I got a shiny new checking account just about a year ago, as in, I got it about 50 weeks ago. I have written 10 or 11 checks on that account, and a couple of them got scanned and then returned to me, as the transaction was done as an EFT.
I use my debit card a lot, and of course I do a lot of online banking, too.
Really? Can you pay income taxes online? Driver’s licences in Quebec can be paid only at a couple banks, by no means all and not, so far as I know, online. Many US companies will not accept a Canadian credit/debit card (even on a US bank) because you cannot supply a valid zip code.
At my local market the two lines usually open are the express lane and the W.I.C. lane. Last night they had 4 lanes open, supremo, so I took the first one. And was greeted by the most talkative curious nosey cashier I have ever met
Chatty Cathy- Wow this is a lot of food, do you have a big family?
Me looking at my half filled cart in puzzlement - Er no
CC - you have a lot of stuff here…
Me- just empty cupboards at home
CC - they must really be empty…
Me - frowning at her, I then put my milk on the lower basket of the cart
CC- Do you have a bad back
Me- thinking to myself how does she know my back hurts today - Er No, why do you ask
CC - Well I had another customer and it looked she had a bad back so I felt bad and asked if she needed help and she said no, but I felt bad for her…
CC holds up aubergine- what is this?
Me - eggplant
CC- what are these?
Me- capers
CC - Your family likes to eat that?
CC - ooh icecream some is lucky in your house
:rolleyes:
This store is in a depressed little town, but they are family owned and have done a lot of work to make it a clean well stocked well priced grocery store. Still i wonder in what turnip field do they find these employees?
When I first read the thread title, I was prepared to answer “yes.” Having read the OP, though, I’m not so sure. If the two people had had separate carts, it wouldn’t have been a violation.
That having been said, though, I think 20 items is too high a threshold for a Wal-mart express lane. Enough people buy fewer than 20 items that there’s nothing particularly express or special about it. The express lane ought to enable me to dash into the store, grab one or two things I need, and get out quickly, without having a substantial delay at the checkout.
Yep.
It should be more like a 5-item line. That’s one of Wal-Mart’s greatest operational weaknesses … that you can’t get in and get out with a few items (at least not around here). That makes the quick trips to the local stores much more worthwhile than they’d normally be.
They don’t do that at any place I’ve ever shopped. Not even Walmart, at least from my observation of said check writer.
As for check writing. We have a checking account that gets interest (some “Green” checking program) which only allows us 5 free checks written a month.
We never hit 5 in a month.
Oh yes, paying something once a year, or once every 4 years is exactly like paying for your groceries with a check.
Nope.
Some people, however, pay by check.
I pay my driver’s licence online (and my income taxes as well, when I have to pay them).
That’s probably my biggest pet peeve about Wal-Mart. A lot of times I only need to buy one or two things, but I still have to wait behind a half-dozen people at the Express lane.
In that vein, another pet peeve is that they never seem to have too many of their registers open. What’s the point of having 30 registers, if you’re only ever going to have 10 open?
The funny thing is, they spend billions getting the self-checkout system installed and running, and now I don’t see any Wal-marts using them. (my BIL actually is one of the computer guys on the team that was in charge of it)
For some reason, most U.S. grocery store chains didn’t even accept credit cards until about 12-15 years ago. At least, this was true in the Eastern part of the country. (If I had time to rummage through my old checkbook stubs, I’d be able to identify the year when all of a sudden, I stopped writing dozens of checks to grocery stores each year.) But a lot of people, especially older people, still pay for their groceries by check. Habit, I guess.
Why DO they do that?
I have done it before when purchasing things for work that had to be on a separate receipt.
Is this a violation of the express lane - if it is 12 items maximum, if I have 10 separate items and 4 12-packs of soda? The soda (apart from one) stays under the cart, and the cashier just swipes the one 4 times, or hits a button on the register to indicate 4 items.
My roomate and I do this on occasion, and it is trivially easy to separate. The only time its not, is when we have a ton of items, in which case we go to the normal checkout.
I’m guessing the cashiers care–they just aren’t allowed to **do **anything about it. That’s how it was when I was a supermarket cashier, anyway.
My dad lives in Urbana, IL, and the one by him has it, and I’ve used it. The main problem is that the self-checkout is in kind of an out-of-the-way place versus where the cashier-checkout is located, so when you’re on your way out the door, it’s easier to just queue up.
Two things I pay by check: my rent and one of my utility bills. The rent, because I don’t want to set up an automatic monthly payment, and that utility bill because they charge you money to pay it online and I’m not mailing my CC info anywhere.
FWIW, when I was a grocery-store cashier, people would often write checks so that they could make it out for over the amount and get cash back. Can’t do that with a credit card. Checks can also make it easier to keep track of your balance (especially if you get ones with built-in carbon copies), and you can sometimes count on a check being deposited later than a debit or credit card payment would go through or put a hold on your money.
Not really, because it’s obviously something that can be scanned off one item and it doesn’t need to be bagged.
I do it sometimes. As **villa **said, I do it when I’m buying stuff for work that needs a separate receipt so I can get reimbursed.
I’ve had supermarket clerks shoo away people from the express lane who have full carts, but if they’re over by a few items, it’s no big deal. I shop at Food Lion most of the time, and the clerks make no bones about making someone with what is clearly more than 12 items go to the regular lane.
What about a parent and child, can they technically get away with 2x the amount by having the child have a order? Would it be needed to have them as 2 separate orders, since that would take more time?
I checked Revenue Canada’s site - my bank is one of the ones that supports paying taxes online. And even if I wasn’t at a participating bank, I could go to a bank and pay it there. TBH, I’m a newish grad, so with my tax breaks I haven’t had to pay any income tax yet.
Driver’s licenses in Saskatchewan can be paid by cash, cheque, credit card or debit card at any SGI location.
You got me on the third one though. I’ve never tried to order from a US company that wouldn’t accept my money. I guess I could use a cheque then.
Ah, here you’d usually just ask when the transaction starts if you could get cash back, and the cashier would just add the amount on. That’s not something that I’ve seen often though, ATMs are everywhere.
Yeah, there’s nothing express about 20 items. This is no doubt Walmart’s threshold because it allows them the appearance of caring about the customer experience (“we have four express lanes open at all times for your convenience!”) while actually not providing the convenience at all. (And encouraging people to buy more, because they can have more items and still check out “expressly.”)
In the next few weeks, you’ll see that they’ll have more registers staffed for more hours of the day, for the holiday, oh, no, wait, excuse me, the Christmas season. January 2, it’ll be back down to usual levels until the two weeks or so before school starts in your area next fall. They have this stuff down to a scary science.
None of the stores in my area that had them installed still have them, the most recently built stores never had them to begin with.
I spend way too much time and money shopping at (expletive deleted) Walmart.