The Dangers of a Cashless Society.

Carter said:

Covered End said: minutes

Carter said:

I've had a bank fuck up and "misplace" a few thousand pounds of my money. This was only recently an its made me feel like keeping my money in a box buried underground or in a safe in my house. Their attitude to fixing their balls up was atrocious too. 

Their approach to retail banking is also ensuring that will soon vanish. They are only concerned with selling over-priced financial products as opposed to helping people manage their money. My mate helps his dad with this stuff and his dad had something like £50k in a current account and all the arseholes did when he took his dad down there to move most of it into a savings account was be obstructive and attempt to sell mortgages with shite rates, credit cards this guy plainly didn’t need before telling my pal they would only issue the money in installments over 2 weeks, asking him to take it out in £5k lumps, walk it along to the other bank his dad had opened a savings account in and deposit the cash in there. Absolutely no reason they couldn't have transferred it via BACS immediately. 

I find that almost impossible to believe unless there is more to it.
No right minded person would suggest that.
It sounds to me more like your mate asked to withdraw the £50K in cash and they didn't have it and would have had to order the cash on the next run, so suggested take out £5K if and when they had it. 
Which bank was it?

Bear in mind I'm telling this third-hand so I'm paraphrasing someone else paraphrasing however the guts of the story is they refused to do the transfer in branch, he absolutely didn't want fifty bags withdrawn for obvious reasons. The issue was they had plenty of opportunity to help this bloke manage his money and at the point he's (my mates dad) decided he wanted to move elsewhere they put up an unreasonable amount of resistance. My mate is not the kind to bullshit, there isn't anything in it for him and he just isn't that sort of person. The bank was TSB. Think about the situation he's in there, you are in a bank, with your dad who you are trying to assist, the bank staff refuse to play ball for whatever reason and he felt there was not a lot he could do. And on the day there wasn't other than withdraw large sums of money they could handle then physically walk that along the road to the other bank. No reason to disbelieve him although I totally accept I wasn't there 

ME14addick said:

Carter said:

Covered End said: minutes

Carter said:

I've had a bank fuck up and "misplace" a few thousand pounds of my money. This was only recently an its made me feel like keeping my money in a box buried underground or in a safe in my house. Their attitude to fixing their balls up was atrocious too. 

Their approach to retail banking is also ensuring that will soon vanish. They are only concerned with selling over-priced financial products as opposed to helping people manage their money. My mate helps his dad with this stuff and his dad had something like £50k in a current account and all the arseholes did when he took his dad down there to move most of it into a savings account was be obstructive and attempt to sell mortgages with shite rates, credit cards this guy plainly didn’t need before telling my pal they would only issue the money in installments over 2 weeks, asking him to take it out in £5k lumps, walk it along to the other bank his dad had opened a savings account in and deposit the cash in there. Absolutely no reason they couldn't have transferred it via BACS immediately. 

I find that almost impossible to believe unless there is more to it.
No right minded person would suggest that.
It sounds to me more like your mate asked to withdraw the £50K in cash and they didn't have it and would have had to order the cash on the next run, so suggested take out £5K if and when they had it. 
Which bank was it?

Bear in mind I'm telling this third-hand so I'm paraphrasing someone else paraphrasing however the guts of the story is they refused to do the transfer in branch, he absolutely didn't want fifty bags withdrawn for obvious reasons. The issue was they had plenty of opportunity to help this bloke manage his money and at the point he's (my mates dad) decided he wanted to move elsewhere they put up an unreasonable amount of resistance. My mate is not the kind to bullshit, there isn't anything in it for him and he just isn't that sort of person. The bank was TSB. Think about the situation he's in there, you are in a bank, with your dad who you are trying to assist, the bank staff refuse to play ball for whatever reason and he felt there was not a lot he could do. And on the day there wasn't other than withdraw large sums of money they could handle then physically walk that along the road to the other bank. No reason to disbelieve him although I totally accept I wasn't there 

In order to prevent money laundering there are strict rules on withdrawals.

Algarveaddick said:

valleynick66 said:

Algarveaddick said:

Radostanradical said:

Algarveaddick said:

Radostanradical said:

Algarveaddick said:

See the thread on power outages in Portugal and Spain to learn why cashless is a bad idea... (I was in the UK luckily).  

Not sure a once in a life time incident, which was resolved in less than 24 hours, would be enough by any risk likelihood matrix framework to justify that decision ?

After all how did those without cash get by if there was no power to ATM machines.

Blimey - there's an awful lot of assumption there, and unless I am misunderstanding, a contradiction from one sentence to another?    

Absolutely not, I analyze risk for a living. I would kindly ask you to point out the contradiction in my sentence (assuming you actually do understand what contradiction means).

i shouldn't engage but I'm working late and this will be a nice distraction, so let me guide you on your critical thinking journey.

Step 1) Has this kind of an outage to this extent happened before in Portugal/Spain (or anywhere in the developed world for that matter) in lets say 70 years at this scale and length of time ? No it hasn't.

Step 2) We look at the ARO (Annualized Rate of Occurrence) so right now, as mentioned above, it hasn't previously happened before so its 1 in 70 years, so that means the chance of this happening each year is 0.14 and thats being very liberal as I selected 70 years it could be much longer.

Step 3) lets look at the single loss expectancy (SLE) which in economic terms is around 2.4 billion (Reuters). The Spanish economy alone is worth 1.9 Trillion.

Now ask yourself is it worth forcing small, medium and large private businesses to adopt an archaic system that will cost them money on the off chance something that has happened once in seventy years and may cost the economy 2.4 billion (roughly 0.2% of the economy) might but probably wont happen ?

Also again I ask you, as you brought up the blackout to justify your belief how do you propose people would get hold of cash if their is a power outage ? even if you go in to a bank you need to validate your card ? Only a small number of people will have cash readily available.

So in summary your task is the following - 

Point out the contradiction good chap.
If possible follow my thought process.
Make a sensible decision.

Well, I was talking about people being sensible enough to have a reasonable amount of cash at home to deal with an emergency. You seem to have missed that point as you suggest they would need an ATM, which of course they would not, as they are not "cashless". In your cashless world, "Only a small number of people will have cash readily available" In mine, everyone would. That is the whole point and that's why I read it as a contradiction - people with cash don't need an ATM, short term. I did say I may have misunderstood, to try to keep it friendly.

Regarding your stats, as the push towards a cashless society really began to build momentum post-covid, wouldn't five years be a more realistic time scale than seventy? Or even twenty as I would say that is roughly when we began to rely on computers (and therefore electricity) to do everything. I would suggest that in the modern world, with the increase in cyber attacks and unexpected weather patterns that outages would become more likely than a generation ago? Also, an outage does not have to be on the scale of this one to be a problem to individuals, a forest fire or a power worker's strike could have the same effect over a smaller area.     

You also mention "forcing small, medium and large private businesses to adopt an archaic system" - a system that everyone was reasonably happy with until five years ago "archaic"? Really? A system that I know many small, medium and large private business's are still using, and are quite happy with.

Cash and card are not mutually exclusive and at no point was I suggesting they were. 

   

If we have no power at all for an extended window cash to hand is a minor consideration as shops etc won’t be open (in large numbers). 

Not quite sure what the argument is here Nick? You use the words “in large numbers” yourself, so if shops are open in small numbers and able to take cash for food, then it’s worth having cash, isn’t it? We are not talking about a long term disaster, my original comment was about the situation where a lifer had no food and no cash during the outage in Spain. People seem to be reading stuff into what I am saying that simply isn’t there. I am just suggesting that having some cash to hand is a good idea, I am not saying people can’t use cards or their phone, crack on if that’s what you want to do… 

valleynick66 said:

Algarveaddick said:

valleynick66 said:

Algarveaddick said:

Radostanradical said:

Algarveaddick said:

Radostanradical said:

Algarveaddick said:

See the thread on power outages in Portugal and Spain to learn why cashless is a bad idea... (I was in the UK luckily).  

Not sure a once in a life time incident, which was resolved in less than 24 hours, would be enough by any risk likelihood matrix framework to justify that decision ?

After all how did those without cash get by if there was no power to ATM machines.

Blimey - there's an awful lot of assumption there, and unless I am misunderstanding, a contradiction from one sentence to another?    

Absolutely not, I analyze risk for a living. I would kindly ask you to point out the contradiction in my sentence (assuming you actually do understand what contradiction means).

i shouldn't engage but I'm working late and this will be a nice distraction, so let me guide you on your critical thinking journey.

Step 1) Has this kind of an outage to this extent happened before in Portugal/Spain (or anywhere in the developed world for that matter) in lets say 70 years at this scale and length of time ? No it hasn't.

Step 2) We look at the ARO (Annualized Rate of Occurrence) so right now, as mentioned above, it hasn't previously happened before so its 1 in 70 years, so that means the chance of this happening each year is 0.14 and thats being very liberal as I selected 70 years it could be much longer.

Step 3) lets look at the single loss expectancy (SLE) which in economic terms is around 2.4 billion (Reuters). The Spanish economy alone is worth 1.9 Trillion.

Now ask yourself is it worth forcing small, medium and large private businesses to adopt an archaic system that will cost them money on the off chance something that has happened once in seventy years and may cost the economy 2.4 billion (roughly 0.2% of the economy) might but probably wont happen ?

Also again I ask you, as you brought up the blackout to justify your belief how do you propose people would get hold of cash if their is a power outage ? even if you go in to a bank you need to validate your card ? Only a small number of people will have cash readily available.

So in summary your task is the following - 

Point out the contradiction good chap.
If possible follow my thought process.
Make a sensible decision.

Well, I was talking about people being sensible enough to have a reasonable amount of cash at home to deal with an emergency. You seem to have missed that point as you suggest they would need an ATM, which of course they would not, as they are not "cashless". In your cashless world, "Only a small number of people will have cash readily available" In mine, everyone would. That is the whole point and that's why I read it as a contradiction - people with cash don't need an ATM, short term. I did say I may have misunderstood, to try to keep it friendly.

Regarding your stats, as the push towards a cashless society really began to build momentum post-covid, wouldn't five years be a more realistic time scale than seventy? Or even twenty as I would say that is roughly when we began to rely on computers (and therefore electricity) to do everything. I would suggest that in the modern world, with the increase in cyber attacks and unexpected weather patterns that outages would become more likely than a generation ago? Also, an outage does not have to be on the scale of this one to be a problem to individuals, a forest fire or a power worker's strike could have the same effect over a smaller area.     

You also mention "forcing small, medium and large private businesses to adopt an archaic system" - a system that everyone was reasonably happy with until five years ago "archaic"? Really? A system that I know many small, medium and large private business's are still using, and are quite happy with.

Cash and card are not mutually exclusive and at no point was I suggesting they were. 

   

If we have no power at all for an extended window cash to hand is a minor consideration as shops etc won’t be open (in large numbers). 

Not quite sure what the argument is here Nick? You use the words “in large numbers” yourself, so if shops are open in small numbers and able to take cash for food, then it’s worth having cash, isn’t it? We are not talking about a long term disaster, my original comment was about the situation where a lifer had no food and no cash during the outage in Spain. People seem to be reading stuff into what I am saying that simply isn’t there. I am just suggesting that having some cash to hand is a good idea, I am not saying people can’t use cards or their phone, crack on if that’s what you want to do… 

 Because we can all cope for 24 hours without cash / a shop. But a longer term outage will be a different kettle of fish and require a more substantial sum of money kept in cash for ‘emergencies’. 

The world has moved on substantially now and cash isn’t the ‘need’ it was. 

If you don’t have enough food for 24 hours you are better off considering your contingency for that in my view. 

ME14addick said:

Carter said:

Covered End said: minutes

Carter said:

I've had a bank fuck up and "misplace" a few thousand pounds of my money. This was only recently an its made me feel like keeping my money in a box buried underground or in a safe in my house. Their attitude to fixing their balls up was atrocious too. 

Their approach to retail banking is also ensuring that will soon vanish. They are only concerned with selling over-priced financial products as opposed to helping people manage their money. My mate helps his dad with this stuff and his dad had something like £50k in a current account and all the arseholes did when he took his dad down there to move most of it into a savings account was be obstructive and attempt to sell mortgages with shite rates, credit cards this guy plainly didn’t need before telling my pal they would only issue the money in installments over 2 weeks, asking him to take it out in £5k lumps, walk it along to the other bank his dad had opened a savings account in and deposit the cash in there. Absolutely no reason they couldn't have transferred it via BACS immediately. 

I find that almost impossible to believe unless there is more to it.
No right minded person would suggest that.
It sounds to me more like your mate asked to withdraw the £50K in cash and they didn't have it and would have had to order the cash on the next run, so suggested take out £5K if and when they had it. 
Which bank was it?

Bear in mind I'm telling this third-hand so I'm paraphrasing someone else paraphrasing however the guts of the story is they refused to do the transfer in branch, he absolutely didn't want fifty bags withdrawn for obvious reasons. The issue was they had plenty of opportunity to help this bloke manage his money and at the point he's (my mates dad) decided he wanted to move elsewhere they put up an unreasonable amount of resistance. My mate is not the kind to bullshit, there isn't anything in it for him and he just isn't that sort of person. The bank was TSB. Think about the situation he's in there, you are in a bank, with your dad who you are trying to assist, the bank staff refuse to play ball for whatever reason and he felt there was not a lot he could do. And on the day there wasn't other than withdraw large sums of money they could handle then physically walk that along the road to the other bank. No reason to disbelieve him although I totally accept I wasn't there 

In order to prevent money laundering there are strict rules on withdrawals.

Algarveaddick said:

Friend Or Defoe said:

So much easier to keep track with money electrically. Each apps has all the transactions listed out. 

If I go out with £100 and come home with £20, I’ve spent £80. It’s not that complicated mate… 😉😂👍

SomervilleAddick said:

ME14addick said:

Carter said:

Covered End said: minutes

Carter said:

I've had a bank fuck up and "misplace" a few thousand pounds of my money. This was only recently an its made me feel like keeping my money in a box buried underground or in a safe in my house. Their attitude to fixing their balls up was atrocious too. 

Their approach to retail banking is also ensuring that will soon vanish. They are only concerned with selling over-priced financial products as opposed to helping people manage their money. My mate helps his dad with this stuff and his dad had something like £50k in a current account and all the arseholes did when he took his dad down there to move most of it into a savings account was be obstructive and attempt to sell mortgages with shite rates, credit cards this guy plainly didn’t need before telling my pal they would only issue the money in installments over 2 weeks, asking him to take it out in £5k lumps, walk it along to the other bank his dad had opened a savings account in and deposit the cash in there. Absolutely no reason they couldn't have transferred it via BACS immediately. 

I find that almost impossible to believe unless there is more to it.
No right minded person would suggest that.
It sounds to me more like your mate asked to withdraw the £50K in cash and they didn't have it and would have had to order the cash on the next run, so suggested take out £5K if and when they had it. 
Which bank was it?

Bear in mind I'm telling this third-hand so I'm paraphrasing someone else paraphrasing however the guts of the story is they refused to do the transfer in branch, he absolutely didn't want fifty bags withdrawn for obvious reasons. The issue was they had plenty of opportunity to help this bloke manage his money and at the point he's (my mates dad) decided he wanted to move elsewhere they put up an unreasonable amount of resistance. My mate is not the kind to bullshit, there isn't anything in it for him and he just isn't that sort of person. The bank was TSB. Think about the situation he's in there, you are in a bank, with your dad who you are trying to assist, the bank staff refuse to play ball for whatever reason and he felt there was not a lot he could do. And on the day there wasn't other than withdraw large sums of money they could handle then physically walk that along the road to the other bank. No reason to disbelieve him although I totally accept I wasn't there 

In order to prevent money laundering there are strict rules on withdrawals.

They are also on the lookout for people scamming older individuals. If your mate needed to help his Dad, and wanted to move the money to an account outside their bank, that would immediately raise suspicion that it could be a scam on a vulnerable person. 

valleynick66 said:

Carter said:

I don't understand why you wouldn't have access to some cash either on you or somewhere at home. Not thousands just a ton or so. 

Not me but I’d  say given the state of the economy most households don’t have a spare ‘ton’ just in case and live a different life.