Richard J. wrote:
Recliner wrote on 01 Aug 2017 at 15:36 ...
Richard J. wrote:
Roland Perry wrote on 01 Aug 2017 at 14:54 ...
In message , at 13:40:31 on Tue, 1 Aug
2017, d remarked:

The "inside" isn't manned 24x7. And thanks for confirming my impression
that there's a breed of tech geek who thinks one minor improvement is
justifiable, how ever many negative consequences it has. (And no,
talking to humans isn't one of those - the human's barcode reader
struggled to read the new fob too, increasing the length of the queue).

So pay by card or cash, whats the problem?

Do keep up; it's their *loyalty* card, not a payment card.

Fair enough.

Tesco have their own bank

The shop people claim the ATMs are "nothing to do with us", so it could
be a branding thing like Virgin Trains being nothing to do with Virgin
Bank.

however so it wouldn't be beyond the realms of
possibilty for them to have to release a smart card/fob for payment.

I have always thought they should have a combined Credit/Loyalty card.
Maybe there's some regulatory issue with it.

John Lewis manage to have a credit card with a reward scheme that favours
purchases in John Lewis and Waitrose, so there's evidently no regulatory issue with that.

Indeed not; Tesco implemented this idea decades ago, but Roland appears not
to have noticed the ad by every checkout.

However they also have a separate loyalty card for John Lewis, and yet
another one for Waitrose ("My Waitrose"). So full loyalty to the John
Lewis group implies three cards in your wallet. :-(

Why not one of these?
https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/par.../benefits.html

That's the credit card that I referred to, which offers reward points and
a credit voucher 3 times a year. But the MyWaitrose loyalty card also
offers additional targeted price reductions on a number of items,
including the ability to choose 20 items on which you get reductions
every week. Presumably the John Lewis loyalty card has something
similar, but my wallet is suffering from plastic overload.

I think the Partnership card doubles as both a JLP loyalty card and credit
card, but I agree that it ought to be able to also act as a myWaitrose
card.