Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Banks are greedy...


Another damp day. Apparently there was a bit of minor flooding in places and a few holiday makers had their plans affected. Got down to the station for our regular train this morning and…no train.  According to the announcements there was a broken down train at Surrey Quays. So we hopped on to the Southern and went to London Bridge instead. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, it tis so easy to get about even if your original journey is no longer go.
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Now this is from the ‘So idiotic, I wonder what muppet thought of it’ file. Read in the free paper on the way home an item saying that the 27 ATM machines at one of the Olympic venues will be replaced by just eight. Giving visa the monopoly.  So Visa will be laughing all the way to the bank with their profits up due to all the charges. 

With a small beer costing £4.20 it will come as little surprise that visitors to the Olympics are being warned they could run out of cash. But the reasons aren't just the prices at the bar for Olympics sponsor Visa has been accused of limiting visitors' access to cash at the Games by replacing 27 dispensers with just eight of its own outlets. Visa confirmed it was replacing 27 ATMs at the various Olympic sites with eight which would run on its own system as part of its exclusivity arrangement as a sponsor. Ron Delnevo of the UK Payments Council said the move appeared to be designed to "compel those visiting Olympic venues to use only Visa cards".It understood Visa requested that the existing ATMs, which would have accepted all Link cards, were switched off and replaced with eight new machines which would only accept Visa cards. It said ATMs would be switched off at the Excel Centre, Earl's Court, North Greenwich Arena, Wembley Arena, Wembley Stadium, Wimbledon, Old Trafford, St James' Park and the City of Coventry Stadium. It raised concerns that visitors could run out of cash and have to resort to using Visa credit and debit cards, as no other cards would be acceptable.
Visa said visitors could bring cash with them, and pointed out that 115 million Visa cards were in circulation in the UK, meaning there was a "high probability" that most of those attending would have access to one of its cards.

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