I don’t think checks will go away as soon as you think. I’m not exactly sure what the technical barriers are to completely electronic banking, but it’s still not here. If you use “online billpay” from your bank, there’s a 99% chance that a check is being cut and sent out. It seems electronic to you because it’s electronic at your end but not at the bank’s end.
At my small business we accept credit cards. It’s nice and easy for us but we do pay a good bit in fees and by law cannot charge our customers to recoup these fees. Although it’s nice to be able to get money so easily it is also a bit of a drain to have to pay $1.20 on a customer’s $24.95 monthly subscription fee. About 25% of our customers still pay with checks. The largest customers all pay with checks. Some of the smallest ones to too. While it’s a pain in the ass for me to keep running to the bank to deposit them, it still saves us a little money to do business with checks.
My company also can’t afford direct deposit, since there’s only 3 of us and we don’t all bank at the same place (we’re in different states). So every week I have to physically write checks for payroll. Our idea of direct deposit is me writing my brother/employee’s paycheck and depositing it in the night drop box at his bank
Some of our vendors don’t accept credit cards or EFT either. Like our health insurance, for example (I think that’s the only thing I pay by check other than payroll). I’d suspect it’s a cost issue for them too.
There’s still stores around here that don’t take credit cards. And some of my utilities as well - Cleveland Public Water, I’m looking at you!
I agree with brick and mortar CD stores, though. I used to live at those places. Haven’t been to one in 10 years.
Holy crap! You’re telling me that, up until about a year ago, I could have sent someone a TELEGRAM? I so wish I’d known about that! That would’ve been some crazy fun, there.
I wouldn’t call it “nutter”, but it’s very likely it’ll take a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of it, and as the USPS is the third-largest employer in the US I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Also, the USPS does a lot more than merely deliver mail. They have the most comprehensive database of streets, addresses, and carrier routing in the US and they do a pretty heady service of selling this routing (and other like data/services) to third-party distribution companies, over $500 mil worth each year.
Except those weren’t the telegrams you might imagine from the movies; delivered in person by a Western Union agent. I remember getting telegrams at my parents’ house in the 1970s and 1980s, received via a phone call from Western Union, followed a day or so later by a mailed copy of the telegram. I don’t know how long ago Western Union stopped delivery of telegrams by messenger, but it was a while back. (The corporate history page said that they introduced next-day delivery of Mailgrams via mail in 1970.) Anyone know?
I do myself, to pay dayhome fees. The agency I’m with is small and the only other way to pay would be to walk in the door each month with cash or a money order. The latter costs me more than my checks to use, and it’s easy to write off a few months worth of checks in advance and hand them over.
That’s the only thing I really use checks for though. Not much else since I got a credit card.
I’ve made this argument before, but it will be decades before DVDs (or recorded video on a disc if) goes the way of the dodo.
People like to browse, and browsing through the on-demand choices on their television is currently a pain in the ass. Many people have also yet to make the jump to DVD. Then there are the people who don’t want to rent their movies/TV shows, but to own them (and “buying” a digital download movie now is more expensive than a DVD).
And then there’s the big one: bandwidth.
There is currently not enough bandwidth in the world to handle all of this downloading of high definition video that people think is just around the corner. And what about all the movie watchers who don’t even have broadband access? Do you think they will be ignored? They make up roughly 40-50% of the US population.
And on top of all this is the argument that video games will also go download only in the next decade. We’ll ignore the fact that the game makers own data says that roughly 50% of owners take their consoles (there’s that number again), but focus purely on the fact that file sizes for video games are rising at a ridiculous rate. This will put further strain on any bandwidth we have and cause a lot of problems.
Downloading media on such a large scale is 20 years away, minimum.
A few British supermarkets have stopped accepting cheques as a form of payment (or are going to do so in the next year). Morrison’s already has stopped accepting them, Sainsbury’s will follow later this year.
As for record shops - HMV recently reported it was in difficulty and Fopp went into administration. Their days are numbered.
Apparently your auto insurance company, the Ohio Democratic Party, The National Arbor Day Foundation, and several other organizations pay for them. I have some in my desk drawer from Amnesty International and State Farm. I get so many in the mail that I throw most of them away. It seems to me that the address label companies have found a much more lucrative niche and will be around for quite some time.
