Self-checkout and receipt checks

[orbital]

,,, paying with banknotes.

+

In the checkout category

One of my local gas stations started doing pre pay for gas. News to me.
So I wanted to fill my car and only had a $100 on me.
Had to walk inside, stand there, say what pump I'm on, wasn't sure how much it would take to fill my tank, hand over a $100, hope the attendant wasn't a crook, walk back to my car, fill it, walk back into the station, stand there to get my correct change.

Really unnecessary for my area ,, not impressed w/ the extra steps involved.

 

[thermal guy]

Drives me nuts when all I have is 100's on me😁

 

[idleprocess]

One of my local gas stations started doing pre pay for gas. News to me.
[...]
Really unnecessary for my area ,, not impressed w/ the extra steps involved.

In my area this has been a norm for going on a decade. With the advent of pay at the pump 20+ years ago - and its subsequent swift market acceptance - suspect the potential to virtually end gasoline theft was the appeal for station operators.

 

[pnwoutdoors]

I don't do the "megalo" type places. People who love 'em ... great. For them. And if they believe validation of receipts upon exit, despite having just come from the cashier line, is the right thing to do, that's okay. Again, for them. I'll go elsewhere.

Myself, I do the smaller groceries. Of course, compared to small farmer's markets, they're still considered "supermarkets" (aka, "supermarchés"). While manual check-out stalls are provided, it's still the rare occurrence where it's ccard-only or where a staffed lane isn't also available. I do the quickie DIY checkout stall, with cash. Almost never do I find there's no cashier lane also running, though often there's only one. Works fine, though takes a little longer. Works for me.

The beauty of such DIY checkout stalls, too, is: they'll take $100s and $50s. Have yet to find any that didn't.

On the few occasions where I've been in a grocery where they won't take cash ... I walk, and they're left with the couple of bags' worth of grocery items they need to re-shelve. If disallowing "legal tender" is what they want to do, basing their business model of such choices, they're welcome to it.

 

[orbital]

Drives me nuts when all I have is 100's on me😁

+

lol

For a long time now, I just use cash locally.
Keeps my belt tighter

 

[SYZYGY]

i'm trying to remember if i've ever not prepaid for gas. for me that's basically just something i've seen in movies, lol

 

[IMA SOL MAN]

Love the familiar "ding ding" of driving in to a service station. Hard to find a full service station in Kansas since the OPEC oil embargo of the '70's. Everybody went self-service to lower gas prices, and now the C-stores make their money on over-priced grocery items instead of service and TBA sales. (Tires, batteries and accessories).

 

[idleprocess]

Hard to find a full service station in Kansas since the OPEC oil embargo of the '70's.

Last time I saw a full-service station was a trip to Oregon something like 15 years ago where the law required it (but that's changing). Otherwise those were on the way out when I moved to Texas in the early 90s when they were already vanishingly rare; I've not seen one since the mid-90s..

and now the C-stores make their money on over-priced grocery items instead of service and TBA sales. (Tires, batteries and accessories).

I recall this is largely due to petroleum companies' standard practices where they sell it to the stations under terms that effectively let them dictate the retail price with razor thing margins. Conveniently the motoring public may well shop gas prices they're laughably indifferent to C-store prices thus the station operator will happily price gas at local market so long as it drives business to the soda fountain and chips aisle where margins are flush.

The service station aspect of filling stations (with which I'd also associate TBA sales) seems to have largely disappeared. There are but a handful in my region remaining, all clearly 30+ year old facilities. Suspect this has to do with the increasing reliability of automobiles combined with technological changes pushing business towards more specialized garages.

 

[IMA SOL MAN]

I'm reminded of the service station scene in the movie The Jerk with the defective oil cans--hilarious!

 

[SYZYGY]

amazing movie

 

[thermal guy]

+

In the checkout category

One of my local gas stations started doing pre pay for gas. News to me.
So I wanted to fill my car and only had a $100 on me.
Had to walk inside, stand there, say what pump I'm on, wasn't sure how much it would take to fill my tank, hand over a $100, hope the attendant wasn't a crook, walk back to my car, fill it, walk back into the station, stand there to get my correct change.

Really unnecessary for my area ,, not impressed w/ the extra steps involved.

It sounds funny when people are saying that their gas station is starting prepay. It been like this in my state for ever. I thought most states were like this.

 

[bykfixer]

I think in my area it was around 1978 or79 or so when self-service pumps showed up. Back around the time leaded gas was replaced with unleaded completely. It was a nickel a gallon less at first for self-service. I worked at a gas station in 79/80 and if I recall correct it was all unleaded.

We had the honor system for payment at most places locally until about 2008. But when a tank full of gas went from $25 to $100 folks were driving off without paying fairly often. It's just normal to pre-pay now.

I used a self check out tonight as today's youth were walking out without paying and the klepto alarm kept ringing and the receipt checker was watching out that the couple with $500 worth of groceries paid for at least half.

 

[aznsx]

Cash is going the way of the phone booth and the newspaper stand / box (self-serve type); albeit perhaps for different reasons. I can love it or hate it, but neither will change it.

BTW, if you use a card at gas pumps as I do exclusively (if something goes wrong and I get the 'see attandant' message, I drive on - I'm not going inside), do watch out for the so-called 'card skimmers' which lowlife scum can apparently 'install' at or nearby (?) the card readers. I hear on the news they're a huge problem in PHX metro. I don't know if / how they can be spotted, but I do look to see if I see anything unusual. I routinely get gas in decent neighborhoods at well-lighted places, and which the staff seem to keep an eye on. CCTV helps with that part.

I think in my area it was around 1978 or79 or so when self-service pumps showed up. Back around the time leaded gas was replaced with unleaded completely.

Yeah, and that's when everyones ~pre-'77 valve seats started getting trashed (burned) w/o an additive. Then the industry solved the problem the government created (stellite valve seats as I recall). Didn't help the legacy cars though.

As an aside, I'm fairly certain my '76 CVCC Civic (and perhaps the '77) were the only cars sold in the U.S. in 1975 that could run fine on leaded and still pass emission standards easily - no Cat required.

Of course now we have the seasonal 'special blend' fuel requirements which can also be detrimental to fuel systems w/o using additives.

As someone in the biz of 'solving problems', I have disdain for those who cause them intentionally!

Edit: spelling error

 

[SYZYGY]

are you not in favor of unleaded fuel? ignoring catalytic converters, widespread TEL emission was pretty problematic.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

BTW, if you use a card at gas pumps as I do exclusively (if something goes wrong and I get the 'see attandant' message, I drive on - I'm not going inside), do watch out for the so-called 'card skimmers' which lowlife scum can apparently 'install' at or nearby (?) the card readers. I hear on the news they're a huge problem in PHX metro. I don't know if / how they can be spotted, but I do look to see if I see anything unusual. I routinely get gas in decent neighborhoods at well-lighted places, and which the staff seem to keep an eye on. CCTV helps with that part.

For awhile there was an Android app called Skimmer-Scanner that could probe a gas pump or ATM for the presence of a possible bluetooth skimmer. The bad guys have a habit of using the cheapest and most readily available bluetooth module called an HC-05. The Skimmer-Scanner would look for this module, connect to it and send a single-character probe. If it got a specific response back, it's likely that a skimmer is present.

That app has since been de-listed on the Google Play store because it doesn't support the most modern phones. The author has posted the source code on Github though, so it's possible that it might be re-worked by an enterprising coder to work on current Android phones. And if you have an older Android phone, you might be able to side-load the original .apk if you can find it.

In general, stick with the name brand gas stations and choose a pump that has line of sight to the cashiers; these are less likely to have skimmers attached. Also check for the presence of an unbroken security seal sticker on the pump.

 

[aznsx]

are you not in favor of unleaded fuel? ignoring catalytic converters, widespread TEL emission was pretty problematic.

No, not at all. Just recounting history for those who might not have been there or be aware of it.

I am, however not fond of problem solutions which put the cart before the horse, and are perhaps hurriedly implemented before their time at some other expense (creating other problems which as yet lack good solutions). Good solutions are often poorly implemented. History is rife with them, but that would lead to a sustained thread tangent. I don't (want to) do that.

 

[pnwoutdoors]

Cash is going the way of the phone booth and the newspaper stand ... BTW, if you use a card at gas pumps as I do exclusively (if something goes wrong and I get the 'see attandant' message, I drive on - I'm not going inside), do watch out for the so-called 'card skimmers' which lowlife scum can apparently 'install' at or nearby (?) the card readers.

Going inside to "pre-pay" with the person at the register works fine and avoids all of that. Just requires going inside, but helps thwart the skimmer installers.

Nearly every other shop works that way. Head inside, pay for your desired product, then you get the product. We've become indoctrinated that the pump-pay model is "the" way of things.

Of course, when "legal tender" (transl: lawful offer) is made, there's nothing that says a vendor must necessarily take that offered form of payment. After all, if Farmer Bob waltzed in with his price pig and offered that or the deed to the "back forty" acreage, I doubt many shops would consider it "valid" payment. So, "big green" might well go the way of the dodo.

 

[M@elstrom]

Self serve checkouts when doing a weekly shop is ludicrous, it's not like the savings are passed onto the consumer, there's no "Staff discount" even though you are technically working for said supermarket, this isn't convenience it's cost cutting profit driving, pure and simple.

ATM's were the same... sold as a "fee free" convenient alternative to branch transactions but over the years soon became the primary means of withdrawing funds thanks mostly in part to wide spread branch closures, now the push for a cashless society is on the horizon... bank system crashes, extensive outages for upgrades etc. are a reality, just imagine how that would work without cash as a back up option?

 

[pnwoutdoors]

Self serve checkouts when doing a weekly shop is ludicrous, it's not like the savings are passed onto the consumer ... this isn't convenience it's cost cutting profit driving, pure and simple.

Check-out speeds through the queue are not all that different, where I am.

In many smaller, more-rural, more "country" areas, where groceries are a relative rarity, it's still a thing to know "market day."

One person's "ludicrous" is another's normal.

 

[MidnightDistortions]

I don't bother with self checkouts whenever I can. Waiting a couple of minutes on a supervisor to get something cleared you might as well just have a cashier ring you out. The Home Depot in my area does self checkouts with a supervisor standing there. It's pretty silly...