John K Mitchell's Misc Blog

It's now only 20 days to Christmas, and time is running out for getting presents sorted.

Yesterday I found just the thing for one of the Grandchildren and was able to order it on-line for collection from a local store here in Peterborough. The only problem was that when I went to pay and collect it the store was too busy to cope with the number of customers at the checkouts. Now, this store has some machines that allow you to enter the reservation number or the product code, insert your credit card and pay for the item with out going anywhere near the check-outs. "Great" I thought, "I'll do that". Unfortunately, of the 4 machines, once had run out of paper to print the receipt, two others were taking peoples card details and printing blank receipts and the 4th had a queue of people that reached the back of the store and halfway back to the front.

Guess what I did - yes, that's right, I walked out of the store and into the toy shop down the road. They had the same item at the same price and no queues !

Technology is great, but when it goes wrong - boy does it screw up the process !