Jun, 2021 22.57
I think that underlines why it's probably a bit too early to trust your phone to everything and not carry anything else with you. If I've travelled from my house I do still feel the need to have physical cards and if I've travelled by train, paper tickets. Putting all your trust in a battery powered device with a glass screen and leaving yourself with no backup when you're out and about seems just a little bit mental tbh.
I've bought a phone case that has space for three cards built into the back just in case but the phone alone works really well for me and there's nothing mental about it IMO.
Well therein is the key - you have a backup just in case, even if it never gets used. That's a bit different to trusting everything to your phone with nothing else up your sleeve if the retailer's contactless failed (as demonstrably can happen given this discussion) or anything happens to your phone. The other thing with no cards also means no access to cash if you're not already carrying it (I don't think retailers doing cashback allow this over contactless do they, nor does any bank allow contactless to use a cash machine?). This is admittedly much less of a problem now than it was a few years ago, but there are still businesses around which either don't take card or still have quite high minimum transaction levels (my local Chinese takeaway will not take a card below £15, with my regular order being slightly under that so I have to take cash out specially for them).
I carry my debit card in my phone on the off chance that I ever need cash as opposed to retailer failure! That's the first time I've ever experienced such an incident, phone or not, so it's really not something I consider an issue. If I was without a card I would have just used the Scan and Shop app as a back up instead.

You can withdraw cash at Barclays ATMs with an Android phone, don't know about the other banks. Once cash machines start accepting Apple Pay, which is available in the States so presumably will eventually make its way over here, I'll be leaving the card at home.