Unreasonable? Picky? Moi?

[flick]

I've just got back from trying to pick up some dry cleaning. I went in, and all looked normal: lady at the till, racks of clothes, credit card reader in convenient place on the counter....

Handed over my ticket, she got my clothes down.

Got out my purse, started to get out my credit card.... "Oh, do you think you could pay cash?"

Odd, but I checked and, no, I couldn't. "Our phones are down, the card reader isn't working."

I offered a cheque. "I don't know if we take them...."

She then suggested I do an approx twenty minute round walk to the nearest cash machine* to go and get cash, instead. When I boggled and asked what the problem was with the phone, she said that the lines for the whole building been down since yesterday and would be down until at least the end of tomorrow.

* I was too annoyed to let her know that that isn't the nearest one. The nearest one is probably more like ten. Even so.

Am I being unreasonable in thinking that, actually, if you've been unable to take card payments for a day, and have another two days still to go before you can, what you actually do is find out if you can take cheques, make special temporary arrangements to do so if needed, get a manual card machine... not tell your customers that they should waste their time wandering around the place hunting for cash?

Particularly annoying as, although it's not crucial, I actually wanted the dry cleaning for tomorrow morning.

Comments

[redbird]

At least, if they can't or won't do any of that, they should have signs up, including on the outside of the shop, saying something like "Sorry. Cash only until Tuesday 1 May," to minimize the amount of wasted time for everyone.

[flick]

Yeah - I'd have been annoyed but just kept going if they'd had a sign like that, but nothing. I might even have been slightly happier if they'd put the card reader away!