No cards in the Spar shop?

jogdish

Does anyone know, what the reason for the no bank cards allowed in the Spar on campus is about, seems very odd for a campus.

brianregan09

It's forever been like that and there is an atm 30 seconds across the courtyard

wnolan1992

I'd imagine it's probably because the average spend of each customer is low enough that it doesn't justify the cost of taking card payments, plus it probably alleviates congestion at peak times by not having people taking time getting out a card, putting it in the machine, putting in a PIN, waiting for the transaction to go through and getting a receipt.

Maybe as contactless becomes more prevalent it will be accepted.

punisher5112

Its a cost thing....

I would hazard a guess most customers would be buying chewing gum or bottle of fizz or such...

Small items.

jogdish

okay, thanks. Was odd seeing KBC/BoI advertising contactless and then seeing the shop.

Even if its a cost thing, they basically have a monopoly and contactess speeds things up!

punisher5112

jogdish wrote: »

okay, thanks. Was odd seeing KBC/BoI advertising contactless and then seeing the shop.

Even if its a cost thing, they basically have a monopoly and contactess speeds things up!

But there is a charge for each transaction.

I see other shops have a minimum spend of say €10 to combat this.

wnolan1992

punisher5112 wrote: »

But there is a charge for each transaction.

I see other shops have a minimum spend of say €10 to combat this.

IIRC back in the day Dromroe shop (prior to the 2012 incident) were accepting cards if you spent a tenner.

iLaura

wnolan1992 wrote: »

IIRC back in the day Dromroe shop (prior to the 2012 incident) were accepting cards if you spent a tenner.

I only started in 2012 so probably wasn't around for it, but there was an incident?

iLaura

iLaura wrote: »

I only started in 2012 so probably wasn't around for it, but there was an incident?

Some please elaborate on the incident

wnolan1992

Basically, the SU used to own the three shops (Courtyard, Dromroe and Cappavilla). In or around 2012 (maybe 2011, memory's hazy), the company almost went bankrupt, shops had to be sold off, Cappavilla shop was closed, Dromroe shop was shut down for a semester or two. Shops now owned by private company.


(For the record, that's a TL;DR summation to the best of my knowledge and may not fully reflect the intricacies of the situation)

(Also, it's incredibly upsetting to me that there are now people with no memories of this :P)

brendanwalsh

student's union was hemorrhaging cash and some of the elected sabbats were wasting money on stuff like taxis etc.