Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Green Lanes is not in the European Customs Union
You may have noticed that you can buy pittas in bags that are clipped at the top by one of these from shops on Green Lanes:
I'm not sure where they're getting them from but they're banned in the EU as a choking hazard. Also possibly because they're American.
This makes me want to bet that the Green Lanes custom of charging you 50p for using your debit card will continue to be in force after the EU ban comes in this weekend. Anyone want to take me up on that?
Tags for Forum Posts: breadclip, debitcard, eu, greenlanes, kwiklok, shops, traders
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Oh wow! Damn, I was looking forward to them having just thumbed their noses rather than engage their lawyers. We had them in New Zealand when I was young too. Sadly, they're just more plastic now.
They were definitely banned 15 years ago as I was thinkingdreaming of doing what Saeloc have done and asking around in NZ that's what they said. I guess the bread companies like Hovis and Warburton are happy with their sticky close labels...
I take it back "Jonathan Warburton has recently used the Kwik Lok to do exactly this.", damn, they'll be rich!
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Or as I like to call it, a 10% transaction tax, at best. 20% if you were only spending £2.50.
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Permalink Reply by Lauren on
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As children we used to clip these on the spokes of our bikes and rattle around the playing fields on them. I didn’t have so many of them as I was OCD about the colours and only wanted the pale blue ones which I think came from M&S, whereas the ones on the common bread were yellow. We only got the common bread in our house so I used to trade several yellow for one blue. You could also trade them for other commodities such as chewing gum, marbles or Panini stickers.
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10%, 20%? Really? Using cash is free and yet it has expenses around it. This should be absolutely free, otherwise it's just a tax on commerce. The worldwide payments system is worth billions (I saw a talk by the guy who owns this company last year) and it shouldn't be. What are our roads "worth"? In Sweden they have stuff like this too.
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Are Visa really charging them 20%? If you pay for something worth £2.50 with a card and they charge 50p then that's 20%. It's not even interest, it's just a charge for using an electronic system to transfer funds from your account to theirs through an automated clearing system. I think you should read the article I linked to above. Here it is again: HERE.
And to be clear, my beef is not with the amount that Visa are charging, it's not 20% so someone is making a profit and discouraging small bank payments.
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Not necessarily fixating, just pointing out that they're high and a payment transaction system is all about percentages. I like how Sam Smiths are charging for cards now, you buy a £3 pint and if you pay with a card there is an extra line item in your view of the cash register to show the 14p card charge. Sadly, this will be banned too.
The unacknowledged cost of a cash transaction is also... unacknowledged. Besides the equipment you need to hold the cash and the honest staff you need to make sure it all goes in the till and the correct change is handed out, you run the risk of it all disappearing in the kinds of theft that just can't happen with a card. I don't see the shop keepers charging me for that.
Anyway, I don't want to slag off the shop keepers and this place is amazing because of them. I just like the way it's not very "EU" around here and thought I had an intersting example of it. Anyway, want to take me up on my bet that they'll still charge 50p for small card transactions?
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Yes and those are bad too. Notice how those Tesco Metro and Sainsbury’s Locals have a free cash machine? That’s one of the reasons they get planning permission as otherwise poorer neighbourhoods get price gouged. Take out £10 to put on your gas meter and pay a £2 fee (20%) then a really crap rate on your gas.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Cash isn’t free John. The cost of printing and circulating comes from general taxation
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USING cash is free. I agree it's not free but it's free for us to use. If you are a shopkeeper on Green Lanes and you take your daily cash take into the bank, they will charge you...
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Permalink Reply by OleMiss on
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I incur a cost of 0.68% per card transaction received. However, I pay 1% to deposit cash at the bank.
We do not live in the age of zip-zap machines. Cards payments cost very little to process. Cash is a costly nuisance.
The real cost of receiving card transactions for the grocers, pubs and restaurants of Green Lanes comes in the form of corporation tax. There is none on cash, but it's hard to wriggle out of with electronic transactions.
Conversely, I suspect that some of the traders account for inordinately large sums of cash flowing through their businesses. Here the funds will be declared and the taxation viewed as a sanitation expense. In these cases, they are very much behaving as typical businesses within the European Union.
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