I was a grocery store cashier right around the time checks were starting to fall out of use and cards were becoming more popular. We didn’t have the automatic check printer, although I know other stores had it at the time. We were taught to “gently” remind people that if they were paying by check, they could start filling it out while we were ringing up the items.
I also had people (usually older) apologize to me whenever they paid by card if it was a small amount. They didn’t understand that them paying by card was the easiest thing for me. No making change, no running the check through the machine and hoping it reads correctly. I didn’t even have to open my drawer.
They weren’t apologizing because they thought it made your job harder, they were apologizing because they know the store incurs fees for each transaction and the fees on a small transaction will virtually wipe out all the profit margin.
The store where I use my smartphone app does price comparisons with other stores in the area. If an item in my order is priced lower at another store, I get a credit for the difference, which can be applied to my next purchase.
No, J G Wentworth. They had been such a pain to work with. They bought the first company I was with, and in three years they said that my escrow needed to go up by $100+ a month. Over that time my taxes and insurance had only gone up by 3-400. They paid my taxes and my insurance in December, in February they had $1400 in escrow, my total for both isn’t even $4000 a year.
Most credit cards consider the cash back portion to be cash advance. Interest on those starts immediately, no grace period.
I, personally, use Android pay via my smart phone whenever possible. Much quicker than chip-and-PIN, more secure than handing over a card to a human and I often have the notification and receipt on my phone more quickly than the cashier can hand me the register printed copy.
He’s not talking about getting cash back at the point of purchase, where your bill is $80 and the store puts through a $100 charge and gives you a $20 bill. He’s talking about “cashback rewards” where you get say 5% in reward credits that you can redeem for cash at some later time.
It was a major grocery chain, not some little mom and pop store. No one cared about credit card fees.They way they talked about it they were embarrassed to have to use a card.
I write and receive checks regularly, a few every month.
But, I literally can not remember the last time I wrote a check in a store. It must be over a decade ago.
I used to keep a few loose checks in my wallet, but I stopped doing that ages ago, too.
My grocery store doesn’t do that, but I did get money back at Fry’s for this kind of thing (were they ever mad!) and they put the refund on my credit card just fine.
I haven’t paid interest on a credit card in over 35 years.
I’ve gotten email receipts at Staples, which caused all sorts of problems for rebates. When I go to the grocery though (once a week) the receipt looks like the MS for On the Road.
I write checks for contractors or for larger purchases, where I can get a discount for not charging. Or when I owe something to a private person, and find it easier to write a check then to stop off and get cash. We write checks to our kids of birthdays and holidays. I have never carried an ATM card or a debit card, and I tend not to regularly carry large amounts of cash. Instead of carrying a debit card with me all the time, my preference is to remember to bring the checkbook when I’m intending to make a large purchase.
I could imagine being in the OP’s place, as I am generally a very slow adopter of new technology, do as little shopping as possible, and ink and paper serves a great many of my needs/preferences. At least this was not a situation in which the OP was prohibited from using a check. Instead, it was just processed differently.
The only checks Ive written in the past ten years were to my landlord, who still required either checks or money orders, and most tenants went around the corner to a convenience store and bought money orders.
If I didn’t have those monthly checks to fill out, I’d probably have to ask somebody what year this is.
Actually, a couple of credit card companies don’t play nice with my bank account bill pay and won’t e deliver my bills to the bank any longer. So, I have to directly pay them from the web or their app.
I think I pretty much only write checks for fantasy sports league fees. Paypal and I don’t get along. It is fine to pay my SDMB membership since it works as a credit card payment, but I’m not giving paypal my bank account information after a very bad experience. I’ve put cash in the mail as well to pay my entrance fees and so far, no bdd experiences. I just stick it inside a take out menu.
The reason I write a check for the car payment: the bank branch is a mile and a half away. So, making a car payment is a good excuse for a nice walk and a little exercise.
That’s my point. The last time I paid by check in a store, they ran the check through the register to fill it out and I just signed it. That was a nice little solution, and it overlapped debit cards. So, why did They have to come up with another mechanism, when everyone was switching over to debit cards? I’m just surprised there are enough people using paper checks at registers for this solution to be necessary, that’s all.
I’ve used a cheque in the last 20 years, as a way of sending money through the post to an organisation that hadn’t quite got with the times. But writing a cheque to someone who’s standing right in front of you would have never occurred to me.
In Switzerland, banks don’t issue or use checks. Shops take cash or card or POS debit. All bills are paid online. There is also an app you can use, but I haven’t needed to do that. All bills will have an “account number” for whatever bank they use and all is done through bank transfer, no physical checks. I have even purchased things and been given an account number to go home and pay online. They look at my residency card and note the info and then give me their bill and I take the item home.
The only time I miss checks is when I have to send money to school and need to make sure I have the right cash on hand, but for anything more than about $40, the school will just mail a bill to my home.
