It seems like advanced ACH tech could make checks fast and painless and actually lower Target's cost of settlement. This decision seems short-sighted, since many places already no longer take cash either, and all other forms of payment will include the interchange tax and further prop up credit card monopolies. That's bad for society.
I never pay with check and can't remember the last time I was delayed or even saw someone else pay with check, but this is a harbinger: once they take away cash as a form of payment, the only thing left will be non-anonymized.
They already do -- if you're using a personal check, you could just sign up for a Debit REDcard (now known as a Target Circle Debit card). You even get the same 5% discount that their credit card holders get, and you can pull up to $40 cashback at checkout.
This is largely untrue, and potentially dangerous advice in the United States, where there is no federal requirement for businesses to accept cash as a method of payment.
There are a handful of US states and municipalities which mandate cash acceptance, but you should definitely check the laws where you live before trying anything like that.
Actually you seem a little confused, let me clarify: It's true for debts already incurred, but not for transactions that haven't already happened. That's what legal tender means.
So this would apply to for example, a postpaid sit-down restaurant meal -- when the bill comes, you offer cash and if it's turned down your debt is settled. That's the law.
There is generally no requirement to agree to accept cash prior to making the transaction though, as at a counter service place where you pay as you get the food. They would be in their rights to refuse to hand over the food and ask you to leave.
And that's why you see a lot of cash free counter places now, but not sit down postpaid. It would be impractical to refuse to take cash once the food has already been eaten.
I don’t think that’s relevant, because the discussion was about paying for goods at Target, a department store.
Even so, there’s a good chance your opinion is incorrect; some legal experts state that if a sit-down restaurant posts signs stating they don’t accept cash, it can be viewed as a contact[0]. Cornell Law asserts the following (note the past tense!): “Federal statutes do not require a seller to accept cash as a form of legal tender for payment of goods or services that were rendered.”[1] Most likely, the waiter would get a manager, and they’d take the cash, but why go through all that trouble when you can just eat at a regular restaurant that does accept cash?
No: "as at a counter service place where you pay as you get the food. They would be in their rights to refuse to hand over the food and ask you to leave."
This is exactly the same situation as at Target: you bring a bunch of goods to the cash register. You offer a check. The cashier is going to say "sorry we don't take checks anymore: do you have another way to pay [a Target card, a debit card, a credit card, cash...]. Either you present the alternative method of payment or leave without the goods.
The solution is to preauthorize cards before seating and finalize them after. It cuts down on dine and dash also.
I think that's more or less how Alamo Drafthouse does it: they run your card when you place your initial order, and bring out the final bill at the end to write in a tip. At least, I don't think I've ever noticed someone try to use cash there.
The solution to what? There's literally no problem that needs solving here. It's easy to accept cards and also easy to accept cash. Neither is particularly expensive or hard to deal with.
If you really want to accept just one and not the other, that's fine, too. If you occasionally get a confused customer who accidentally consumes your services and then only has cash to pay, that's not a big deal of course.
And the reverse is also no big deal -- if you don't accept cards, and the customer don't have cash, you just point them at the nearest ATM (often in the same store, since this is a common way to avoid credit card merchant fees)
Yes, and until the start of Covid, a check was the only convenient way for me (American) to pay my rent.
The other (inconvenient) way I could pay is by exchanging cash for a "money order" at a post office or a retail location known as a "check-cashing store", then giving the money order to the landlord. Giving cash directly to the landlord was (and remains) not an option.
I’m actually rather surprised to find that this wasn’t phased out a long time ago. I’m in Canada where there is no Target, mind you, but I just cant picture the last time having ever seen someone writing out a cheque at any store.
The only place I regularly see cheques used would be at home appliance stores.
To speculate, I'recon the top two reasons would be: dedicated bank account for home expenses; purchaser doesn't have the money today, but expects to have it deposited before the cheque clears "in a few days".
Having worked at such a place in college, this is also complicated by the fact that they don't simply take a check and deposit it like the sort of people who cling to checks expect.
The check gets scanned, ID collected, and it's reported to a third party financial institution that basically evaluates the customer's creditworthiness and issues credit to the store to cover the check. (If the check were to bounce, it would be their problem to deal with.)
This also means checks can be instantly denied by that third party, if their system is not confident enough that the collection will be trouble free. Which is...not uncommon for the sort of people who want to write a check to buy an appliance, rather than using a credit card. Which then involves belligerence when it's denied.
I worked for Zellers in Canada in 2011 and we accepted cheques. I only remember ever seeing one though, but we did take it. Zellers has obviously been gone a long time though, and 2011 was quite a long time ago.
I'm not an employee being paid to scan and bag my items and it's only time saving over a trained employee if it's less than a few items.
Oftentimes not even then, if I bring my own bag and the scanner demands an employee come over after every item because the scale is off by a couple of grams. Completely awful experience if there's more than one alcoholic drink as well.
The time I'm saving is not waiting in line because some stores are ludicrously understaffed.
Targets in my area don't suffer from this, but I know of one grocery store location that seems to have a single cashier, even on the busy weekends. This was true before self-checkout. I used to avoid this location at all costs, but with self-checkout it is somewhat bearable to pick up a few items. There isn't even someone at the self-checkout station to help you out if needed.
I guess I just don't understand this mind set, especially at a grocery store where many items don't have a bar code.
At a poorly owned and and managed grocery store, that is chronically understaffed, as someone giving them money, you'd rather temporarily become an unpaid employee and waste your time looking up the product codes for apples and onions, using a system that's purposefully less efficient than what the real cashiers use, instead of just going to a store that doesn't make you work for them to pay them money.
In places where it's as bad as you've described there's often a line and wait for self check out. I've just abandoned my shopping and went somewhere else if I have over a handful of items
I wouldn't go out of my way to this store, but it is next to some places I frequent. I would not waste another 30 minutes of my time going to a completely different store in some attempt to avoid being an "unpaid employee", my time is valuable.
I agree. It seems to be ok if it's just a few items, and if the employee isn't being needed to supervise more than four self-checkout stations, like at Lowes or Home Depot.
But stores that go overboard on this (like Walmart) are incentivizing us to actually spend less and definitely not fill a cart. An employee staring at us like we're robbing the store doesn't help either when we're trying to do things properly. I always feel like a SWAT team is standing by in case I put something on the wrong side, and the stores are happy that I feel that way because perhaps then I'm less likely to steal, but really I'm more likely to click "Buy Now" on a website.
Best Buy is an example of a store that has processes that are mostly welcoming, even with relatively high-value and easily shoplifted items, and they don't have or need self-checkouts. Perhaps that's because their margins are higher or because they have such a short distance between their segregated checkout areas and the anti-theft associate standing by the door.
I love self checkout because I always only buy a few things and the scanner pretty much never fails for me. And if it does, the employees are usually quick to fix it.
Where I live, self-checkouts almost universally have a "Use my own bag" button, that prompts you to place your empty bag on the scale and then tares it after you press the button to continue.
Scales are like two years out of fashion. Target and Walmart are using cameras and machine learning now. Almost no false positives, but someone's going to come and take a look if you bag something without scanning it.
I noticed it once when I paid for pharmacy items at Walmart and later put that bag into the bagging area when I bought grocery items. It flagged it as an unscanned item and notified the attending associate.
All in all, it's a superior experience to waiting in regular lines or having to talk to people. Ultimately, I want to just scan and pay with my phone without the kiosk bottleneck.
The greater Houston area is over 8000 sq miles, it’s larger than New Jersey. I count 17 Targets in the north west quadrant alone. You're gonna have to be more specific about where in Houston does or does not have a shoplifting problem.
> "According to the spokesperson, Target accepts several forms of payment, including Target Circle Cards, cash, digital wallets, SNAP/EBT, credit and debit cards, and buy now-pay later services."
My hardware engineering job got a lot of daily faxes. Folks from machine shops put documents/drawings in their big printer scanner, type our fax number, and the .pdf appears available to everyone in a network folder. Honestly it's cleaner than dealing with email and attachments. Less steps involved. They are high quality pdfs, so I wouldn't be surprised if it skips the phone call tech entirely somehow.
Pretty much any time you need to send medical records between doctors in different areas, or deal with a workplace injury or insurance authorization stuff, it's going to involve collecting fax numbers so they can fax documents between the offices.
I never pay with check and can't remember the last time I was delayed or even saw someone else pay with check, but this is a harbinger: once they take away cash as a form of payment, the only thing left will be non-anonymized.