England UK

Alex wrote:

> At 15:21:32 on 31/07/2006, Ronald Raygun delighted uk.finance by
> announcing:
>
>> Jonathan Bryce wrote:
>>
>> > Andy Pandy wrote:
>> >
>> >> "Faffing around" with cash is usually a lot quicker than faffing
>> around >> with cards. Our local supermarket used to have a "cash
>> only" 10-items >> lane, which I'd use even if the queue was longer
>> than the other 10-items >> lanes because people got through so much
>> quicker.
>> >
>> > That was presumably before chip & pin, which can be processed a lot
>> > quicker.
>>
>> On the contrary. C&P is slower than signing.
>
> Nonsense.

Ain't.

>> It takes about the same
>> length of time to actually sign as to press 5 keys. Say 2 seconds.
>> But with C&P you first have to take care to position yourself
>> properly, and there is a delay while the on-line authorisation
>> happens. Say 10 seconds.
>
> More nonsense. The on-line authorisation is nothing to do with the
> cardholder verification;

I couldn't care less. I just used the term "on-line authorisation"
because nothing better came into my head. If something else is
responsible, so be it. The fact is that most places I use a PIN
card there is a long wait-time after I enter the PIN before the
till gets around to printing my receipt.

>> Then, when signing, there's the time to
>> print out the chit (2 seconds) and for the operator to compare your
>> signature (2 seconds).
>
> And the time for online authorisation and, as you say, for the slip to
> have been printed and handed to you to start with,

You don't always/often need on-line authorisation when you sign.

> then you find a pen,
> realise it doesn't work properly, find a suitable surface to write on,
> etc.

The checkout chick supplies the pen, tried and tested. Surfaces are
available. Shops are geared up for this, you know.

> Authorisation method being equal, there should be no particular
> difference between the two methods. With Tesco estimating every 1
> second delay at checkout costing them £1m per day, for instance, I
> can't see them accepting a £6m per day hit for implementing EMV.

That can't be true. If it takes a few seconds longer to deal with
each customer, it just means the queueing customers have to wait a
little longer, they aren't going to be too many of those per till,
and if there are, they'll find a shorter queue. And if the queue
lengths are too long in the shop, they just open another till by
shifting some staff from shelf-stacking to checkout duty until the
panic is over and a new panic starts (the shelves get too empty).

If they were that worried about till delays, they'd invest more in
staff training so they don't have to waste time identifying non barcoded
products. "Is this a swede?" the chap asked me today when handling my
turnip [no smutty jokes please]. And then there's having to call for a
supervisor to authorise any correcting of mistakes, such as when they
ring up x4 for four cans of beer joined at the neck, when it's "sold
as fours only" and the "x4" is already implicit in the barcode.