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Black Friday Panic at Macy's: People Report Credit Card System Outage (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Macy's might have celebrated an increase in share price on Black Friday, but it seems like the retailer will end the day with a lot of lost sales. Many of its customers recently took to Twitter to complain that its credit card machines are down, and that they can only pay with cash.
This exactly. I pay with credit cards because i get cash back or points towards things like gift cards for places I actually buy things. I'm paying the same price at the register as someone who is paying cash, except that I get back a percentage of what I'm paying for to reduce the cost of something next time.
Not everyone is using credit cards because they can't afford things. I hardly ever carry a balance on mine and pay them off right away. I also don't like carrying a lot of cash around with me. If someone steals the money off you while your out shopping, you've probably lost it for good. If someone steals your credit card you can simply cancel it and get a new one. Any charges incurred will be wiped away.
Businesses should always be prepared for a system failure or power outage. I was in a local shop recently when the power failed. It took them less than a minute to get a box of paper based "kerchunkers" from the manager's office and put one at each register. Sales lost: $0.
Last summer on a hot day, I was in a Target store when the power failed. Backup lights went on immediately. People who looked like managers went quickly from one checkout station to another, doing something. Everything at the checkout stations worked except the conveyer belts; you had to move the stuff towards the checker by hand.
When I drove away, the signal lights in the area weren't working, so the power loss wasn't the store's fault.
When the managers were going from one checkout station to the next, I don't know if they were enabling an override or what. But whatever they were doing, it looked like they knew what to do, and that they had practiced getting the checkout stations back online; they were prepared.