Is This The End Of Retail?

[Kim]

I have to pity anyone sending nasty lawyers' letters to Barakta! Well, almost.

In this instance it appears the nasty^[1] lawyers were victorious 


_{[1] Well, competent in their defence of a fuckwit organisation.}

[andrewc]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/01/21/william-hill-close-hundreds-betting-shops/      Bad luck for the employees. 


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46972632   Santander closing 140 branches. 

[ian]

While I sympathise with the employees, I find it hard to be sorry at the loss of betting shops. Obviously it's just going online, where it's easier for them to profit.

I'm still surprised there are any high street banks, I've not been in one, erm, I can't remember.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I have to pity anyone sending nasty lawyers' letters to Barakta! Well, almost.

In this instance it appears the nasty^[1] lawyers were victorious 


_{[1] Well, competent in their defence of a fuckwit organisation.}

Not good. I can probably guess what this is about (but won't). Still, I hope she got to use lots of ink.

[Cudzoziemiec]

While I sympathise with the employees, I find it hard to be sorry at the loss of betting shops. Obviously it's just going online, where it's easier for them to profit.

Agree.

I'm still surprised there are any high street banks, I've not been in one, erm, I can't remember.

Not so agree. I don't go in one often, maybe once every couple of months, but every time I do, it's full of people queuing to pay in cash, mostly from nearby small businesses.

[hellymedic]

My Mum is nearly 83.
She won't use an ATM outdoors after a non-violent theft last year.
She NEEDS the security of a staffed bank when she withdraws cash.
My parent's refuse to bank online.

I think folk like them are going to have increasing problems.

[Jaded]

Cashless payments have rocketed.

The closure of banks leaves small businesses, the elderly and transport free, and the technically inadequate in deep doodoo.

[ian]

True enough, but I can understand why banks aren't keen to keep their expensive high street branches open. Ultimately it's change (though not small change), I suppose. The only thing I routinely use cash for is local taxis and even they're gradually shifting.

[Cudzoziemiec]

There used to be a NatWest, Barclays and HSBC on my local "high street". Only the NatWest is left now. I've seen people from local shops in there wanting to change cash (both big to small and small to big) and be refused cos they don't have accounts there (just after the almost next door Barclays closed) – fair enough – I wonder if NatWest have gained customers small business customers by being the last branch standing?

[ElyDave]

Cashless payments have rocketed.

The closure of banks leaves small businesses, the elderly and transport free, and the technically inadequate in deep doodoo.

But for some things cash remains the only way, such as market traders, taxis (about 50:50 taking cards in my experience)

[Cudzoziemiec]

I doubt if cash is the only way even for market traders, but it's probably still the best and most common way. And there is a small counter-trend of places giving up taking card payments, presumably because for their combination of business, customers and bank account, the charges for that were higher than for paying in cash.

[Jaded]

True enough, but I can understand why banks aren't keen to keep their expensive high street branches open. Ultimately it's change (though not small change), I suppose. The only thing I routinely use cash for is local taxis and even they're gradually shifting.

It seems to me that they look at branches as individual cost centres, rather than as loss-leading service providers.

And a general comment - when all the bank logos have disappeared from the High Street, I suppose banking just becomes a commodity like electricity.

[ian]

I think generally that expecting commercial business to serve a societal function, particularly when that is loss-leading, is likely to end in disappointment for those on the sharp end.

It's a case of managed change really. I've no doubt when I'm 83 I'll be doddering in the queue trying to pay with a superannuated phone while everyone behind me tuts in exasperation because I'm holding up their brainWEB transactions.

I'm seeing more and more places take card-only now, even my wife's orchestra have a little POS terminal for tickets on the door.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It's a case of managed change really. I've no doubt when I'm 83 I'll be doddering in the queue trying to pay with a superannuated phone while everyone behind me tuts in exasperation because I'm holding up their brainWEB transactions.

And someone will still be complaining that an audax event didn't take payment by cheque. 

[rafletcher]

There used to be a NatWest, Barclays and HSBC on my local "high street". Only the NatWest is left now.

We've lost all three of those in the last 2 years. 

As for cash payments, even the local Big Issue sellers are gearing up for cashless. And our local "Gift Shoppe" selling birthday cards etc. actively prefers cashless. Of course cash transactions aren't auditable, so may possibly be a reason why certain traders like them.

[Kim]

Cashless payments have rocketed.

The closure of banks leaves small businesses, the elderly and transport free, and the technically inadequate in deep doodoo.

But for some things cash remains the only way, such as market traders, taxis (about 50:50 taking cards in my experience)

This is one of the many things Uber got right:  When you use their app the payment is electronic and you know the cost up front, so no hurriedly fiddling with cash at the end.  You also get a receipt automagically.

Barakta has decided that the combination of this and being able to summon cabs to arbitrary unfamiliar locations without having to communicate by telephone is such an overwhelming accessibility advantage that she's sucked it up and taken to supporting the Evil Empire.  If the local cab companies felt like implementing an app that wasn't shit^[1], then she'd happily reconsider.


_{[1] The one in Leicester gets your location by GPS, looks up the nearest feature on the map, and then summons the cab to that feature, rather than just passing coordinates straight through.  This means she inevitably gets voice calls on a phone she can't hear from confused taxi drivers who've gone to the non-pedestrianised bit of $location_name Road, a substantial distance from the entrance to $location_name House, where she's waiting.}

[ian]

Indeed, Uber works*, local cab apps don't. Attempting to use the one for our local firm just means Diane from the office calls.

Grab, the alt-Uber that's ubiquitous in SE Asia, has a cool feature where it translates the messages from the drivers into your language (sometimes, it's a bit variable), but it evidently uses Google Translate, so a lot of them up get happy frog!

I text back English?

No, Vietnamese! comes the response.

*unless your driver falls asleep.

[Cudzoziemiec]

_{[1] The one in Leicester gets your location by GPS, looks up the nearest feature on the map, and then summons the cab to that feature, rather than just passing coordinates straight through.  This means she inevitably gets voice calls on a phone she can't hear from confused taxi drivers who've gone to the non-pedestrianised bit of $location_name Road, a substantial distance from the entrance to $location_name House, where she's waiting.}

Easier for drivers, who know where they're going, and not too bad for local passengers w/o hearing or speech disabilities who can easily direct the driver from that landmark. Presumably caters to the main market, or at least perceived main market, at less app-development cost and plays to the perceived strengths of local cabbies having local knowledge.

[Kim]

_{[1] The one in Leicester gets your location by GPS, looks up the nearest feature on the map, and then summons the cab to that feature, rather than just passing coordinates straight through.  This means she inevitably gets voice calls on a phone she can't hear from confused taxi drivers who've gone to the non-pedestrianised bit of $location_name Road, a substantial distance from the entrance to $location_name House, where she's waiting.}

Easier for drivers, who know where they're going, and not too bad for local passengers w/o hearing or speech disabilities who can easily direct the driver from that landmark. Presumably caters to the main market, or at least perceived main market, at less app-development cost and plays to the perceived strengths of local cabbies having local knowledge.

It seems unlikely that doing a map lookup is less development work than just sending some coordinates to the taxi driver's app.  I suspect the advantage is that it's an easy bolt-on to an existing system where Diane From The Office puts an address into a database, which is presented to the driver as text and they then use local knowledge (and/or the satnav app on the third device suction-cupped to their windscreen) to find the customer's location.

Which isn't to say that's actually better, just that it allows them to have an app while avoiding a forklift upgrade of their systems.  The side effect being that the app has none of the advantages that it should, and you're better off using the telephone^[1].

Lack of local knowledge by taxi drivers outside That London is a perennial bugbear, of course.  "No, I don't know how to get there, that's why I'm using a taxi!"


_{[1] Unless TextRelay is involved.  Diane From The Office is hopeless with TextRelay calls.  When she's not hanging up before the operator arrives, she's sending taxis to the *other* deaf customer's house.}

[ElyDave]

I admit, I'm way behind the taxi curve, preferring to fall out of the door of airport, rai!way station etc and do that old fashioned queueueueing. Apart from home to/from airports, where I have a man who does.

I've used one local taxi app in Twickenham, it was very accurate in telling me taxi was not there yet.

[Butterfly]

The app for the taxi company in Kidderminster is exactly what I need as the house is hard to find in an area with no mobile signal at all unless you are on EE. Unfortunately, the app only lets you book within a certain radius of central Kiddy, probably 3 miles, which ends about a mile closer than our house, rendering the app useless to us.

[Cudzoziemiec]

And a general comment - when all the bank logos have disappeared from the High Street, I suppose banking just becomes a commodity like electricity.

Perhaps it does. But there have been attempts to disrupt banking since at least the 1990s and yet we still seem to end up with the same four or five dominant companies.

[Ben T]

It's a case of managed change really. I've no doubt when I'm 83 I'll be doddering in the queue trying to pay with a superannuated phone while everyone behind me tuts in exasperation because I'm holding up their brainWEB transactions.

Which if they were that clever they wouldn't need to queue in the first place 

[ian]

Yes, but we're British.

[Ham]

Buggrit, Knight & Lee – are they estate agents or solicitors? 

That's nearly as good as the "Womble, Bond & Dickenson" barakta has been receiving nasty lawyers' letters from.  I reckoned they were so BRITISH-sounding they might be a fake company invented by a USAnian.

It's worth noting, they appear to be real. Had he been UKnian rather than USAnian, that name would have been rather character forming I suspect.