Stores that DON'T accept contactless payments - name and shame!

djpailo

masonic wrote: »

What you seem to be missing is that on the tube the rate limiting step becomes joining a queue for tickets/Oyster top up. In Oyster's heydays, running out of money and having to top up the card or buy a ticket at the station could add 5 minutes or more on to what is normally a 2 second transaction.

Contrast that with a supermarket, where the rate limiting step is the checkout operator scanning your items and you packing them. That could be 5-10 minutes per customer. Contactless might save you 10-15 seconds out of 5-10 minutes, but since contactless can only be used for transactions under £30 and many supermarket transactions will be higher than that, in a fraction of cases it will be very marginally quicker and in the others it will be irrelevant because the transaction cannot be made contactlessly anyway.

To me, the difference between 2 seconds and 5 minutes is very much more significant than the difference between 4 minutes 50 seconds and 5 minutes.

Other shops would fall somewhere in between these two extremes, but there are very few shops I could go to the tills and pay for my items in the time it takes me to negotiate a tube station barrier, whether they take contactless payments or not.

So the benefit is clearly different in different situations. To say it is "just as beneficial" in all of these situations is missing the point.

Your logic is still flawed though in my opinion. You are assuming a perfect scenario for the tube where you can go straight through and then comparing that to a worst-case scenario in a supermarket where someone has many many items. 5-10 minutes is a number plucked out of thin - what about people buying one items like coffee in a coffee shop, or scanning a few items for lunch?

If you've used a central London tube station at peak time the chances are you'd have to queue for the ticket gate. If you are unlucky, then you may have to go to a busy London terminal during peaks where the queues can be much worse. Stations can even be closed and regularly are closed. So in those cases, these worst case scenario's, your contactless card doesn't help you get through the gate faster. The longest I've had to wait to enter a station is about 30 minutes to go a few hundred yards.

So you can easily find benefits and drawbacks to using contactless cards on the tube and in supermarkets/ shops. To say one is far more advantageous than the other without giving comparable examples just doesn't make sense to me. We might as well be comparing apples and oranges.

The fact you say:
"So the benefit is clearly different in different situations. To say it is "just as beneficial" in all of these situations is missing the point."

Is very ironic because this is the very thing that was stated in the original post (and is the very thing you are making the mistake of doing). I'm not making any claims except that you should only be comparing comparable examples before passing your judgement - which the other guy wasn't and you aren't either, despite your illusions that you are.

My previous post was just to try to highlight that I can find comparable examples where you don't have much time saved on the tube (to compare with the original poster saying you still waste lots of time in the supermarket), or you do have lots of time saved in the supermarket (to compare with the original poster saying you save lots of time using contactless on the tube).

Your argument would make more sense if you were to use "average" or "typical" examples, perhaps you were indeed trying to, but as I said, 5-10 minutes per customer is too extreme in any case.

adindas

I have an annual travel card to cover zone 1 and 2 in London. But I sometimes top up my Oyster card for occasional travel outside Zone 1 and 2. I am fully aware that I can not use contactless payment in ticket machines.

I just wonder if any place such as tube / ticket ticket offices in London that accept contactless payment ?? Any info / lead will be very much appreciated ...

djpailo

adindas wrote: »

I have an annual travel card to cover zone 1 and 2 in London. But I sometimes top up my Oyster card for occasional travel outside Zone 1 and 2. I am aware that You can not use contactless it in ticket machine.

I just wonder if any tube ticket office in London that accept contactless payment ?? Any info will be very much appreciated ...

No, there are no ticket machines that accept contactless and the majority (most) ticket offices have now closed except where a station is still owned by a train operating company (e.g. Queens Park to Watford Junction). I don't think these would offer contactless payment either. Perhaps those "new" visitor centers might, I doubt it though.

masonic

djpailo wrote: »

Your logic is still flawed though in my opinion. You are assuming a perfect scenario for the tube where you can go straight through and then comparing that to a worst-case scenario in a supermarket where someone has many many items. 5-10 minutes is a number plucked out of thin - what about people buying one items like coffee in a coffee shop, or scanning a few items for lunch?

If you've used a central London tube station at peak time the chances are you'd have to queue for the ticket gate. If you are unlucky, then you may have to go to a busy London terminal during peaks where the queues can be much worse. Stations can even be closed and regularly are closed. So in those cases, these worst case scenario's, your contactless card doesn't help you get through the gate faster. The longest I've had to wait to enter a station is about 30 minutes to go a few hundred yards.

Since my examples were intended to be illustrative only, and only intended to illustrate that not all uses of contactless payment are equally beneficial, I'm happy to concede that my illustrative examples are just that. That is to say that you can imagine many more examples where the use of contactless has other costs/benefits, adding further weight to my argument. But I only needed a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

So I accept your retraction of your previous statement that "The point I'm making is that using contactless for shopping is just as beneficial as using it on the tube." Although you go on to say you have not made such a claim, it is still right there in black and white if you wish to refresh your memory.

It seems we are in agreement that the benefit is clearly different in different situations. To say it is "just as beneficial" in all of these situations is missing the point.

So you can easily find benefits and drawbacks to using contactless cards on the tube and in supermarkets/ shops. To say one is far more advantageous than the other without giving comparable examples just doesn't make sense to me. We might as well be comparing apples and oranges.

The examples were comparable. I compared them. QED.

What's more, I could compare apples and oranges with complete validity. But there is no need for me to do so. Prepare to be amazed: here is a webpage dedicated to comparing apples and oranges. Here is an excerpt:

"Oranges are an excellent source of Vitamin C, with nearly 140% of daily intake requirement, whereas apples contain roughly 7%. Oranges also have a greater amt of Vitamin A, 6% as compared to apples at 2%. Potassium is higher in Oranges (300mg) as compared to apples(26mg). Apples have a higher foliage (55mcg) as compared to oranges (23mcg)."

There's nothing wrong with that comparison either... except that they perhaps meant "folate" rather than "foliage"

The fact you say:
"So the benefit is clearly different in different situations. To say it is "just as beneficial" in all of these situations is missing the point."

Is very ironic because this is the very thing that was stated in the original post (and is the very thing you are making the mistake of doing). I'm not making any claims except that you should only be comparing comparable examples before passing your judgement - which the other guy wasn't and you aren't either, despite your illusions that you are.

Well, let's examine that. Taking aside your inappropriate use of the word "ironic", it seems you feel that I am "making the mistake" of doing something. It is quite difficult to discern exactly what that something is from what you have stated. Since we have agreed that the benefit actually is different in different situations and not the same as you previously suggested, I would simply put the rest down to a misunderstanding of my post, since all I intended to convey is that the benefit is different in different situations and to say it is just as beneficial in all of these situations is missing the point. Which we now know we both agree about.

schiff

Discussing time saving in supermarkets by using a contact-less card is wasted in a common scenario. There is a category of shopper who arrives at the check-out with their trolley (in front of me).

As the items go through the till they are transferred back into the trolley; perfect. When the final cost is announced the person reaches for their handbag, unzips it, digs inside for their purse/wallet, selects a card and places it in the reader. Once it's confirmed, the card goes back into the purse/wallet, into the handbag which is zipped closed. Departure then takes place.

I arrive with my trolley, clutching my card, or having it handy in a side-pocket.

btw TSB credited me with the full £5 cash-back today, though I certainly didn't spend £100 in the month. Not complaining though!

pmduk

Perhaps at this point we could return to the topic or possibly start a different thread in Discussion Time if further discourse is really necessary?

No-name_2

I love contactless - personally I hate keying my PIN in now as touching the grimy, bacteria filled keys makes me shudder.


I see contactless as my default way of paying - I can't be alone as I seem to get an automatic apology now from staff saying that contactless is not in use!


However, I don't like that some contactless payments seem to take a couple of days longer to show up on my pending transactions online (Santander card).

colsten

No-name wrote: »

However, I don't like that some contactless payments seem to take a couple of days longer to show up on my pending transactions online (Santander card).

Easy - go back to bacteria-ridden PIN pads.


Seriously, and assuming you have a smartphone - have you got the Spendlytics app? I am not using it myself as I track my spending in a Personal Finance app but I believe it does track all your transactions, even if they haven't yet been debited to your account.

GTR_King

I use contactless/Apple pay all the time
I have used it in
KFC
Works canteen
Weatherspoons
Unit 17/Vodka Revs (Night Clubs)
Greggs
Game (But most games are rip of prices & over £30)

would use it in Sainsbury's/boots/Wilkinson's/CEX If they offered it

colsten

[QUOTE=GTR King;70541039
would use it in Sainsbury's/boots/Wilkinson's/CEX If they offered it[/QUOTE]

Boots and Wilkinsons have offered contactless all along.