Hello

[Nurseandy]

During our recent 100 hour power outage the village shop was still operating but as others have highlighted on a cash only basis.

[GreyMan123]

During our recent 100 hour power outage the village shop was still operating but as others have highlighted on a cash only basis.

So, I really do need to have a bit of cash saved up…

[jansman]

There’s too much blind faith in technology these days. Cash is king. If I ain’t got a hundred quid in my wallet I feel naked. Pulled into the garage to fill up this morning and their card system was down. No problem with cash only for me. They had to have someone outside telling drivers there were no card payments. That reduced the queue!

[GillyBee]

It is all about balance and covering the biggest risks. I was caught out many years ago when my bank unexpectedly and incorrectly blocked my accounts, leaving me with no access to debit or credit cards. Since then I have always made sure I have backup accounts with a different supplier as well as a sensible amount of cash at home.
That major bank IT outage a couple of years ago did not affect me but I suspect it made many others wish they had a backup account elsewhere.

[Arzosah]

It is all about balance and covering the biggest risks. I was caught out many years ago when my bank unexpectedly and incorrectly blocked my accounts, leaving me with no access to debit or credit cards. Since then I have always made sure I have backup accounts with a different supplier as well as a sensible amount of cash at home.
That major bank IT outage a couple of years ago did not affect me but I suspect it made many others wish they had a backup account elsewhere.

I have some very recent experience in that department fraudulent activity on my mastercard credit card in mid October, £6,700 of it. Simplistic telephone message (" a special word" - no, it was a password, and I didn't realise) meant that I failed telephone security. I was left with a nightmare for nearly six weeks, re-establishing my security was a nightmare with no functioning printer (mea culpa) and not wanting to go into a post office to break my shielding. All that time, this debt was hanging over my head, and nearly spread to my bank, though I stopped that. Once I got back into conversation with them, they finally got their act together and acknowledged I *wasn't* the fraudster. Still had no confirmation, no apology and no hint of compensation (I'll be challenging all of that!).

If it had been my only way of buying online, during a pandemic and me being vulnerable to it, I'd have been stuffed, without extraordinary measures, such as getting a relative to buy things for me temporarily. But I had a visa credit card, and a visa debit card, plus paypal to kick it all down the road if necessary.