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There's a Family Dollar by my house that is down at least 2 full days per month because of bad inet connectivity. I live close enough that with a small tower on

There's a Family Dollar by my house that is down at least 2 full days per month because of bad inet connectivity. I live close enough that with a small tower on my roof i can get line of sight to theirs. I've thought about offering them a backup link off my home inet if they give me 50% of sales whenever its in use. It would be a pretty good deal for them, better some sales when their inet is down vs none.

ryandrake 1y ago
You'd think any SeriousBusiness would have a backup way to take customers' money. This is the one thing you always want to be able to do: accept payment. If they made it so they can't do that, they deserve the hit to their revenue. People should just walk out of the store with the goods if they're not being charged. Why doesn't someone in the store at least have one of those manual kachunk-kachunk carbon copy card readers in the back that they can resuscitate for a few days until the technology is turned back on? Did they throw them all away?
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  The kachunk-kachunk credit card machines need raised digits on the cards, and I don't think most banks have been issuing those for years at this point. Mine have been smooth for at least 10 years.
  - xboxnolifes 1y ago
    It's hit or miss. My (brand new) bank card and chase credit card are raised. But my other credit cards are flat.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    > kachunk-kachunk credit card machines How aptly descriptive.
  - progmetaldev 1y ago
    My card tied to my main financial institution have the raised digits, but most cards you'd sign up for online now no longer have the raised digits (and often allow you to select art to appear on the card face).
  - hinkley 1y ago
    My credit union has been behind for a while. I think I had an embossed one until about nine years ago. Six at the latest. Still doesn’t have NFC in it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- BenjiWiebe 1y ago
  I think a lot of payment terminals have an option to record transactions offline and upload them later, but apparently it's not enabled by default - probably because it increases your risk that someone pays with a bad card.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    After having my credit card locked by stupid fraud prevention algorithms on my honeymoon, I had a long chat with them before going overseas a second time. And that was the day Visa had a full on outage. We would walk into one shop, try to buy stuff, get declined, then go into the next and get accepted because they were running in offline mode. Got a nice big bill from my cellphone carrier for making the call to visa to ask them wtf as well.
- voidmain0001 1y ago
  If they used standalone merchant terminals, then those typically use the local LAN which can rollover to cellular or PoT in the event of a network outage. The store can process a card transaction with the merchant terminal and then reconcile with the end of day chit. This article from 2008 describes their PoS https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/store-operations/case-study-family-dollar-optimizes-pos-system-with-embedded-apps https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/store-operations/ca...
- Spooky23 1y ago
  It’s family dollar. They don’t care about customer satisfaction and the cost of reliability is cost. The stores are in the hood or middle of nowhere. The customers don’t have many options.
  - progmetaldev 1y ago
    These stores appear everywhere, even in areas with high income. You'd be surprised, but often people with those high incomes shop for certain products at very low rates, and that's how they keep their savings. A good example is garbage bags. Most people don't care too much about the quality of their garbage bags, unless they rip on the way to the bin.
- wat10000 1y ago
  Many businesses don't lose revenue from short outages, it just gets shifted.
- Finnucane 1y ago
  Then they would need to get the little booklets of invalid numbers to keep by the register to check (yes, I am old).
jrodom 1y ago
50% of sales? what do you think the gross margin is on average for each item sold?
- consp 1y ago
  2-3%, bit higher on perishables. Though i'd just ask lump sum payments in cash since it likely has to no go through corporate (as in, avoid the corporation).
- chasd00 1y ago
  It's Family Dollar, margin has to be almost nothing and sales per day is probably < $1k. That's why I said 50% of sales and not profit. I go there daily because it's a nice 30min round trip walk and I wfh. I go up there to get a diet coke or something else just to get out of the house. It amazes me when i see a handwritten sign on the door "closed, system is down". I've gotten to know the cashiers so I asked and it's because the internet connection goes down all the time. That store has to one of the most poorly run things i've ever seen yet it stays in business somehow.
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    They're all run on a shoestring: 1: I doubt they're "with it" enough to put together a backup arrangement for internet. 2: Their internet problems are probably due to a cheapo router, loose wire, ect. 3: The employees probably like the break.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    I think the point people are trying and failing to make is that asking for half of means sales is half of revenue not half of net and that you’re out of your goddamned mind if you think a store with razor thin margins would sell at a massive loss rather than just close due to connectivity problems. Your responses imply that you think people are questioning whether you would lose money on the deal while we are instead saying you’ll get laughed out of the store, or possibly asked never to come back.
    - 1y ago
BenjiWiebe 1y ago
Pretty sure it'd be a lot better deal for them to have no sales than to pay out 50% of sales on stuff with single digit margins.

ryandrake 1y ago

You'd think any SeriousBusiness would have a backup way to take customers' money. This is the one thing you always want to be able to do: accept payment. If they made it so they can't do that, they deserve the hit to their revenue. People should just walk out of the store with the goods if they're not being charged. Why doesn't someone in the store at least have one of those manual kachunk-kachunk carbon copy card readers in the back that they can resuscitate for a few days until the technology is turned back on? Did they throw them all away?

ElevenLathe 1y ago
The kachunk-kachunk credit card machines need raised digits on the cards, and I don't think most banks have been issuing those for years at this point. Mine have been smooth for at least 10 years.
- xboxnolifes 1y ago
  It's hit or miss. My (brand new) bank card and chase credit card are raised. But my other credit cards are flat.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  > kachunk-kachunk credit card machines How aptly descriptive.
- progmetaldev 1y ago
  My card tied to my main financial institution have the raised digits, but most cards you'd sign up for online now no longer have the raised digits (and often allow you to select art to appear on the card face).
- hinkley 1y ago
  My credit union has been behind for a while. I think I had an embossed one until about nine years ago. Six at the latest. Still doesn’t have NFC in it.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
BenjiWiebe 1y ago
I think a lot of payment terminals have an option to record transactions offline and upload them later, but apparently it's not enabled by default - probably because it increases your risk that someone pays with a bad card.
- hinkley 1y ago
  After having my credit card locked by stupid fraud prevention algorithms on my honeymoon, I had a long chat with them before going overseas a second time. And that was the day Visa had a full on outage. We would walk into one shop, try to buy stuff, get declined, then go into the next and get accepted because they were running in offline mode. Got a nice big bill from my cellphone carrier for making the call to visa to ask them wtf as well.
voidmain0001 1y ago
If they used standalone merchant terminals, then those typically use the local LAN which can rollover to cellular or PoT in the event of a network outage. The store can process a card transaction with the merchant terminal and then reconcile with the end of day chit. This article from 2008 describes their PoS https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/store-operations/case-study-family-dollar-optimizes-pos-system-with-embedded-apps https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/store-operations/ca...
Spooky23 1y ago
It’s family dollar. They don’t care about customer satisfaction and the cost of reliability is cost. The stores are in the hood or middle of nowhere. The customers don’t have many options.
- progmetaldev 1y ago
  These stores appear everywhere, even in areas with high income. You'd be surprised, but often people with those high incomes shop for certain products at very low rates, and that's how they keep their savings. A good example is garbage bags. Most people don't care too much about the quality of their garbage bags, unless they rip on the way to the bin.
wat10000 1y ago
Many businesses don't lose revenue from short outages, it just gets shifted.
Finnucane 1y ago
Then they would need to get the little booklets of invalid numbers to keep by the register to check (yes, I am old).

jrodom 1y ago

50% of sales? what do you think the gross margin is on average for each item sold?

consp 1y ago
2-3%, bit higher on perishables. Though i'd just ask lump sum payments in cash since it likely has to no go through corporate (as in, avoid the corporation).
chasd00 1y ago
It's Family Dollar, margin has to be almost nothing and sales per day is probably < $1k. That's why I said 50% of sales and not profit. I go there daily because it's a nice 30min round trip walk and I wfh. I go up there to get a diet coke or something else just to get out of the house. It amazes me when i see a handwritten sign on the door "closed, system is down". I've gotten to know the cashiers so I asked and it's because the internet connection goes down all the time. That store has to one of the most poorly run things i've ever seen yet it stays in business somehow.
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  They're all run on a shoestring: 1: I doubt they're "with it" enough to put together a backup arrangement for internet. 2: Their internet problems are probably due to a cheapo router, loose wire, ect. 3: The employees probably like the break.
- hinkley 1y ago
  I think the point people are trying and failing to make is that asking for half of means sales is half of revenue not half of net and that you’re out of your goddamned mind if you think a store with razor thin margins would sell at a massive loss rather than just close due to connectivity problems. Your responses imply that you think people are questioning whether you would lose money on the deal while we are instead saying you’ll get laughed out of the store, or possibly asked never to come back.
  - 1y ago

BenjiWiebe 1y ago

Pretty sure it'd be a lot better deal for them to have no sales than to pay out 50% of sales on stuff with single digit margins.