Sounds like you might be talking about a debit card with PIN. I don’t use it because I believe there is less protection if my bank account gets drained and that is why I strictly use my credit card (well, Winco requires a debit card so I do use it there) which has great protection.
Nope. That is actually what my “pointless gripe” was about when I redacted it; it started with why the fact that he was a husband was important enough for the headline, and then the story was clear to run the whole “husband is clueless at domestic chores” trope.
On May 28, 2013, we were charged $76,419,081,785.00 cash for an ornament at a Christmas museum gift shop.
We renegotiated.
Back when I worked as a grocery checker, 2005ish, they took away our ability to scan as multiple items. If they had 20 cat food cans, we scanned 20 cat food cans…
I can see why they would do that. The customer might have twenty of the same brand and size of cat food, each costing the same, but in different flavors. For inventory purposes, you want to capture exactly which SKUs were sold.
Right. So please don’t chat with the cashier. A friendly greeting, etc- yes please, but not a conversation. It slows them down, which means they can get written up or get fired, or they might not notice a scan error.
It’s always the opposite direction with me: The cashier wants to chit-chat. I’m fine with a “hello”.
Wait - that isn’t true at our favorite store, Winco. They are all business there. Safeway…not so much.
When I worked at Safeway the policy was always announce the total to the customer. This sort of thing gets caught pretty quickly if you announce a huge number nobody is expecting.
I usually go through self-checkout at the store but when I do go to a manned checkstand they verbally tell me the total only about 1/3 of the time. I don’t know why they don’t do this. It’s a good practice that costs nothing.
There’s no reason they couldn’t be talking about a credit card. Credit cards have exactly the same technologies as debit cards here at least. Contactless, chip, PIN, etc.
I don’t know that I have ever had a PIN for a credit card. I think you can request one if you want to get an expensive cash withdrawal with one, but I’ve never done that. Never, ever had to enter a PIN with any of my credit cards for purchases. Been using credit cards for over 30 years in the US. If I somehow was forced to enter one, it would be useless to me.
Right. But this person is in Switzerland. In New Zealand I have a PIN/chip/contactless for all of my cards, debit and credit, it is ubiquitous. I can’t remember when I last signed for a credit transaction. PIN is more secure and faster. Contactless is even faster but not secure at all (hence the transaction limits).
Why would a PIN make a credit card useless to you?
Here in the US any “tap limits” there may be are set by the bank issuing the card (or other device, there may be an option for the end-user to set a limit on their account as well) and is not a general rule.
Huh, wonder if someone typed in the UPC code instead of the cost?
They did that for awhile where I work but they changed it a few years ago. It was really slowing down the registers and Speed Rules these days.
We’re still supposed to ring up by different flavors of pet food and I do so, even as some customers whine “But they’re all the same price!” OK, you think the inventory is screwed up now? If the computer tries to order 4000 of the one flavor used to ring up your order but only 500 are available from the factory and doesn’t order any other flavors because it has no record of them being sold the shelves are going to be even more bare than they currently are. Yes, the computer does most of the ordering these days and yes, the computer really is that “stupid”. We do have a human involved at some point but it’s not all the time. Accuracy at the register isn’t good for just the customer, it helps the company, too.
I’m confused over your location and thought you were in the US. In the US, we don’t have PINs on credit cards for normal purchases and I don’t know if that is even an option to enable. Like I said, I think you can make a cash withdrawal on a credit card (PIN required), but that is something I have never done, and never will. If I were forced to enter a PIN on a credit card purchase, that card would be useless because I wouldn’t know what to enter.
Sounds like in other countries, a PIN on a credit card is normal.
If you’re planning to travel, especially to Europe, you can setup a PIN through the issuing bank.
I can’t remember the last time I signed a credit card receipt. Even in the U.S. I used my PIN for my Swiss credit card.
Granted, this was a B2B transaction. I ordered a bunch of stuff from one of my parts suppliers, about $4800 worth. There was apparently some flavor of glitch in their merchant processing that ran my card 4 times.The 4th one not only bottomed out my account, but my bank cleared it and charged a NSF. So I ended up about -$150 on an account that normally hovered around $15k.
I’m not too worried about overcharging with scanners and modern cash registers that print out a detailed itemized list of purchases and prices. Back in ye olde days I was once charged $40 for a $4 item. I’m sure just a mistake. Back then I would keep a running total in my head while shopping to have some idea what it would cost, and the register at least printed prices so it was easy to find this error and correct it. I think the only thing I watch out for now is the proper code for fresh produce.
This is how I still do it. I have in my head about what I expect it to be. And I always look at my register tape before I leave. I have no idea how someone would miss hundreds of dollars overcharge when you are RIGHT THERE.
I wonder if the original story is legitimate or just another urban myth about clueless husbands. Even if true I thought at first maybe he had just spent the money on something else he didn’t want his wife to know about. But if true there was a receipt and the overcharge returned.
The story as written doesn’t make sense. Maybe something similar happened and some of the details got corrupted, or maybe it’s the Daily Mail.