What are you all up to
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Fine day here too, so was able to get the caravan washed and BobbyDazzled. Had a phone call this after postponing the car service for a week, as seemingly the dealership is being taken over and the transfer of MOT records has not gone through yet so they can't do ours till a week on Friday. Thankfully we have nowt booked yet and hadn't intended going until the following week anyway.
Lovely sky just now, which augers well for tomorrow.
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I am sure it is monitored very closely. CCTV is widely used. I noticed in Waitrose recently they now have CCTV on each check out terminal in glorious technicolor. In the larger supermarkets the self scanners are monitored by a member of staff, no doubt to help customer but to also be aware of what is going on. When you use individual scanners you usually have to have some sort of membership card like a My Waitrose Card and I imagine in Tesco you use your Club Card to access the system? One way they control is the use of rechecks. In the early days of Quick Check these were quite frequent and if there was an error you would probably be rechecked again and there after more frequently. It's not just dishonesty either it can be down to user error. They tend to work via a RF system and like WiFi this can be hit an miss in parts of the store. So something could go into the trolley that has not scanned correctly and unless the customer is on the ball it can lead to missed items. There is also the possibility for dishonesty by for example scanning a cheaper bottle of wine but putting a more expensive one in the trolley. On on the law of averages someone will get away with that some of the time. I am sure that if retailers thought they were losing unacceptable amounts of money due to the fraudulent use of self scanners they would put measures in place. In the end we all pay for the misuse of these things in the prices we pay! Interestingly I did notice that B&Q removed all their self scan checkouts for a while.
David
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I'm glad I've stuck with home deliveries, shopping for food is gettting less and less attractive! However lots of smaller local shops, cafes and pubs are now under threat from increased energy bills, our local community shop is going to struggle to pay £1000 a month for electricity in the autumn, much the same everywhere so that's the thing that bothers me at the moment. Can't imagine the costs for larger shops!?
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Hate to spoil good opinions of Nationwide, BUT that was the place I took elderly Sister t'other day and they only had the one counter about four foot high with only two [2] clerks on duty and as I moaned there were no seats available at that end of the establishment !! i suppose each branch has it's own peculiarities and / or management
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Brian
It must have been a small branch? Our Nationwide is quite palatial and always helpful. Far better than my branch of Natwest which I had to visit the other day but left with my issue unresolved.
David
PS re the diabetic monitoring device. We were unsuccessful trying to order online so Margaret rang the company and they are going to put a two week trial in the post so we will see how she gets on.
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The thing I find somewhat odd about this discussion on the alternative, modern and innovative ways of doing one's supermarket shopping, is that so many of the comments read as if it is something new. I don't know about Waitrose - the only branch near me closed recently and, anyway, I didn't use it except on the rare occasion that I was feeling flush - but I am perfectly sure I was using a scanner to do my shop before I moved back to my home town in 2006. I would not swear to that, as one gets older time moves in very mysterious ways; but I think Sainsbury have had scanners for well over a decade.
Originally, with the scanners, you went to a conventional checkout to have the contents downloaded and make your payment. Dedicated self service checkouts - for both scanned shops or a shop that you scan at the checkout - came later I think.
They, that is Sainsbury, changed their self scanning system some years back and, if memory serves me right, there was a period without scanners before the new system was introduced. With the even more up to date "Scan & Go" you can now use your smart phone to do the scanning, but even that came in in 2018; I prefer to still use the provided scanner.
On a trial basis, Sainsbury have now opened one of those places, started by Amazon, where you don't even have to do any scanning. Using cameras and weighing machines built into shelving, you just log in, do your shop and walk out and payment is automatically taken. If it works, it sounds damn good to me.
Sorry, this seems to have turned into a hagiography for Sainsbury. Other supermarkets are available.
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Grayjames
As I mentioned earlier Waitrose started their Quick Check in 1995. Something you mentioned did remind me of how it was in the beginning. You had to use an ordinary till but there was no need to unpack, unless you had a recheck. I had forgotten that! The next stage was that they had the dedicated Quick Check terminals which were for the exclusive use of Quick Check customers. The only trouble with that is that if you had a recheck they had to cart you away to a conventional till point which was a bit embarrassing!!! Now the Terminals are for both Quick Check and customer scanning which is a bit of a nuisance when its busy. I remember Safeway, before they were taken over by Morrisons in 2004 had a scanning system but Morrisons didn't incorporate it into their business model.
David
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Not sure about relative size, David but it's the only NW branch in Crewe ! and about the same size as Santander a hundred yards away.
P.S. / Edit How do they fix the white disc to ones arm please ??
Super glue or is there a screw thread on the back perhaps
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I am hanging a door today, at DD's house. Existing door but all new door surround and facings, so have to make new cut outs for hinges, and the oak is pretty tough!
It will take me all day, in fact probably several days as I cannot work on it once my "little helpers" return from nursery at 1pm. Plus, it is a very heavy door so I will need SIL to help me lift it at the weekend.
Was sunny here, but now quite grey.
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Very well done to your grandson heddlo. You must be delighted.(Thanks for the translation - these number they give nowadays mean nothing to me!)
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Strange to see those figures Heddlo. When I was last at school taking my GCEs a 9 was the "why did you bother coming in take the exam?" fail figure whereas a 1 was the "you are a bit smarter than the teacher, can we offer you a job?" pass grade (at least at my school it was)
We didn't have any letters as grades.
Well done to your grandson.
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Killing a half hour and having a cuppa before taking Mrs.WN in to town for a haircut appointment whilst I go and get some materials from the builders yard for some small jobs that need doing over the weekend.
Have to pay a visit to Nationwide as well and am surprised at your Sisters treatment in Crewe ABM. Ours is as described elsewhere, still have at least 2 people on the counter and chairs to sit in whilst you have to wait if necessary and the investment person often mucks in if there is a long queue.
Had to laugh at MiL a few weeks ago. She went into HSBC to cancel a direct debit and was asked by the assistant why she didn't do it online as it was soooo easy. I'm not sure if the young lady is back working again yet after being given one of MiLs famous withering looks. Fortunately I'm impervious to them now.
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Haven't set foot in our bank for a long time, hope they still have seating it will be somewhere warm to go next winter?!
Recovering from family visitors and dog today.
Big hoo ha locally about keeping our shop etc going so large on line presence with good and not so good comments. There's nothing like reading accounts to put the wind up a peaceful existence, think we'll let the younger ones rise to the helm.
Wonder how much supermarket energy costs will impact on shoppers too? Handheld readers will probably need a warning noise, you have reached your maximum spend!
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I made a rare visit to our NatWest branch last week to inform them about a change of email address. All done very smoothly and efficiently.
Yesterday I got one of those "how did we do" emails sent - (you've guessed it!) - to the address I told them I wasn't using any more!
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Haven't set foot in our bank for a long time, hope they still have seating it will be somewhere warm to go next winter?! wink
Don't hold your breath brue. I have a feeling that banks, shops etc will have very minimal heating or no heating at all! I have been told that our local Dobbies, and a few other establishments, didn't use their air con during the recent very hot weather as they couldn't afford it
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On a slightly less costly note I did a bit of blackberrying today and was surprised to find them quite plump and juicy even after weeks of dry weather. Just picked a few to go with apples that are falling off and getting bigger by the day too. Soon there'll be roadside boxes on offer to passers by, a good time of the year and it's free!!
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They do for indoor workers C👍🏻
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I think a lot of folks are going to rediscover a common sense approach to prioritising and handling finances and everyday living in the next few months. Just reading about nurseries asking parents to make sure children are wrapped up warm as the days get cooler. Having been brought up in a household that didn’t get central heating through my junior school years, and that school having old fashioned heating where we were rotated around the radiators, I could give a few tips. I suspect some of our local woods will suffer again as well. During Miners Strike, woodlands around the local collieries were decimated by families trying to keep warm. All sorts of knock on effects on the horizon☹️
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Radiators TDA, unheard of in my day....
at primary school we had coke stoves with guard rails sporting the odd pair of steaming knickers and wet socks in the winter. Our gaberdine macs (remember those anyone?) were left to dry in an outside porch so they went in wet and came out wet.Actually all through covid our teacher daughter and pals and students worked through winter with all the windows open so coping with adversity is nothing new.
I do recognise that working conditions have certain regulations by the way, to anyone who thinks I might not know, but times will be tough for many this year ahead.
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We were just saying that the other day. We were brought up with no central heating, ice on the inside of the bathroom window. The only fire in the house was in the front room and this was the only warm room in the house. But most modern houses these days don’t have fireplaces with a chimney, ours hasn’t, nor is there any option to have one. So how do people heat their homes without using gas or electric even in one room without a fireplace.
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You don’t need a fireplace for a stove. They can be retro fitted into most types of houses, including wooden. You see lots of stand alone stoves in holiday cottages, flued to an exterior wall.
https://www.directstoves.com/resources/how-to-have-a-wood-burning-stove-without-a-chimney/
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Yes brue our eldest grand-daughter is a teacher and spent the whole of covid teaching with the windows open and her coat on.
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