Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Sorry Amazon: Philadelphia bans cashless stores
This week, Philadelphia's mayor signed a bill that would ban cashless retail stores, according to The Morning Call. The move makes Philadelphia the first major city to require that brick-and-mortar retail stores accept cash. Besides Philadelphia, Massachusetts has required that retailers accept cash since 1978, according to CBS.
The law takes effect July 1, and it will not apply to stores like Costco that require a membership, nor will it apply to parking garages or lots, or to hotels or rental car companies that require a credit or debit card as security for future charges, according to the Wall Street Journal. Retailers caught refusing cash can be fined up to $2,000.
Amazon, whose new Amazon Go stores are cashless and queue-less, reportedly pushed back against the new law, asking for an exemption. According to the WSJ, Philadelphia lawmakers said that Amazon could work around the law under the exemption for stores that require a membership to shop there, but Amazon told the city that a Prime membership is not required to shop at Amazon Go stores, so its options are limited.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:26AM (22 children)
in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, cash payments are often encouraged by small businesses, often with a discount (especially without a receipt/tax invoice), as these payments will not be reported for tax purposes.
Some businesses even run "cash only".
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:30AM (15 children)
And somehow the general populous are okay with that, but not okay with benefit cheats, or companies or politicians or celebrities evading tax.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pav on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:58AM (4 children)
Aussie here... No, neither is OK. It's called a "cashie", ie. a cash job, and gets an eyeroll. Noone usually makes a scene because it's not tax evasion until it isn't reported at tax time... and noone wants the banks in total control through electronic only payments either.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:00AM (2 children)
A technicality that makes people feel better.
Hopefully anyone paying cash in hand will then go on to fill in https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/shortforms/form/TEH_IRF, [service.gov.uk] however I suspect they won't.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:36PM
Usually it's easier to demand a receipt... If the business owner is still stupid enough to keep things off the books, WHEN a customer gets audited then they'll get caught.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:28PM
Form not found
Sorry, this form is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
Select 'Next' to return to GOV.UK. If the problem persists you may wish to contact the HM Revenue & Customs Online Services Helpdesk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:09PM
you're a suckass slave.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Pav on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:13AM (1 child)
BTW, Australia has just had a Royal Commission into banking... and billions upon billions have been stolen from customers, in part through bogus charges to just such debit and credit card accounts. Of course the conservatives are handing out stern words, wrist slaps, and sugary sympathy to ripped off customers. I guess if the crimes are big enough...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:57PM
Ah, the USofA missed the opportunity of Royal Commissions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:58AM (5 children)
For small business, at least - food trucks with a single owner operator, single person house cleaning services, single person landscaping services, owner operated plumbing service - cutting corners this way is often the only way to stay open. I live in Pennsylvania and the wife of my self-employed friend has an autoimmune disorder. His family health insurance is $40,000 per year, plus he has a deductible. Of course he prefers cash payment for his services and doesn't report 100% of his actual income to the state and federal government. His choices are "cheat on taxes" or "go out of business and hope Medicaid will cover the medicines his wife needs to stay alive". And he still reports income and pays taxes, he just keeps as much as he can off the books.
That's a lot different from companies or politicians or celebrities evading tax. And frankly I don't care about benefit cheats, average American food stamp (SNAP) benefits for a family of four is $465 per month - big fucking deal, close a few tax loopholes that the cheats use and you could write a check to every family in the country for that amount each month. My dad worked full time and paid taxes from age 17 to 62 and then got laid off, and was forced to collect SNAP benefits for a year before he found another job. Shit happens.
(Score: 4, Informative) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:32AM (2 children)
His family health insurance is $40,000 per year
What is wrong with your country?
To spend $40k (£30k) in health care in the UK you'd have to have two earners each paying £75k in tax, or earning about £180k each in tax.
If it's one earner it's £150k in tax or about £350k a year ($460k)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:12PM
It's America. They fuck ya. It's like in India where you have a cast system, except in America it's like that with health. If you are born sick or just get bad luck, then you better die fast as otherwise it's a painful death with no health insurance. Like a 3rd world country.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:15PM
What's wrong with my country? Plenty. If you're bored you can go to the Pennsylvania health insurance exchanges to buy private family insurance. You can get the same $40k numbers he's actually paying.
I'll be even more angry if true socialized medicine doesn't hit within the next five years. The situation has been untenable for a long time, I just think the inertia of anti-socialism propaganda is finally getting overcome by sheer frustration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:56AM (1 child)
There are apparently about 80 million families in the US, so 80e6*465*12 ~ $450 billion per year.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183659/number-of-families-in-the-us/ [statista.com]
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:46PM
Which is peanuts when you consider that national wealth is in the 50 trillion range.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:03AM (1 child)
Sorry to do this:
"Populous" means numerous.
"Populace" means the common people of a country.
In your sentence above it would be "general populace."
It's an error that's cropping up more often in recent years, probably because of predictive typing. I don't usually point out grammar or spelling issues but do so here because non-native speakers of English or even less careful speakers of English might not realize it's a mistake.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:04PM
Hmmm. But aren't you one of those who "begs the question" incorrectly, but justifies it by saying that is how it is commonly used?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:48AM (1 child)
In the US that's a popular model for small businesses too. It's partly for tax purposes but maybe mostly or even entirely because most electronic banking systems charge transaction fees. It's not a big deal when you're selling expensive items, because then you can pad the price of the transaction fee into the retail pricing. But if, for example, you're selling inexpensive food then adding the price of credit card transaction fees into your pricing might be enough to send customers to the competition and keeping it out of your pricing might cut your margins enough to put you out of business.
But either way the win for me here is that I prefer to withdraw cash and then buy everything that way, so that one less company tracks everything I buy and how much I spend at each retail location and sells it. I live close to Philadelphia, and I'm glad the city did this.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:59PM
It's also legal in (most?) of PA for small businesses to reject card payments for small amounts of money, as such transactions can actually end up costing the merchant more than they make on the sale. They're also allowed to have different card/cash prices, for certain things, at least gas (and many gas stations still have signs with separate cash and credit pricing) and though I don't see that being leveraged as much to encourage cash these days I don't think its off the books.
(Score: 2) by TheFool on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:41PM
In the US, payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, etc) won't allow you to encourage discounts for using cash with anything but a kind word. They can do this by refusing to be your payment processor if you try. I'm sure you could be clever about it, but most businesses just shrug.
But yes, you do see the occasional "cash or check only" business once you get outside the cities here too.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:58PM
We love cash, don't we? I use it as much as possible. I built the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park (NYC). And I run that one on a cash only basis. Cash business is great business. And another one is the Casino business. Very tough business to be in, but incredible amounts of cash coming in there. You have to be careful about the counting. Find some guys that wear yarmulkes, they're very good with money. And if you play your cards right you can go very far with that one. Ka ching!!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:13PM
On the other side...
Homeless people can take card payments [thebigissue.org.au]
Buskers too [abc.net.au]
They say this is "...to combat increasingly cashless society" - hmmm, a "combat" situation. I (rhetorically) wonder who is winning?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by gaffa on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:03PM
As a business I prefer the low transaction- and subscription fee on cash payments.
As a customer I think cash is the easiest method of payment.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by ledow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:50AM (71 children)
I read this in the same vein as those places who eschewed electric lighting, motor vehicles, etc.
Just seems an utterly backwards step designed to *stop* voluntary progress (these shops aren't being forced to go cashless, they are choosing to, and to exclude that category of customers who might not want to do that). Now, if they were trying to enforce a relationship with a particular credit card vendor (*cough* London 2012 Olympics *cough*), that's not right. But if they are just saying "We don't want to handle cash, it's too risky and expensive to do so, so we're choosing not to accept them" then you have a problem that you're just batting down the road rather than actually solving.
I know what I'd do now if I owned such a place - I'd investigate ways to charge for accepting cash and/or reward people for paying by card. I'd make it so that cash was such a "one-off" exception that it would feel inconvenient, and there'd be a different process. "I'm sorry sir, but you can only pay cash at our cash till... if you wait over there, I'll serve these gentlemen first... by the way we have to hand-count all the cash twice and provide you a hand-written receipt as we don't have an electronic system for that". And then I'd give you the new apprentice who "isn't entirely familiar with this, because we don't do it very often, so I'm using it as a training opportunity".
Not illegal, but not entirely co-operative and positively discouraging to the point that the only people who'll go through it all are the people who want to cause a fuss anyway.
The world's going cashless, whether certain people/places like it or not. I'm basically operating cashless on a day to day basis for the last.... 10 years? I spend any notes I do receive* immediately (rather than carry them around or bank them) and then put any change either in my car door or a little tin in my office, or a little tin at home. I use those stashes only to pay for parking where they don't take card (rare), or for things like giving people 50p for their charity cause, or for when a friend needs to borrow money. Honestly, many of those coins have been in those boxes for 3-4 years now.
But if cash disappeared tomorrow, I would be unaffected. It's just as likely that the whole till system goes down than it is that I don't have a card that will work. And when that happens, it's pointless trying to get young staff to try to take cash reliably - most stores just shut up shop if the tills go down because the mistakes and cash-handling cost more than just a day's profit, especially when you're trying to cram as many customers as you normally might through the manual system which is inherently slower.
It's time we let go of cash. The only advantage is "anonymity", and there's little cause to justify that. In the way that that there's little cause to justify cash use because it lets some people evade tax - of course they would *like* to do that. Whether that should be allowed or not is another matter entirely. I read somewhere that the biggest use of the £50 note, the largest denomination in the UK, is for illegal transactions "off the record", drug deals and the like. I know that's not the only purpose of such notes, but it facilitates them. When you have a number on one named account going into a number of another named account, you at least have some kind of auditability. There's a reason that people are after Trump's financial records, not how much cash he has in his safe.
In a cashless world, I bet we would actually benefit greatly in terms of criminal investigations (not just drug deals but executive backhanders, bribes, taxicabs evading tax, shop staff stealing from the till, etc.) and money management. Not perfect, by a long shot, but a lot harder to hide than a bundle of fifties under the table.
(* The only times I *need* to use cash: sometimes one of the old guys in work wants to buy something he's seen on TV. We find it for him on Amazon because he can't work a PC. He gives us the cash, we buy it on our card. He's grateful. He's one of the people who would benefit from such legislation. And for the last two years, he's done it all himself - got himself tablets, laptops and PCs, Alexa, a Kodi box, a pre-pay credit card, etc. etc. etc. because the hassle involved says him more money than he ever spends on doing it).
(Score: 5, Informative) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:32AM (25 children)
Let me give the counterpoint: not everyone can get a debit or credit card. So by allowing cashless shops, you are ingraining poverty and crime.
Let's look a little deeper at the way things are going. In 20 years time, the corporate overlords will know everything about you (via facebook et alia). They will know all about who you hang out with, they will know all about what you do. Multivariate analysis software ("AI" in the vernacular) will be mining all of this data and using it to decide whether or not to give you a credit card. If you have, at some point in the past, known someone who has a criminal record; or has defaulted on a debt; or has been a recipient of social security; or you live at an address where people have this; or in a district where many people have this: your credit will be more expensive; you may not be eligible for financial services such as banking, or they may be more expensive. This is *already* happening.
By requiring that people have access to banking facilities in order to buy basic necessities such as food, you are forcing people to the black market; crime, prostitution, etc; just to get food.
Nb: in the 21st century, fascism will not be characterised by Hitler and Stalin, but rather a more insidious sort of corporate fascism where "my favourite minority" are classified as persona non grata by the system; disallowed credit and banking facilities; forced into poverty and crime.
(Score: 2, Troll) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:21AM (7 children)
by allowing cashless shops
You're not allowing cashless shops. You're letting individual free people decide the terms they want to do business with.
The default is that everything is allowed unless it's not.
You simply want to ban cashless shops. This means you want to ban people from making their own free choices of who do do business with. It's very authoritarian.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:34PM
Does "letting individual free people decide", say, not to serve black people make good policy sense? Sometimes there is another store nearby for black people to shop at instead, but sometimes there isn't.
Does "letting individual free people decide", say, not to serve people rejected by local banks make good policy sense? Sometimes there is another store nearby for people rejected by local banks to shop at instead, but sometimes there isn't.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:56PM (4 children)
Requiring shops to accept cash does not forbid individual free people from deciding who they want to do business with and how they want to pay.
If you want to shop at X and pay with cashless, then great! Do so!
Simply requiring X to also accept cash does not inhibit your choices.
The government has an interest in this. If cash cannot be spent anywhere, then it becomes useless.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:37PM (3 children)
Simply requiring X to also accept cash does not inhibit your choices.
Yes it does, I - a shop owner - have to accept a form of payment I don't want to.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:59AM (1 child)
Just like you - a shop owner - have to accept as a customer someone whose eye colour you don't like.
Legal tender is legal tender. You are also permitted to accept goods or services as barter provided you declare it as income.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Wednesday March 13 2019, @08:45AM
Legal tender is legal tender
That only applies for paying a debt. A resturant where you eat a meal then are presented with a bill is a debt and you are legally allowed to pay by cash
Buying a car in cash isn't paying a debt, the seller has no obligation to take your cash.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:45PM
I was not referring to shop owners, but to the shoppers who shop there. Sorry if I was unclear.
Shoppers are not inhibited from paying cashless.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:47AM
Which is fine unless the shop is an effective monopoly. Then the shop is making itself (and the goods and services it monopolises) unavailable to a lot of people.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:08AM (12 children)
Yes they can.
There are pre-pay credit or debit cards, the same way there are bank accounts for those with zero credit (they don't offer some facilities, but even they usually offer debit cards). Scrap cash and all you have to do is provide a card to anyone who asks... which isn't at all difficult, and a damn sight cheaper than printing money.
There's no reason for any corporation to know anything about me from my bank account. They don't know it now, they won't know it in the future. They know the card number I choose to give them, that's all. And I have multiple cards. Additionally, if everything was card, you can get cards nowadays that have different, single-use numbers for each transaction. Pay-by-tap does something very similar.
The rest of your concern is defeated not by using cash, but by enforcing data protection. Credit is voluntary. Banks don't have to give it to you and you may need to supply them with information to get it. Credit is also *optional*. Cash isn't credit any more than a debit card is. We're not talking credit at all, in any way, shape or form. Which is why those people who only get "basic" bank accounts don't get credit cards. They get debit cards. That are usable online and in shops just the same. He says, with two debit cards in his pocket and not a credit card to his name.
What you're trying to say is "Cash is the only way to do this". It's not. It is, however, the single-most expensive thing to produce out of all the monetary methods, and an expensive to handle system, and unauditable.
By forcing people to have access to banking facilities in order to by food, we are *stopping them* from having to resort to the black market. Specifically, those who are already "black-market" (e.g. cash-in-hand prostitutes) will remain exactly how they are, while everyone else will have to put their purchases through a card that *anyone* can get and only those cards will be accepted in shops.
It also makes crime a lot harder to pay off. Mugging is now pointless, because get no cash and you can't even sell the phone on.
It's really a poor argument to say that changing payment methods is somehow fascism. Everyone gets a card because everyone needs a card. But now you can't hide black-market transactions, and resort to barter is the only method that would work. And the goods you barter with? They had to come from a non-cash transaction or other barter.
All you're doing is eliminating an anonymous layer that's used to mask origins of transactions. And in the UK card use overtook cash use this year.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:43PM
Prepaid Visa cards in grocery stores charge a 10 percent surcharge to load them with cash. In addition, the merchant must pay a substantial monthly fee plus 30 cents per transaction plus 3 percent of the total.
How old does the account holder have to be, and how much of a monthly fee does the bank charge the account holder for both sending and receiving money? How practical would it be for, say, a 14-year-old to accept credit cards for mowing lawns or babysitting?
At no charge?
First we'd have to find a way to make prostitutes no longer black-market.
"Your card and PIN or your life"
But a mugger can prevent the victim from calling the police now that the victim has lost possession of his or her cell phone and pay phone operators have removed the pay phones on which the victim would have once called 911.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:25PM (10 children)
> There are pre-pay credit or debit cards
Just to add to the other poster, I believe In the US it is common to pay for a current account. If you are not from US you may not be aware of this.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:19PM (9 children)
I (actually we my family) use credit cards for everything we possibly can. We do not pay for cards. They pay us. Those cards earn lots of rewards. Disney Dollars. Airline points / miles. Cruise ship rewards. Amazon rewards dollars. Or Target card getting 5% off right at the register. Etc. etc.
Not only do we not pay for cards, we have an endless stream of free high limit credit card offers coming our way constantly. We destroy them and toss them out.
BUT . . . we NEVER borrow money on credit cards. We never pay interest. And obviously, never any late fees. We don't use a card unless we are prepared to write a check for it right now.
We even pay our utility bills on credit cards.
Now where does all that free money come from? Oh, from the people who pay cash to buy the same items we buy.
It's not nice. But it's how the system works.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:53AM (4 children)
The credit card companies are just betting that enough responsible people have a disaster that will pull them into debt. Disallowed by health insurance, and the bill = savings + substantial debt? Economic disaster sees you unemployed for an inconveniently long time, and it's dig into credit or deny your kids crucial education/opportunity? It's a safe bet they'll take enough economic scalps of so-called "responsible" borrowers, and has made trillions on trillions.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:55PM (3 children)
I wouldn't call myself a "responsible borrower" using credit cards, because I don't use them for debt.
If I needed to borrow, odds are good my banker would give me a commercial loan on far better terms than a credit card.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday March 15 2019, @01:02AM (2 children)
Why would your banker give you a commercial loan if conditions had become so dire that you'd need to consider such borrowing in the first place? This is exactly the blindness/denial they count on.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 15 2019, @02:08PM (1 child)
I wouldn't be seeking a loan unless I expected I could repay it.
I suppose in desperation, it is hard to know what I would do. Would I be driven to borrow money that I knew I could/would never repay? Who knows.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pav on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:13AM
Simple recipe - some lead a blessed life and are losses for the banks, but a large portion face a financial challenge beyond their means at some point in their lives - and if the credit card is in your pocket the hook is set. Some will sacrifice their health, permanently downgrade their financial wellbeing etc... rather than take a chance by going into debt, but many gamble that they can find money in the medium term if they keep their health, earning capacity etc... For the banks, ideally you won't go bankrupt... but are far enough in debt that a large chunk of your disposable income will be theirs for a significant period.
This is harming us on a society-wide scale - wealth captures more wealth. We don't tax the wealthy like we used to, so the books are no longer balanced. Society now borrows the untaxed wealth and pays interest on it... either the government borrows (and prints), or else the private sector borrows instead. The alternative is societies getting poorer, and plenty of countries without borrowing capacity are in that camp. Already in most western countries the middle class have exhausted their borrowing capacity so they're falling into the lower class. China is even starting to get there.
No wonder these bankers want a credit card in every pocket... They need to set those hooks before rome burns.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:51PM (3 children)
How do you pay the balance on the credit cards? I assume from a checking account. But that can become expensive if all banks with ATMs in your area charge a monthly "account maintenance fee" for having a checking account. You might try working around a local bank's fees by switching to an online-only bank. But without an ATM or branch in your area, depositing cash or checks received in the mail from on your birthday and Christmas becomes impractical. So is depositing your paycheck if your employer is a small business that does not qualify for payroll direct deposit. You might try unloading your cash at the few remaining cash-only businesses and using the bank's app to deposit checks. But the bank's app doesn't run on a desktop or laptop computer with a webcam or flatbed scanner. So in order to run the bank's app, you have to upgrade from a land line or flip phone to an iPhone or Android phone, and your carrier might try to force you onto a more expensive cellular plan just for having a smartphone.
Fees, fees, fees.
How did you get the first of these credit cards? Someone with no credit history at all, positive or negative, is likely to end up declined. Or did you take out a student loan and repay that in order to qualify?
I too pay my phone bill and my cable bill with a Chase Visa card. But some utilities accept only paper checks, or only ACH debit from a checking acount, which doesn't give you any rewards, or give a $5 per month discount on the bill for using ACH debit instead of credit.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:23PM (2 children)
> How do you pay the balance on the credit cards?
Checking account.
> that can become expensive if all banks with ATMs in your area charge a monthly "account maintenance fee" for having a checking account.
Free checking with balance continuously over $1000 or some number I don't know anymore.
> You might try working around a local bank's fees by switching to an online-only bank.
Never really thought of that. Interesting. Once you do the same thing for decades, you don't think of doing something different unless some big reason hits you over the head.
I do use an ATM occasionally to get cash. But I get a large amount at one time to avoid multiple or frequent trips. And, of course, I rarely spend cash.
> How did you get the first of these credit cards?
So long ago, difficult to remember. We started with ordinary consumer credit cards. (ones with annual fees) Acted responsibly with them. Eventually got better and more and better CC offers.
> I too pay my phone bill and my cable bill with a Chase Visa card.
Same here. Several Chase Visa, but one rarely used BoA Visa for a cruse line. Those are our favorites for specific rewards. Oh, and Target for always instant 5% off. Target eventually significantly raised my limit.
Same about phone and cable. But also electricity and gas -- hopefully they won't one day stop accepting CC autopay. If they do, we'll reconsider whatever is the best option -- even using debit card if its in our best interest.
Here is what I think is the catch: In order to accept debit cards, with, say Visa, they agree to also accept all Visa cards, including these "rewards" cards. And they are not allowed to charge differently for people who pay "cash". This is an issue that stores like Walmart would like to change. If you pay "cash" you pay less. That way the cash customers aren't subsidizing the rewards card customers. Sadfully.
I think getting so many continuous offers of rewards cards is a combination of: Time. History of prompt payment. Spending a lot on cards. (Including once even buying a used car on a Southwest airlines card -- chase visa -- which was 1 and a half free flights to Disney World) And possibly my income level. But I think mostly our credit history. Those cards would keep raising our credit limit to insane levels. What makes them think I would ever spend that much money when they KNOW that we don't have that much.
Raising your credit limit above your means to repay might be one of their tricks. Maybe people think credit is some kind of free money.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
Tying up $1,000 or more in an account that earns 0% APY could prove difficult for people struggling to make ends meet, even if they have been fortunate not to fall into the payday loan cycle of hurting.
Losing money forever to annual fees could prove difficult for people struggling to make ends meet.
Since when? I've seen businesses that are cash or debit only because they're on Interlink and Cirrus, the ATM debit networks, not Visa or MasterCard, the credit networks operated by the same companies.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:29PM
Yes I've realized the $1,000 tied up for 0%, but I think I simply don't 'perceive' it that way. I also realize that is not an option for many people. And I was one of them decades ago.
If CCs with annual fees are too expensive, then I would probably, just thinking out loud, stick to cash, checks and a debit card.
But . . . one thing we have learned about debit cards! Have two of them. We have our 'real' checking account, and NEVER use its debit card except at an ATM. Then we have our 'online' debit card (that name is historical before we had so many CCs). If we do use somthing that needs a debit card and won't take credit card we use the 'online' debit card. This means we maintain two checking accounts. I think that 'online' one is set up with a checking account fee, because we only keep a couple hundred dollars in it unless we know we need to put more in it for an upcoming debit-card-only purchase. I don't know how it is set up, because I don't take care of the bills. I earn it, she spends it. :-) But seriously she takes care of all that and I don't worry about it.
WHY have a special debit card? Because the 'online' one is the one that might get 'hacked' or have money stolen out of it. When this happens, your account might be frozen for ten days. But you do get your money back. We had this happen. But we were okay because we had credit cards we could buy groceries and fuel with.
It was speculation about Visa imposing requirements to accept credit cards. I'm happy to be proved wrong and correctly informed.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:10AM (1 child)
It's no problem. The poor can always shoplift instead.
I have been musing lately about a return to barter, myself. "Take your 11% sales tax now, Mr. Mayor Muthafucka." "If you want 30% of my Cheerios, you can come down here and collect it yourself, Pelosi. Oops, sorry, pissed in them first..."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:13PM
For small transactions, you can not only barter, but you can pay with green backs (aka "cash").
It is convenient. Untraceable. The receiver may or may not report it as income, but that is not your business.
I've seen instances of small businesses where you could come in, buy something, pay cash. The owner doesn't ring it up, you walk out of the store. He pockets the cash. The transaction was off the books. Especially if it is a food place, this small reduction of inventory is also untraceable.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:20PM (1 child)
Depends on your clientele. It's like going to Chanele and then wanting to pay cash-only for $2000 worth of perfume. Sorry, but some places don't want cash. Like Amazon. Amazon's clients are not cash heavy in the first place.
I see what you did there... giant hyperbole. And which food store doesn't accept cash?? And if you believe that cashless Amazon stores would not allow cash when there is demand, you're probably a little crazy. But they would have some place where you buy credit for Amazon and then you buy whatever againt that credit.
Nah, you already have Mr. Orange there with his other favorite minorities. 800k without pay for 2 months because he saw something on Fox News. Now how's that for forcing people to food banks?? People that actually work? But no, you go after stores experimenting with cashless.... oh noes!!!!
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:22PM
> And which food store doesn't accept cash??
In 10 years time (if we allow it) all major supermarkets.
> And if you believe that cashless Amazon stores would not allow cash when there is demand, you're probably a little crazy.
Who wants to serve bums, prostitutes and drug addicts? Not much demand there. Except you just created a positive feedback loop and ingrained poverty.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:36AM (30 children)
Get out of your millennial city-based box
(Score: 2, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:18AM (6 children)
That's your choice. However this move is forcing me to accept cash for something up front - a move that attacks my freedom. (Forcing acceptance of cash for outstanding debt is of course fine)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:52AM (5 children)
Cash has to be something you can rely on being able to use. Credit cards are not 100% reliable and are pretty much untrustforhy.
Sorry for stepping on your freedom for being a corporate biach, but my freedom of buying necessities goes above that.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:04AM (4 children)
My freedom not to sell you stuff goes above your freedom to buy stuff from me.
Go buy from someone else.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:46PM (1 child)
From which someone else? If all grocery stores in an area exercise their perceived right to go cashless at the same time, then someone refused a bank account will be unable to buy food.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:19PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:50PM
Even if that is legally the case (here in the US, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't), it definitely should never be so.
The bottom line is that if you want to do business within society, your business should be open to all of society within bounds that everyone can meet — wearing at least a minimum of clothing, for instance. Otherwise the door is open for not-very-sub rosa classing by bad actors. "Oh, I won't bake a cake for a religious / atheist person"; "Oh, she went to jail once, not serving her"; "Oh, we don't serve people in wheelchairs"; "Oh, we don't serve Republicans"; etc., etc., ad infinitum.
We know this happens. That's why the law already has some stupid garbage about "protected classes" such as blacks, gays, etc., where instead it should just protect everyone beyond the very most basic social constraints that are achievable by anyone. I'm not even all that convinced of those, frankly.
Your "freedom not to sell a person stuff" is an open door to abuse, a door that people are known to be willing to walk right the hell through. Even if you in particular might not misuse it, there are a huge number who will. Better to shut that door entirely, and keep it shut.
--
No one said the joke would be funny.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:25PM
You DO NOT have a freedom to not accept cash.
Governments mint and print cash for a reason. So that there is a standard legal tender that people can exchange.
The government's interest in making sure that currency still can be traded exceeds (vastly exceeds) your interest in not accepting cash.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:41AM (19 children)
.... and I don't want bankers to take a cut of every payment I make.
Banks hate cash because they are not the man-in-the-middle of the exchange.
(Score: 1, Troll) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:45AM (18 children)
Shops hate cash because it costs more to handle
People hate cash because it costs more to handle
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:04PM (9 children)
"Shops hate cash because it costs more to handle"
People keep saying this, and there is a certain small truth to it. My wife ran a retail business for a long time, so I've seen this: you have to count the cash, you have to carry it to the bank to deposit, you have to get change from the bank to stock your till. Yes, it takes time.
However, cards are at least as expensive. There's not only the fee on individual transactions. You also have to buy or rent the machines to accept and process the payments. You have to have the network to send payments to the payment processors; this network may have to be scanned and approved. You have to have the contracts with the payment providers; these in turn may place certain requirements on the business that have to be met.. All these costs are infrastructure, but they are substantial, especially for a small business. Somehow, the "cash is expensive" people never account for these costs...
Finally, if the network connection goes down, or the payment providers has a problem, or you just have a power failure: you cannot do business. I've seen this happen, and (of course) it tends to happen at times of peak load.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:49PM (6 children)
Of course you can continue to accept payment cards during a power or network outage if you thought ahead to buy a $20 credit card imprinter and carbon slips for use as a backup and train staff on their use. That's why the numbers on a credit card are embossed.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:23PM (3 children)
Great tweet, you brought back some wonderful memories with that one.
Sometimes they still do the emboss -- so important for our blind folks, right? But more and more of the cards are totally flat. But we remember the Carbon Paper. And we loved the Carbon Paper -- made from beautiful Clean Coal. I haven't seen that one in years. Credit Card, in America, is now cyber all the way. 100%. But I'd love to visit your part of our amazing world, the part where Carbon Paper is powering the economy VERY STRONGLY. Like it used to here in America. When America was Great!!!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:35PM (2 children)
(cont) By the way, Carbon Paper. We hear all the time about, somebody's cyber got hacked. By Russia, China, Korea -- whoever. But before there were cyber hackers, there were Carbon Paper hackers. We didn't call them hackers. We called them Crooks. When we did the imprint, we would (many times) throw away the Carbon Paper. Well, that paper would have all the numbers from the Credit Card. Not so easy to read because it was white numbers with black around them. And the numbers were very long. Tough to read. But, not too tough for these guys. They would pick those special papers out of the trash. Read the numbers. And do Fake transactions with those numbers. Not great. But, still much better than cyber. Which has complicated lives VERY GREATLY!!!
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:24PM (1 child)
You sure seem to know a lot about scamming card numbers off the old fashioned imprinters. Where did you learn that?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:26PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:25PM (1 child)
They aren't anymore.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:17PM
(checks wallet)
A credit card from Synchrony isn't embossed, but credit and debit cards from Chase are.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:40PM (1 child)
The point is it's not you or I that make that decision. It's the shop keeper. If a shopkeeper decides handling cash is too much hastle, why should the government use it's power to force him to?
Sure in some nazi world where the government controls everything then they can, but in the land of the free the person deciding not to take cash should rule
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:16PM
You are free to get a job so you don't have to handle cash and if you're lucky the hours are better.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:52PM (7 children)
In the case of a 50 cent order at a yard sale (occasional private sale of used goods outside the seller's residence), I'm interested in your reasoning as to how two 0.25 USD coins cost more to handle than a 30 cent transaction fee charged by the bank. Or is it just the customers who ask "can you break a twenty?"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:27PM (2 children)
"can you break a twenty?"
I'm not that advanced a magician.
But I can make it vanish, you interested?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:09AM (1 child)
Of course. Will a cheque for a ten and two cheques for fives be OK?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:19AM
That may be a convoluted variation of vanishing, I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday March 13 2019, @08:48AM (3 children)
It's upto the person selling to decide if it's worth the hassle to take the cash. Some people think it is, and that's fine, nobody's stopping them.
But some people think it's not worth the hassle to take cash. That's their choice, and you want to stop them.
You then get into the "my freedom to pay cash vs your freedom to not have to take cash" balance.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:33PM (2 children)
What suggestion do cashless shopkeepers make for marginalized shoppers to pay cashless shopkeepers for goods and services, particularly once "somewhere else" also becomes cashless?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:07PM (1 child)
As with many things, it's a balance of rights.
One solution for your problem would be the government operating some form of pre-paid system - you pay the government $50, they give you a $50 card, you take that to stores and spend.
You could either fund this from taxation (socialism! OH NOES!!!), or have the government charge a convienience fee.
The government would not be able to discriminate, it would be open to anyone with legal tender.
This way the shop keeper is not forced to do something
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:19PM
I'm sure everyone would feel better with a clear set of rules for doing business than having the state directly involved.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:20PM (2 children)
I do not want private companies / government / my wife knowing what I spend all the time. - A valid concern
I want my kids to be able to buy sweets at the local shop - My kid can. She has a GoHenry card. Which is a Visa Debit. Which is accepted by all major shops.
I want to be able to donate to buskers - You can. Legit buskers in London can often take card nowadays, especially those on the underground. They are less likely to be mugged for their hard-earned cash too.
I want grandparents to be able to give the kids cash on their birthdays - My parents can. They put it on her GoHenry card. Which is a Visa Debit. Which is accepted by any shop she wants to buy things from, but mostly she buys online from Amazon.
I want car boot sales to exist - Cool! I love them too! They do. My local flea market, most stall take iZettle. £~20 for a device and you can take all cards, Paypal, NFC payments, etc. and even old grannies selling off their knitting can take it.
Your arguments aren't "for cash", in the main. They are for a ubiquitous payment system. Card payments are becoming ubiquitous. And, if you stopped using cash, they would take over and become universal.
Note also that I can give my daughter pocket money automatically only "if granny taps to say she did her chores this week". I can monitor her spending. She can't be beaten up in the playground for it. It's PIN-coded and works in an ATM in any European country.
She can't get into debt. She can't go and buy cigarettes with it, or porn or anything that requires age verification, and certainly without us knowing. And I can freeze it immediately should she lose it. Also, her mother, grandparents and other relatives all have the app to do the same for her. She can also put some aside into a savings pocket for herself, put on targets to save towards, send and receive money from her friends, etc. etc. etc.
Note also that my daughter thinks its great as she buys stuff on Amazon video when she wants to and doesn't have to ask her mother to do it. She also lives in Spain. I live in the UK. You *can't* do that with cash. Not without much bigger risks (e.g. currency conversion costs, money being lost in the post, bullying, etc.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:43PM
"She can't get into debt. She can't go and buy cigarettes with it, or porn or anything that requires age verification, and certainly without us knowing. And I can freeze it immediately should she lose it."
So all your points are fine, but those sentences right there are the problem. Not YOUR problem, THE problem. If you remove cash then it becomes trivial for governments to absolutely control the lives of people. China is putting the program into use right now, and no matter how many checks and balances you make such a system will tend towards authoritarian scenarios.
I used to think 100% transparency was a good thing, but there are so many edge cases where privacy is important and has no bearing on the lives of anyone else. We can either live in a super safe world or we can have freedom. Personally I choose freedom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:13PM
It doesn't bother you that the bank is taking something like 3% on every transaction that happens? That's why some small merchants give a 3%-ish discount for paying cash, because they'd have to give that to the bank. And the banks and credit card companies used to penalize the merchants who did that until Dodd-Frank prevented them from punishing the merchants. THOSE are the guys you happily give your 3% to? If the banks didn't take a cut on every transaction, I would be more likely to agree with your position.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:20AM (8 children)
Yes, that means I have to support the rights of independent commodity vendors such as cake-shops run by medieval religious loons who don't want to sell cakes to gays/trans/blacks/uglies. I also reserve the right to never give them a cent of my money, and to treat the owners as pariahs, but it stops there, obviously.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by http on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
Someone taking that path has no reason to lie and call themselves retail. Do it out of your basement, maybe?
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:01PM
Me: People have the right to be bad at business.
You: That's hardly "business" then!
as that's all I'm getting at the moment - were my setup as such, then that response would be vaguely funny; but my setup wasn't that, and your response wasn't that either. The introduction of the concept of a "lie" being involved changes the implications greatly. So if it's not that, please provide your definition of "retail", such that the essense of the "lie" you mention can be revealed. A reference to a widely accepted economic text would be appreciated. I can't counter your argument without knowing upon what you're basing it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:15PM (5 children)
Here's (one of the) problem(s):
Neighborhood has one grocery source. It's a poor neighborhood, and there's no prospect of another grocery source opening. This place refuses to sell to some arbitrary subclass of the local poor (Mexicans, gays, etc.)
These people now have no other first-order alternative for a food source until (unless) the "free market" manages to set one up. Do you think that will happen before they starve, or end up paying a proxy to shop for them, or end up robbing the existing grocery source?
How about hospitals? Would you be good with the local hospital saying "we don't practice medicine on Republicans"? Or Blacks? Or Women? Or Spanish-speakers? Gays? Trannies? Country-music fans?
That'd be kind of hard on the deprived-of-service individuals with, for instance, appendicitis or a serious snakebite, don't you think?
It's not just about who will bake a cake. It's about a level playing field for everyone when it comes to the ability to operate in our society.
This is exactly the kind of thing a government should stick its hand into, because there is no shortage at all of people who will refuse service for some asinine reason. The fact is that free market hasn't got either the flexibility or the speed required to take up the slack when these assholes start fucking up.
TL;DR: Your freedom to not sell stuff should not even exist, and the free market's effects are insufficient to justify any claim to such a thing.
--
What's the fastest way to tune a banjo or ukulele?
Wire cutters.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:52PM (4 children)
If there's one grocery store in town, and it's run by arseholes, then, counter to what you assert, there's quite probably a gap in the market for a grocery store that's not run by arseholes.
And where the heck does the shitty concept that there isn't a public (and thus not independent, so not covered my the above description) hospital come from? OK, I know the answer to that...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:48PM (3 children)
First, you're moving the goalposts. As I stated, it's a poor neighborhood, can only support one source, and the locked-out folks are one or another small minority of the poor. So there is no such gap. Consequent to that, you present no counter there.
Second, even if we go to the new goalposts, are these folks supposed to not eat until the new store manages to get open? What if that takes weeks, or even months? That's a deal-breaker right there.
The truth is there is no "fair" way to discriminate in retail for services that any citizen might want to take advantage of. Ergo, one should not discriminate. But since assholes will discriminate if left to their own asshole choice, then society should not let them make that choice.
If a business is reasonably construed to be one that serves the public, then it should be serving the public. If it isn't, it should be made to.
--
Anything you say will be misquoted and used against you.
(Score: 0, Troll) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:07PM (2 children)
I didn't put those goalposts there - you did. So you're moving the goalposts into the playing area, not me.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:04PM (1 child)
Yes, I put those goalposts in a very real, many-times-duplicated circumstance across the US, and then I pointed out why the free market won't work in those circumstances.
Then, without addressing what I had pointed out, you moved the goalposts, presuming that there was a potential for another food source to come about (which may apply in some other cases, but not the ones I was pointing out), which was dodging the issue.
First I pointed out that you had dodged; and that your argument didn't address the problem I pointed out.
Then I pointed out that even under the different conditions you postulated, the free market still can't solve the issue at hand, because "there will be another store here someday" doesn't get the discriminated against individuals from here to there — they can't "just not eat" until the store is permitted, built/modified, stocked, and opened to the public.
So yes, I set the goalposts, but realistically so. You failed to address them in either the original, realistic position, or the position you moved them to.
Unless you want to argue that it's perfectly okay to arbitrarily deny services to whoever you want to, you don't have a leg to stand on.
--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 13 2019, @08:18PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:49AM (4 children)
ledow wrote :
If you owned a "place" you would realise how grateful you should be for every customer you can get. Kicking them in the teeth would not be the way to go. That's unless you are a mega-corp like Amazon or Apple with expert PR operators who can shit on their customers and get away with it.
That's right, set up a ridiculous straw man stereotype. Sorry, I don't recognise myself there.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:24PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:55PM
I used to do that with my parents when I was a kid. They don't give credit cards to thirteen year olds, and my parents were not wealthy enough that I could just throw a few hundred bucks on their cards without them caring. When I wanted to buy an expensive LEGO set, I saved up my cash, and I paid them cash in exchange for the use of their card.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:29PM
I think you miss two things:
a) These shops ARE cashless for a reason. The one I read about in London (a cashless pub) is cashless because he says enough per night in "counting up time", not to mention trips to the bank, and bank charges for handling cash, and security of money on the premises, and thefts from the tills, that he *chose* to go cashless. And it worked. And most people haven't even cared enough because they all have cards in their back pocket anyway.
b) My friend in work, I do a favour form, because he wasn't very techy and didn't like cards and Internet and stuff. He's past retirement, technically, but just keeps working. Even he got onboard with cashless society, when seeing the speed and advantages of using card payments to buy things online rather than try to buy things in cash from shops he has to visit to do so.
That was the point of my post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:23PM
You mean shit the customers in the mouth, charge for the shit. Charge the customer for the shit when it comes out again and then sell back the same shit?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:18PM
I hate it when governments whip out yet another tedious abuse of power for what would otherwise be an idea I approve of. It makes it harder to work up a good bit of pissed off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:29PM
It is nice to see that someone in Philadelphia still has some common sense.
In Georgia, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium decided to go cashless. That means you can no longer pay for concessions or retail items there with good old American cash. This has been in the headlines lately and the media is pushing it as if it were some kind of progress rather than a regression. (Progress towards becoming a nazi-like corporate controlled dystopian world, perhaps).
No real reason given, of course, but probably just corporations wanting to increase tracking, or perhaps pushing "mobile" payment methods that require purchasing new cellphones. Given that stadiums are often gathering places for the biggest and dumbest consumertards, you know they will all just take it up the ass.
Bring some of those tasty Philadelphia cashless bans here please!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bill Dimm on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:17PM (5 children)
We can't have stores that don't accept cash, but having ez-pass-only exits [philly.com] on the Pennsylvania Turnpike is perfectly fine. Rules for thee, but not for me (yes, I realize state government and city government are different, but geez).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:18PM (2 children)
So you really miss those old days of the long backups at the toll booths? That is the biggest benefit to those ez pass lanes. Don't you remember how long it took to get through the Delaware toll on I-95, or that horrible mess in Valley Forge where the freeways come in close proximity to each other?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:00PM (1 child)
I don't think Bill Dimm is suggesting that all lanes. Just that each exit needs at least one cash lane for who don't drive through E-ZPass states often enough to justify $142 for ten years of E-ZPass. (It costs $15 for the transponder, $7 for shipping, and $12 per year for service.)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bill Dimm on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:13PM
That is correct. I'm not complaining about having ez-pass as an option. I'm complaining that at some exits it is the ONLY option.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:29PM (1 child)
Is it a private road or government run? If the latter then the government should take cash (in some fashion - even if it's a matter of taking it and your license plate number to a post office or similar)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bill Dimm on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:15PM
It is a government-run road.