Cashless pub.

[Chippy_Tea]

She tries to pay with a £20 and the barmaid (assistant manager) refuses to take it and says its a cashless pub, the customer asks if she knows she can personally sue her for £9,000 for refusing to take legal tender and the barmaid says they wouldn't be allowed to operate if that was true, who is in the right here?


This is on YouTube but it wont let me embed the video

 

[Brew_DD2]

She can't be prosecuted. You can be refused a sale on just about any grounds. Plenty of businesses (legally) operate without cash transactions.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

The customer is wrong - the whole legal tender thing has a narrow meaning in the context of repaying debts, it's nothing to do with what happens in shops where a shop can choose whatever it wants to accept - cash only, card only, or peppercorns only.

https://fullfact.org/online/legal-tender-cash-in-shops/

And it's even more ridiculous trying it on in a pub, as licensed premises have pretty much unlimited freedom to serve who they want.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

She can't be prosecuted. You can be refused a sale on just about any grounds. Plenty of businesses (legally) operate without cash transactions.

Thanks i wasn't aware of that.

The assistant manager did point out there were many signs to tell customers its cashless and its on every menu i dont think they could do any more.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I have watched it again and the customer actually says -

she can personally sue her for £9,000 for refusing to take legal tender

I guess she is going to be disappointed when she tries

(I have edited the OP)

 

[Clint]

A pub I went into not so long ago was "cashless " until they poured me two pints. They took "exact" money. They did have a sign but I'm blind without my specs.
As for legal tender and such stuff,a retailer can refuse lower value coinage and there's nothing to say they legally have to offer you any change!
With the cashless thing at the moment the retailer gets charged by the banks a % to process the transaction,which the retailer has to account for by either soaking it up or passing it on.
The customer currently gets "free" cashless transactions from their bank. When this ceases to be and we get charged then eventually all the value in the money will be owned by the banks.

 

[JockyBrewer]

On the other side of the argument, I know more than one cashless pub that operates that way because it would cost more to take cash.

They need extra staff time because of the considerable time required to cash out at the end of the day, and deposit money at the bank. It also takes longer to serve customers.

They also had issues with insurance covering cash left on premises over night and of course the cost of cash tills and a safe.

 

[Stu]

Our brewery will take cash, but they only take (more or less) exact change.
I get that people want to keep cash moving, but I don't think they realise the implications of having lots of cash about.

I don't think any of our streetfood vendors take anything but electronic payments.

Some of the bigger pubs will happily take £10k or more in a night. Imagine having that amount of cash hanging about.

There's a chippy nearby that only takes cash. Another one nearby takes both. The one that only takes cash is struggling. The other one regularly has a queue out the door - we don't have any cash machines nearby. The irony is that the one that only takes cash is much better and I'd rather use them, but I rarely have cash on me and we have charity raffles and such like at work that take any that I do have!

EDIT: And what Jocky said.

 

[The Baron]

What a lot of people do not realise is that it costs more to process cash.
It has to be counted and taken to a bank, also the cash on premises lead to a higher insurance for the business as they are at risk of robbery by having cash onsite overnight and the risk of someone being robbed taking it to the bank.
If they use a collection company they also charge such as G4S.
Cashless is generally safer and cheaper

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I am old school and always used cash but my bank recently changed the card i have for my savings account where my pension is paid to one with the ability to swipe to pay i didn't want one but now i use it all the time i get instant notifications on my phone when i use it to pay for stuff, the ice cream van and petrol station car wash now take card payments as well as coins so although i wouldn't like to see us move to a totally cashless society i can see it going that way.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Our brewery will take cash, but they only take (more or less) exact change.

@chopps mentioned this in his latest video they took cash but didn't give change maybe that's the way to go for pubs that do not want to move to cashless but also dont want to mess about with loose change.

A couple of beers and a pack of crisps would be close enough to £10 here.

 

[Rodcx500z]

On holiday in Lincolnshire last year nobody could buy anything on site for 5 hours all devices and tills were locked down, never found out why

 

[Chippy_Tea]

On holiday in Lincolnshire last year nobody could buy anything on site for 5 hours all devices and tills were locked down, never found out why

Good point Rod, what happens when we have power cuts which are not as rare as you would think where we live especially in stormy weather.

 

[matt.]

A pub I went into not so long ago was "cashless " until they poured me two pints. They took "exact" money. They did have a sign but I'm blind without my specs.
As for legal tender and such stuff,a retailer can refuse lower value coinage and there's nothing to say they legally have to offer you any change!
With the cashless thing at the moment the retailer gets charged by the banks a % to process the transaction,which the retailer has to account for by either soaking it up or passing it on.
The customer currently gets "free" cashless transactions from their bank. When this ceases to be and we get charged then eventually all the value in the money will be owned by the banks.

Can you explain - very slowly - your last sentence?
Genuine honest question. Wanting to learn and not stirring things up.
Thanks

 

[hoppyscotty]

A retailer can choose the method of payment and perfectly entitled to not accept a particular form of payment for whatever reason they like.

I haven't used cash for years...all via my phone. Haven't even carried a wallet or cards around with me for years and never had a problem. Even in the back of beyond with no mobile signal never had an issue paying. The local pub had an issue once where one of the bar staff dropped the hand held card machine and broke it, but they just opened up tabs for everyone and we all settled up later. I'm not even sure where my physical cards are and certainly couldn't remember any of my PINs. In fact on the odd occasion I encounter a shop that will only accept cash then I automatically assume they're on the fiddle. Went to the states recently and loads of people told me they don't do electronic transactions in many places so I took cash, but they pretty much took card or phone payments everywhere, so that was a waste of time and money in the commission fee's (my credit card doesn't charge for foreign transactions), and I brought back a pocketful of useless shrapnel back with me.

Banks have threatened for years to start charging for electronic transactions, or ATM withdrawls or even for access to banking, but it has been thwarted every time...They have to offer some additional service to justify it, like holiday insurance or something like that. Also powers of competition would make that very difficult...there will always be a bank that would offer free banking and people would flock. There are over 350 banks in the UK so plenty of competition...way too many for there to be some collusion between them, even if that wasn't illegal.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Good point Rod, what happens when we have power cuts which are not as rare as you would think where we live especially in stormy weather.

I can tell you exactly what happens - it doesn't make much odds. In general the card readers and tablets that run the tills are charged overnight, so should have enough battery to at least last a session.

A lot of card readers talk directly to the mobile phone network so aren't dependent on local Wifi; in our case, if there's a power cut or other problem that takes out the Wifi, then the card reader gets paired to someone's phone and uses it as a hotspot to access the mobile phone network.

So unless the power cut lasts more than a day (very, very rare), it makes no difference to the ability to take card payments - and that kind of major disruption would mean nothing else worked either.

 

[Brew_DD2]

A pub I went into not so long ago was "cashless " until they poured me two pints. They took "exact" money. They did have a sign but I'm blind without my specs.
As for legal tender and such stuff,a retailer can refuse lower value coinage and there's nothing to say they legally have to offer you any change!
With the cashless thing at the moment the retailer gets charged by the banks a % to process the transaction,which the retailer has to account for by either soaking it up or passing it on.
The customer currently gets "free" cashless transactions from their bank. When this ceases to be and we get charged then eventually all the value in the money will be owned by the banks.

A lot of them stopped taking cash because banks charged them to process it too. Businesses get charged regardless of payment method.

 

[Clint]

Can you explain - very slowly - your last sentence?
Genuine honest question. Wanting to learn and not stirring things up.
Thanks

If the bank takes a % of every transaction then every time that money is used to buy and sell eventually,in theory the bank will take it all.

 

[samale]

Rural Ireland is the opposite, cash is king

 

[Stu]

If the bank takes a % of every transaction then every time that money is used to buy and sell eventually,in theory the bank will take it all.

And yet ironically, as above, G4S coming out to take your cash to the bank for you is SUPER expensive.
And banks also charge businesses for dealing with cash.
A quick search tells me that Co-op charge their businesses 0.55% cash handling charge
https://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/...rrentaccounts/current-account-cash-tariff.pdf
Plus £10 per month for the privilege of dealing in cash.
If you do more than £30k, SumUp are 0.79%.

So we're talking about less than 1p in the pound, your insurance is cheaper (because you're not getting broken into), no G4S or sending someone with £10k in takings to the bank (our nearest bank is 3 towns away now as they've closed them all down here on the Waterside in the New Forest).
Either the owner does it (time is money) or pays an employee the hour and a half plus petrol and parking. You're not getting change out of £30 for that.

Another quick search says G4S would cost for £20k, £29.50+VAT collection, £9 to deposit and any loose change is charged at 1%.

Of course, if you're running your business as a cash business, avoiding tax and VAT AND DUTY (let's not forget this is pubs and breweries we're talking about), that's prison time!