Like the bit says, even when the phrase was becoming popularized, people saw the inherent flaw in it.
The customer is right, within reason.
You are complaining about a cashless business, one that won't accept the minted currency of the nation.
Which could be a fair complaint.
But if we are to hold to the maxim that the customer is always right, then if I insist on paying in bits of string, then I'm right. If I insist that the value of what I'm taking is far less than you think, then I'm right. At some point, you have to admit that there is a line.
And businesses don't want to insert middlemen, they're dealing with them just like we are. But they're getting to the point where the cost of dealing with those middlemen are less than or equal to dealing with hard cash.
Businesses do want to insert middlemen where they can externalise something else. Either to move another cost or process to the customer or to reduce staff. We've seen the near abolition of customer service by adopting customer service departments that move the activity onto dedicated, and lowly paid staff or outsourced entirely.
For most of the fifty years since Visa started businesses have been expected to take credit cards, even though they cost more to process for all that time. In the UK business could not charge extra for taking cards. The second cash costs more it's OK to abandon it and go Visa/MC only?
Yes, it seems they do want to insert middlemen. Visa of course are encouraging this.
But they're choosing their customers with this action. If you can't buy stuff from them, you are not a customer.
> For most of the fifty years since Visa started businesses have been expected to take credit cards, even though they cost more to process for all that time.
Because those were the customers who were spending the money. They didn't have to, they chose to. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that fast food establishments refused to take them. That is a recent change.
What's the benefit of inserting the middlemen?
You may want to pay in bitcoin, nickels, or with bushels of corn, but that doesn't mean any of them are practical or desirable for the business owner on the other end.
Another reductio ad absurdum? Like I replied to bena before you, with well known adages and slogans it's the core idea that matters, not to take it so literally as to permit payment in corn. Corn is not the currency in general use, cash is. Do you take every slogan and adage entirely literally?
No, it isn't. That's the point.
You can be a customer if you have the money part of the exchange, otherwise you're clearly not a customer.
Most find that a useful shorthand in achieving concise and clear discussion, that helps to avoid overly formal and long grandiose Victorian circumlocution, without finding it vague waffle. Something I am eternally thankful for.
We could have an equally lengthy, fruitless and absurd discussion picking holes in Rackspace's "fanatical" support and Amazon's many slogans including "customer obsessed" and "most customer-centric company" because they do'nt spell out all exceptions, limitations and exclusions to the clearly generalised slogan at full length with legal precision.
> You are giving an "invitation to treat". An invitation the establishment may decline
Quite, and yet you write "What if all I have is corn? I'm a customer." You're not yet a customer and you're not offering legal tender or any other form of recognised currency. Which is why it is clearly absurd and takes the discussion away from the actual topic in TFA - the rise, and potential discrimination, of cashless.
At no point did I dispute any electronic payments are exchanging money. That again is clearly absurd. What I did say is the form may inconvenience me (even if it becomes endemic) and I dislike it becoming required. As the article points out 7.5% in the US are unbanked. 12% aren't on the net.
That's a far larger and problematic discrimination than "no hats". I won't be discriminated against, just inconvenienced. Which is why I mentioned, in another comment, I would encourage requiring businesses to accept legal tender (subject to any legislated limitations on paying large amounts in small change that many countries already limit).
Legal tender is currently cash but an equally valid solution would be a state or central bank run fee-free, privacy respecting eCurrency as it could be easily made universal, separate from the banking system, and legal tender. Who knows it might turn out cheaper to run than mints producing coins and notes. In other words something outside the duopoly of MC and Visa that doesn't require a bank or abandonment of privacy to buy a pair of jeans. Then require businesses to accept that legal tender.
This is going to sound glib, but I assure you that it's offered genuinely: you don't have to do anything.
I would make a point of not supporting such a business but if I'm in a minority and cashless catches on...
Further, I'm in the minority on a whole bunch of topics, but that's not evidence that a harm or an injury has taken place.
If we end up cashless it will be the poor and elderly who will have the most difficulty. Even now, well over 10 years after the switch, it's reasonably common to see elderly folks in supermarket or bank struggling with chip and PIN.
The thing we're dealing with here isn't Visa, it's the businesses themselves. They've reached a point where dealing with Visa is cheaper than dealing with cash.
Once upon a time the customer was always right. A business was supposed to serve the customer's needs and did what was necessary to achieve that. Now the business can insert multiple middlemen with commissions and transaction fees and the damn customers can just fall into line. Sharpish please, and no complaints or we'll close your account.
Do we not see a problem travelling down this road? Or do we have to return to barter and hacksilver to decide perhaps cash was useful?