Eccentric Flower talk:200912/Obsolete

Patrick:

My bank has people in the lobby actively discouraging you from talking to any of the tellers. "Are you depositing that? You can do it more easily at the ATM," they'll say.

I'm so stubborn that I now visit the tellers regularly just to annoy my bank. I used to be a die-hard aTM fan.

I'd think that grocery clerks will be obsolete next. More and more people are choosing the self-checkout lines and/or wanding their purchases as they peruse the aisles.

-- 18:58, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Patrick, have you ever heard of a guy named Clarence Saunders?

Before he came around, grocery stores worked like this: You walked up to a counter, told the clerk what you wanted, and he walked into the back and gradually assembled your order. He handed it to you and you paid for it.

Saunders invented the modern grocery store, where consumers pick their own items from shelves and then a cashier tallies them. But that wasn't enough for Saunders. He wanted to try to eliminate the intermediary wherever possible. His ultimate concept was the Keedoozle. It sank like a stone. I agree with the idea expressed there that Saunders was fifty years - or more! - ahead of his time. You can now go to a Stop and Shop and never need to interact with a store employee at all. Saunders would be proud.

-- 19:09, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

ProfRobert:

The Saunders story reminds me of an Institvte dining survey in the '80s that found that vending machines gave better customer service than the staff at Lobdell.

-- 19:24, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Cheaper, too.

People complain about depersonalized service only when it suits them. The dirty secret is that we mostly like self-service. Basically we want a teller/salesclerk only when we want one, and very much don't want one when we don't. And since labor is the highest cost of any industry, my prophecy is segmented service. Want a human? We will be happy to provide you with one - a la carte. Have your credit card ready.

-- 19:31, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Patrick:

One of the projects a major chain that worked with my old consulting company was very excited about was the next level of people-less grocery shopping. Everything eventually will be coded in such a way that you don't even have to scan it when you put it in the bags in your cart, it'll just happen when they're in the cart itself, and the total will happen as you walk out through the doors.

-- 19:39, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Oh, and speaking of ATMs and checks and lack of humans:

http://consumerist.com/2009/12/chase-cannot-find-a-human-being-to-read-a-check.html

-- 19:58, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

Joy:

Because of the way eyetrackers work, we can't use them with LCD monitors (yet). So the eyetracking companies have been stockpiling the remaining computer CRTs. The trouble we went through to get a good, massive CRT for my newest tracker!

Anyway, I hope the refresh rates get high enough on the LCDs soon enough so we can use them before the CRTs are all gone. Or that there is an underground/black market in them. Hah, academics prowling a black market in CRTs!

-- 20:16, 16 December 2009 (GMT)

ProfRobert:

I find the Chase story quite suspicious. Like several of the commenters on the thread, I have a Chase account, and you have to approve the amount before the deposit is complete. This sounds like a different kind of error that was made in the processing of the check rather than by the ATM.

-- 01:02, 17 December 2009 (GMT)

Bunny42:

Robert, be that as it may, mailing the check to the depositor and then making them present it to a branch to resolve the error is just wrong, on so many levels.

Columbina, a land line doesn't need to be charged. I'd be afraid my cell phone would be dead just when I needed it most. My land line is bundled with my DSL and DirecTV, so the package is a little less expensive.

Also, I do find it easier to get local info from the yellow pages than from google. Many local businesses, including smaller restaurants, do not have websites. Amazing, in this day and age, but true. And something else that I find unfathomable is the lack of hours of operation on whichever websites do exist. Wouldn't you think that would be pertinent information? I'd bet it's way up there on the list of FAQs by phone.

-- 04:03, 17 December 2009 (GMT)

Rhonda:

I deal in cheques quite a lot.

See, I have a tiny business that can't afford to pay the fees necessary to take credit cards. This means that clients need to pay cash or cheques (or barter, but that's another discussion). Which means I still need to deposit same, and I take great pleasure in going down to my very local bank, during business hours, where all the tellers recognize me by sight. They don't skimp on deposit slips and the deposit slips are actually attractive documents. It's a reasonably pleasant experience.

My second job, the one that takes up even more of my time and attention (but gives me no pay) is running a Girl Scout troop. Girls Scout troops all have bank accounts with Bank of America--reknowned for horrid customer service, but they're everywhere, which I guess is why we're all forced to use them.

Troops are specifically forbidden to do online banking or to have bank/debit cards. I manage our finances with paper statements and bank-by-phone, and if the troop gets money, I must use a deposit slip and talk to a human being during bank business hours. No way 'round it. This is extra-lovely because Bank of America is trying to discontinue deposit slips. I can use the ones in the back of the troop chequebook, but if I don't have the chequebook with me (or if I do but it's out of slips) I'm very annoyed that they make it difficult for me to manage my troop's finances. Bank of America's vanishing chequing deposit slips are also very poorly-designed and UGLY documents, but that's another rant.

-- 06:40, 21 December 2009 (GMT)