On 04/01/2014 01:01, Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
"Phil" wrote

But you see the same everywhere, how few use pay-at-pump, although
self-service checkouts do seem to have gained acceptance.

Today's news gave a new reason for this

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...-petrol-glitch

But that's probably not the only reason. I like to get a paper record
for every credit card transaction, so I can check my bill every month.
I used to use the "pay at pump" machines routinely but stopped after
twice finding at the end that the machine could not produce a receipt.
If the machine had been programmed properly to tell me this at the
outset that it was out of paper I could have avoided the pump payment
option. It often doesn't take much longer to pay at the kiosk, and for
me it's worth the extra few seconds to be sure that I get a paper record
of every transaction.

I don't understand how companies can introduce new technology with so
little appreciation of the need for a resilient user-interface and
proper fall-back systems. At one petrol station in France the machine
told me at the end that it had run out of paper, but that I could insert
my card into any other free machine on the forecourt to get my receipt.
I did that, and it worked fine. I've never seen that at the
pay-at-pump machines in the UK.

A year or so back my nearest petrol station introduced fancy new
pay-at-pump machines which hardly anybody used, as far as I could see,
and now I see that they have all been taken away. It's easy to see why.


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