I do most of our food shopping at the supermarket (not looking for thanks) as my wife hâtes shopping. Also I can do it in half the time it takes her, I have my list and away I go.
Sorry I digress, but what does amaze me is the speed of the checkouts with regards to bar code scanning, locating the price, creating the till receipt and then calculating discounts such as buy 1 get one free or buy 3 and the price changes. I like our local supermarket as I can wiz round pick up stuff and get out, but still chat to the girl on the checkout. Occasionally I use lidl where it all about speed, get it on the conveyor scan pack and get out. Must be my age but I cannot keep up packing at the same speed as the scan.
Yesterday a site I look after the owner had forgot to pay and the DNS had switched it off, site not found etc. I guided the owner through payment and then said 24 hours before site is repopulated. But immediately it was back on line.
I wanted to book a holiday and wondered about cycle paths from the hotel to the town centre, google could answer before the girl on the hotel desk could understand my question.
Technology is moving so quickly how did we manage before and how can it improve ?
Not a Linux question as such more about development of technology.
Before you needed a book with restaurants and Michelin stars and all that kind of things if you went to a road trip.
When Lidl came to Finland they had that silly short packing area they have in all other countries but we Finns didn’t act, we just stood at the counter waiting to pay first and then pack our groceries. The stubborness of a us country fellows made Lidl to change the thing that all your groceries have bigger area to wait untill you pay and then you can go and pack them to bags.
Now we have self payouts. You don’t even see a person and I think we all prefer it here.
Not always.
We needed to change the phone number attached to our bank accounts.
It can not be done on the internet because phones are involved in 2FA.
At bank No 1 it took a 2 minute phone call, a bit of ID checking , and done.
At bank No 2 it took a 2 hour phone call with me sitting at the computer and the phone, just to get my phone number changed. I have yet to succeed in getting my wife’s phone number changed… last time I rang they said wait times are impossibly large and I should talk to their robot instead. I tried that… the robot said I have to make a phone call to change a phone number. …
Days out of my life wasted.
Financial institutions sometimes buy the cheapest software packages. I have found that, in the US, credit unions are more likely to have decent online services than banks. I just changed from a bad one to a better one; I had to clean up some details, but the whole process was pretty simple and efficient.
That is true in Australia too. We use a credit union, as well as 2 banks. At the credit union we can ring and get an instant response from a helpful real person.
Their internet banking site is way ahead of the bank’s sites.
.
So they get most of our business.
We are seriously thinking of moving out of one bank in particular. We had them because they had a branch in our local town… but now they have closed the branch.
So much for new technology. In banking it becomes a poor second place performer.
I do groceries with an app. The online supermarket I’m using doesn’t have physical stores.
Instead they have cute little trucks driving around. You can actually follow the truck while it’s headed over to you down to the meter where it’s at the current moment, right to your front door.
You pay using using your phone (which you also use to shop). The delivery driver delivers your groceries and when he drives away, your receipt gets mailed to you, including deductions for recyclables you handed over.
When there’s a problem you can complain online and you get a choice of what they do.
It’s not for nothing they score the best regarding service.
Verizon credit Union is really bad. Call and wait until tomorrow for someone to answer the phone. Just got our 4th notice of account in-activity and notice of a charge if we did not respond with request to keep active.
Reply to the first 2 notices and still got 2 more.
I suppose credit unions vary too.
Does anyone have a way of finding good bsnkd/credit unions.?
I know @abu has already suggested something… Trustpilot.
However - my account was originally with a Credit Union, for Commonwealth public servants - that then merged with the WA Civil Service Credit Union, that then merged with a Building Society - that then got bought out by a bank… But not one of the huge vast mostly evil “Big 4” banks of Australia thankfully…
We still use the CSIRO credit union. It is called Laboratories Credit Union. They are better than any bank we have tried. I believe anyone can join it today, but it was originally for scientific/technical people.
I don’t know, but they give a fresh guarantee – and the stuff is actually fresh when it’s delivered. I guess they got some cooling space in those little cars.