Panic buying

[Gwiwer]

Pity the poor chap who was faced with "card only" payments in the supermarket and didn't fully comprehend .....

 

He dutifully placed a card - who knows what sort, possibly a library card - onto the proffered reader and of course it didn't work.  The helpful assistant asked him if he had a card "with money on it" whereupon he pulled out a £20 note and placed it hopefully on top of the card ......... 

[rockershovel]

9 hours ago, stewartingram said:

Not Panic Buying related, but regarding the "branded workwear"....

When I was working on the tube as a contractor, one of my workmates changed his job to a new company. We often met up during jobs. I saw him open his wheelie toolcase once to get out his HiViz (mandatory whilst on the station for us). He actually had 8 - yes EIGHT - of them, each with different branding on them (also mandatory). Because the Underground was split into different groups (such as Tubelines), and the company had contracts with all of them (3 if I remember correctly), and his company was in alliance with other companies on certain of the contracts, he had a HiViz for each!

 

Stewart

 

I’ve never carted them all around like that, but like a lot of contract staff in the offshore oil sector, I have an extensive wardrobe of branded or colour-coded coveralls accumulated from job to job. 

[Butler Henderson]

Pretty miffed - went to local co-op this am and checking bill when home a 2 for £5 offer was not applied and I had been charged for 3 of an item I had bought 2 of.

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Butler Henderson

[raymw]

If you're a coop member (maybe if you're not) you can phone their ho, and they'll credit you the amount outstanding, and maybe a bit more.

[Butler Henderson]

Looks like I need to go back tomorrow (Instore post office) so will raise the matter.

[ejstubbs]

On 13/05/2020 at 21:50, Mark Saunders said:

I was In Sainsbury’s earlier and they now offer a self scan app to use as you shop according to their tannoy announcement!

 

See my earlier post on this thread.  In summary: I tried it and thought that it was rubbish.  IMO a mobile phone is a terrible device to use for scanning a large number of bar codes expeditiously whilst also manhandling a weighty trolley (probably with at least one wonky wheel).  Especially if you set the phone to stay awake for extended periods so that it doesn't go to sleep in between scans, and you've got Apple Pay or Google Pay on it in order to be able to pay a three-figure bill contactlessly.  You're then basically walking about with a contactless card with no transaction limit in your hand, whilst carrying out an activity that is riddled with distractions.  No thanks.

 

The system in the stores which have their own trigger-operated scanner devices is much better but, as noted above, probably costs more to deploy than relying on customers bringing their own (distinctly sub-optimal for the function) devices.

[rockershovel]

It hadn’t occurred to me that mobile apps worked in that fashion, I suppose because I don’t take enough interest in using them. I suppose Oyster cards work that way, but are passive items keyed to a single sort of terminal? 

 

A while ago, my daughter used to carry a small metal plate in her purse to guard against contactless fraud. I started carrying a small metal mirror from a camping wash bag at her insistence, for the same reason ... it’s back in the caravan, now. 

[boxbrownie]

9 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

 

 

The system in the stores which have their own trigger-operated scanner devices is much better but, as noted above, probably costs more to deploy than relying on customers bringing their own (distinctly sub-optimal for the function) devices.

We always use the self scanning in Waitrose as it avoids all the queuing  at tills and of course with your bags already in the trolley the goods are packed as you walk around so saving the emptying of the trolley and packing into bags at the till, I admit it does go against the grain a little as to employment of till staff which is the only reason we have never used a true “self service till” but the time and effort the self scanning saves is worth the slight moral dilemma.

[Enterprisingwestern]

5 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

We always use the self scanning in Waitrose as it avoids all the queuing  at tills and of course with your bags already in the trolley the goods are packed as you walk around so saving the emptying of the trolley and packing into bags at the till, I admit it does go against the grain a little as to employment of till staff which is the only reason we have never used a true “self service till” but the time and effort the self scanning saves is worth the slight moral dilemma.

 

A moral dilemma indeed David, if we want "cheap" food, something's gotta give!

 

Mike.

[boxbrownie]

16 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

A moral dilemma indeed David, if we want "cheap" food, something's gotta give!

 

Mike.

But “we” don’t want cheap food, we want good food and fair prices, hence why we try to buy the Farmers Milk and if not available locally produced Milk and butter/cheese etc is available at Waitrose around our way.

 

All this push for cheap food I swear is more to do with the Supermarkets out gunning each other than the majority of people clambering for the cheapest food, although I do of course acknowledge there are people who can do nothing other than or afford to buy cheap food.

Edited May 16, 2020 by boxbrownie

[Nick C]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

It hadn’t occurred to me that mobile apps worked in that fashion, I suppose because I don’t take enough interest in using them. I suppose Oyster cards work that way, but are passive items keyed to a single sort of terminal? 

 

A while ago, my daughter used to carry a small metal plate in her purse to guard against contactless fraud. I started carrying a small metal mirror from a camping wash bag at her insistence, for the same reason ... it’s back in the caravan, now. 

Easiest thing to do is to carry a second contactless card in the same wallet. The readers can only read one card at a time and will fail if you try to tap two at once.

[Enterprisingwestern]

2 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

But “we” don’t want cheap food, we want good food and fair prices, hence why we try to buy the Farmers Milk and if not available locally produced Milk and butter/cheese etc is available at Waitrose around our way.

 

I was using the royal we, some people have enough common sense to see what is and isn't sustainable in the long term.

 

Mike.

[boxbrownie]

9 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

I was using the royal we, some people have enough common sense to see what is and isn't sustainable in the long term.

 

Mike.

Exactly....and in the mean time as a country we are loosing our Farmers and Manufacturing.......but don’t get me going there! 

[rockershovel]

53 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

But “we” don’t want cheap food, we want good food and fair prices, hence why we try to buy the Farmers Milk and if not available locally produced Milk and butter/cheese etc is available at Waitrose around our way.

 

All this push for cheap food I swear is more to do with the Supermarkets out gunning each other than the majority of people clambering for the cheapest food, although I do of course acknowledge there are people who can do nothing other than or afford to buy cheap food.

 

Good of you to acknowledge them in passing. The Waitrose and Sainsbury sites in Peterborough both could be accommodated two or three times over, in the car park of Tesco’s largest single site here. That doesn’t include Morrison’s, Asda, Lidl, Aldi....

 

The whole local employment pattern has been transformed into a desert of minimum-wage, contract employment. The good jobs at Perkins, Peter Brotherhood, Baker Perkins, British Railways etc are completely gone. This seems to be quite a common pattern. 

 

 

[ejstubbs]

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

It hadn’t occurred to me that mobile apps worked in that fashion

 

Sorry, in what fashion?  Do you mean  that the payment apps won't function unless the phone is unlocked?  You'd better hope so, otherwise you're walking around with the equivalent of a contactless card with no transaction limit on it.

 

As it happens, of course, they do work like that - and in fact it's one of the key security controls that has allowed the contactless limit to be removed on smartphone payment app transaction (don't believe the flannel about "not sending the card number across the network" that the app builders seem to like to push: all contactless terminals basically work that way, and anyway it's effectively only a secondary control to the use of a securely encrypted end-to-end connection).

 

Unlike with a physical contactless card where all you need to make a payment is the card, with a smartphone payment app you need to unlock the phone with your PIN/pattern or with your fingerprint to make a payment.  In information security terms the PIN or pattern is "something you know", and your fingerprint is "something you have".  It's a second level authentication mechanism, akin to sending an auth code to your mobile phone ("something you have") via SMS to gain access to online banking - a control which is pretty much mandated by the FCA these days.

 

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

A while ago, my daughter used to carry a small metal plate in her purse to guard against contactless fraud. I started carrying a small metal mirror from a camping wash bag at her insistence, for the same reason ...

 

I decided that my old wallet was on its last legs a few months ago, when it started eating coins and secreting them in inaccessible crannies within the lining.  While shopping around for a new one I came to the conclusion that almost all purses and wallets on the market now claim to have RFID protection built in.

 

It's generally recognised in the industry that the true incidence of contactless fraud, i.e numbers of confirmed instances of it happening, is actually vanishingly small.  Theft and user error/carelessness are still by far more prevalent, and likely to remain so.  Given that these are much easier ways to compromise someone's card, I reckon that the existing controls around contactless are probably going to remain adequate for some time yet.

[boxbrownie]

12 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Good of you to acknowledge them in passing. 

 

The whole local employment pattern has been transformed into a desert of minimum-wage, contract employment. The good jobs at Perkins, Peter Brotherhood, Baker Perkins, British Railways etc are completely gone. This seems to be quite a common pattern. 

 

 

Not sure what you meant there.....but we try to do “our bit” by buying local produce from local stores (when allowed) but the reason we favour Waitrose (for online shopping mainly)  is their employment model is one huge step above every other Supermarket chain we are aware of.

[rockershovel]

5 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

Sorry, in what fashion?  Do you mean  that the payment apps won't function unless the phone is unlocked?  You'd better hope so, otherwise you're walking around with the equivalent of a contactless card with no transaction limit on it.

 

As it happens, of course, they do work like that - and in fact it's one of the key security controls that has allowed the contactless limit to be removed on smartphone payment app transaction (don't believe the flannel about "not sending the card number across the network" that the app builders seem to like to push: all contactless terminals basically work that way, and anyway it's effectively only a secondary control to the use of a securely encrypted end-to-end connection).

 

Unlike with a physical contactless card where all you need to make a payment is the card, with a smartphone payment app you need to unlock the phone with your PIN/pattern or with your fingerprint to make a payment.  In information security terms the PIN or pattern is "something you know", and your fingerprint is "something you have".  It's a second level authentication mechanism, akin to sending an auth code to your mobile phone ("something you have") via SMS to gain access to online banking - a control which is pretty much mandated by the FCA these days.

 

 

I decided that my old wallet was on its last legs a few months ago, when it started eating coins and secreting them in inaccessible crannies within the lining.  While shopping around for a new one I came to the conclusion that almost all purses and wallets on the market now claim to have RFID protection built in.

 

It's generally recognised in the industry that the true incidence of contactless fraud, i.e numbers of confirmed instances of it happening, is actually vanishingly small.  Theft and user error/carelessness are still by far more prevalent, and likely to remain so.  Given that these are much easier ways to compromise someone's card, I reckon that the existing controls around contactless are probably going to remain adequate for some time yet.

 

Well, I don’t use payment apps at all. My children tend to regard me as something of a Luddite, but there are definitely things I simply don’t feel the need for, and payment apps are one of them. 

[Rivercider]

16 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

 

 

The system in the stores which have their own trigger-operated scanner devices is much better but, as noted above, probably costs more to deploy than relying on customers bringing their own (distinctly sub-optimal for the function) devices.

In our store the self-scanning option using the stores own hand-held devices has been withdrawn for the time being.

 

As a general comment on self -scanning, I guess the store know how much they save (on checkout staff wages), but won't know the full cost. They know what the hand-held devices cost, but working out shrink (theft) will be difficult. All a bit like when BR did away with ticket barriers to make open stations I think.

 

cheers

[Rivercider]

Out of interest this morning when I was at work I was chatting with the manager of our home shopping delivery team, and asked how things were. Apparently the increase in deliveries is significant, instead of 6 vans making two delivery runs each (=12), there are now 7 vans making three runs each (=21),

 

cheers 

[boxbrownie]

11 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

Out of interest this morning when I was at work I was chatting with the manager of our home shopping delivery team, and asked how things were. Apparently the increase in deliveries is significant, instead of 6 vans making two delivery runs each (=12), there are now 7 vans making three runs each (=21),

 

cheers 

That really does surprise me, well actually it explains a lot also.....no wonder there are no delivery slots available.

 

Not even doubling the number of deliveries is woefully inadequate considering that almost everybody has/was ordered/advised to stay indoors, and shows why even some vulnerable people have had to risk shopping for themselves.

[Rivercider]

2 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

That really does surprise me, well actually it explains a lot also.....no wonder there are no delivery slots available.

 

Not even doubling the number of deliveries is woefully inadequate considering that almost everybody has/was ordered/advised to stay indoors, and shows why even some vulnerable people have had to risk shopping for themselves.

I think from press releases Tesco has increased delivery slots nationally from 660,000 to 1,200,000 per week, so it looks like the increase in our store is broadly in line with the national figure.

 

cheers

[spikey]

7 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

 ... the reason we favour Waitrose (for online shopping mainly)  is their employment model is one huge step above every other Supermarket chain we are aware of.

Hmmm.  I haven't been in Waitrose for the best part of a year (can't afford their prices, can't stomach the patronising posters about how much they care etc), but on one of the last occasions I was, I said to the bored-looking Sunday girl on the till "Cheer up, could be worse.  You could be in Lidl".  "At least I'd be earning more" says she, then went on to explain that she was on minimum wage.  If she was in Lidl, she'd be on a quid an hour more.

Edited May 16, 2020 by spikey
typo

[adb968008]

On 13/05/2020 at 16:14, Gwiwer said:

Uber Eats has probably not taken off in the way the business hoped.  If they are "skimming" 35% as their "cut" I am not surprised.  I believe Deliveroo operate on a much lower take.  Just Eat often - but not always - relies upon self-arranged deliveries although one of their linked outlets we have used (and which does not have a contract with Deliveroo) uses a co-branded rider wearing a Just Eat tabard and using a Deliveroo back-pack.  Nice work if you can get it?  Those folk are paid little enough for a thankless and unsocial-hours job.  

live noticed though the online delivery price is a good 20%-30% higher than the I store price, that’s before the drivers delivery fee.

Its nebulous anyway, you order but it doesn’t arrive, so we gave it up.

Zillions of drivers around here, but there still isn’t enough.

Edited May 16, 2020 by adb968008

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, Rivercider said:

I think from press releases Tesco has increased delivery slots nationally from 660,000 to 1,200,000 per week, so it looks like the increase in our store is broadly in line with the national figure.

 

cheers

Very possibly, and why we couldn’t get a slot from Tesco as well..........

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, spikey said:

Hmmm.  I haven't been in Waitrose for the best part of a year (can't afford their prices, can't stomach the patronising posters about how much they care etc), but on one of the last occasions I was, I said to the bored-looking Sunday girl on the till "Cheer up, could be worse.  You could be in Lidl".  "At least I'd be earning more" says she, then went on to explain that she was on minimum wage.  If she was in Lidl, she'd be on a quid an hour more.

Why didn’t she move then?

 

Ill put that down to bone idle youth rather than anything else.