General Chat

According to a posting on another thread, Reg Varney of 'On The Buses' fame was the first person to use an ATM, at Barclays in Enfield Town, on 27th June 1967.

Thank you all for your replies.....

I may be getting old... or ancient even as Rollo says about the system I use..
But certainly not ready for the scrapheap just yet... Gone through too much health wise for that... Now things are looking up , just want to enjoy life

Like a lot of people... I just don't like being told/ forced to do as the faceless ones want even sometimes demand that we do...

Being such a technaphobe..... Using my computer at beginners level is about my limit.... OH is worse than me.... :-S


Rant over.... :-D

I was in the pose supermarket (w.Rose) the other day. It is the next nearest to home after the Coop.

To reduce the queues they were trying to get people to use the self service tills. OK says I but you will have to do it for me. So she did and tried to explain how easy it was. I know how to use it, I confess, it is just that I won't. You have to be paying by card so you would probably have several items.
I might JUST use the WHS cash one if I don't have any other shopping with me ( ***Bag in the area).

Margaret is lucky to have a bank. They closed our local branch leaving us to get to the bank by bus. If you were lucky you could do it within the hour because of queues in the town branch, but the journey each way was 20 minutes. Now, thanks to the next county (we are on the border) we have a whole 2 and a half hours to get our banking done plus the 40 mins or more of journey time!!!!

Ok - so we do do internet banking - but sometimes you just have to visit the bank. I could drive and pay up to £3 to park - but OH doesn't drive.

Edit: First para was supposed to say 'posh' but 'pose' seems just as apt ;-)

cheques are def on the way out in Canada

http://www.seniorlivingmag.com/articles/2013/04/canadian-government-is-phasing-out-printed-cheques

so thankfully is Mr Harper.

Lore has it that King Canute had a spot of bother with the incoming tide.

Dermot !!!!!!! :-D

And your point is Dermot???

Are all the old fogeys to be ignored in the name of new technology

We all have our likes and dislikes and not understanding to the point of being frightened of things we dont understand.

He cant be the only older person who finds the technology baffling

I am VERY protective of OH in his struggle to get by and to keep as long as possible his indendence.

When that is gone he may well give up and 58 years married I aint letting that happen without a fight :-(

Shirley~I,m getting the hang of it - Time & tide waits for nobody.

Every generation had its own inventions. Technology races on while many of us fail to keep pace. Impending unemployment due to work elimination by advancing technology is a reality of the 21st Century & the greatest social problem we face.

Automation means more product with less work. We have achieved technological genius of making everything we need or want without working so hard any more. The big difficulty is figuring out a way of maintaining gainful employment.

Few politicians, if any, offer a satisfactory solution.

WELL i know time and tide don't wait but my point is that it shouldn't be bulldozed ahead regardless on how it affects people .

New technology should run alongside old methods and phased in slowly to give folks a chance to embrace it

RolloTheRed Report 12 Jun 2015 14:18

cheques are def on the way out in Canada

http://www.seniorlivingmag.com/articles/2013/04/canadian-government-is-phasing-out-printed-cheques

so thankfully is Mr Harper.

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Definitely hoping Mr Harper is on the way out ................. but I won't believe the polls until the day after the election when all the results are in.

There have been too many wrong political polls in recent years ............. BC 2 years ago, Alberta a few weeks ago, even the UK election last month



As for cheques .............. I see no sign that cheques are on the way out, other than that the federal government departments are not going to be mailing out cheques for pensions, tax refunds, etc.

I wonder what they will do about the millions of people who are homeless, have no bank account, but are receiving pension cheques from them

I ordered 100 more cheques on Monday for my personal use, with no problem

The government may want to phase them out, but this government will be out of power soon, hopefully, and "grey power" and people concerned with the homeless can achieve wonders.

Mum and Dad both 84 have internet banking. Dad does it, Mum is not well enough.

Something went wrong with her log in and the 'helpful' Customer Service Department insisted she needed to visit the branch.

The reason why we set up internet banking is because she cannot physically get to a branch. Something the Customer Advisor found impossible to understand.

Complaint made and now sorted but what would have happened if I hadn't been around to help?

Chris

.....but what if there hadn't been a human (albeit a slightly dense one) to talk to, Chris? What if your mum was not only expected to get to the bank, and be confronted by machines to sort out the problem?

To my mind. there's no reason why we can't have both technology and humans.
When the combustion engine came in, it wasn't made impossible for people to still use horses and carts to ply their trade - they 'rubbed' along quite happily for many years, until the engines got more efficient, and use of the horse gradually faded out.

Nowadays it's a case of 'I've got x, y & z', so everyone else should get it/have it right now, and we'll just get rid of 'a, b & c, without fully testing 'x y or z' or taking into account that not everyone can afford, or even wants 'x, y or z'. So, when 'x, y or z' fails, everyone suffers, the system isn't fit for purpose and the skills needed for 'a,b &c' have been lost.

Like it or not, cheques are on the way out.

In Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scandinavia, cheques have almost completely vanished in favour of direct bank transfers and electronic payments.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France, some people still use cheques, partly because cheques remain free of charge to personal customers but with virtually no retailers accepting cheques for several years now they have become a thing of the past when paying for shopping.

Of the major developed countries, only the USA still relies heavily on cheques.
However, Canada's usage of cheques is far less than that of the US and is declining rapidly. In 2012 it was reported they accounted for less than 40% of payments and a large majority of that was accounted for by government issued ones. Once they are phased out usage will drop even further.

Since cheques include significant personal information (name, account number, signature and in some countries driver's license number, the address and/or phone number of the account holder), they can be used for fraud, specifically identity theft - another reason for changing to more secure methods of payment.

The problem is in coming up with a cost effective alternative for the increasingly smaller number of transactions where current electronic methods of payment are not always appropriate.

This has not proved to be simple and here in the UK there doesn't seem to be plans to scrap cheques altogether just yet. However as retail banks continue to struggle to make profits, I can see charges for their usage, perhaps £1 or even more, per cheque being imposed before long.

Cheques are handy for paying small traders, like window cleaners.
They're also a nice (safe-ish) way to send money.
Supermarkets thought self service tills were the 'thing' of the future - less staff, save money, but Morrisons is getting rid of them. Hopefully a sign of things to come. I fail to see why I should collect my own groceries THEN have to play at being a checkout person too.
I'd rather people had jobs.

PayPal can be used for paying windows cleaners etc and in the UK has also been taken up by a lot of smallbiz - shops, restaurants, tradesmen - who did not want to spring for a debit/credit card reader.

ApplePay is going to be a revolution in the USA.

Businesses are not there to support loss making jobs. As IGP says retual banking inc cheque clearance and ATMs has wafer thin margins at best. As it has become much more difficult for the banks to scam their customers with poor value loans and insurance the future of physical branches is bleak - current account services in themselves are not profitable. There is not really much of a business case for them.

Morrisons are in a real fix and have had to cancel several major projects. Bringing back traditional queues is hardly going to help them!

Straws in the wind are that UKGov has decided to sell off RBS for what it can get rather than wait. HSBC is pulling out of retail banking in the UK and will be looking for a buyer for the former "Midland" banking chain. Good luck with that.

Rollo says:
"PayPal can be used for paying windows cleaners etc and in the UK has also been taken up by a lot of smallbiz - shops, restaurants, tradesmen - who did not want to spring for a debit/credit card reader."

The words of someone who thinks everyone does, or at least should, live like him.

This fails to take into account the people who don't have access to the internet - that's a third of the population.
Should they just be brushed to the side?
The Government also fails to take account of the people who live in an area where the internet is a dream - providers have failed to provide.

These people are side lined already with things like tax etc now having to be paid online. 'They can go to libraries' - except libraries are closing - and this is hardly convenient.

One in 4 people has NEVER used the internet. It isn't a 'necessity' to life, so why shouldn't their views/situation be taken into account?