: date: 2012-08-06 10:03
Cashless¶
Back from the Festival in Træna it’s also time for some sceptical critics.
These are mostly directed towards the payment system that has been chosen for usage on the festival. You needed to purchase such a card from the system called cashless in order to be able to pay drinks and food on the festival. Outside of the festival common cash was the only other way to pay.
This is an article of the category personal rant, so don’t bother reading it if you don’t want to.
There’s a couple of points I didn’t and still don’t like about the system. In practical it’s supposed to work like this:
Get a card.
Charge it with money from your Bank-account.
Pay Drinks, food and accommodation at the festival area with it.
Re-charge if necessary.
Pay Drinks, food ….
Un-charge it and transfer the money back to you account.
This worked fine so far. But there are some details in between the lines making this system to a money-print-system for the vendor and the festival, but not for the user (who’s actually surprised?):
Card costs 75kr - a simple plastic card when you buy it in advance. If you buy it on a festival it’s just 50kr. We’re talking about a standard RFID card here, production costs almost as low as printing a bar-code.
Refund of your money is only possible if you register your card before December, 31st. of the running year. After login (for what you need a card) you’re informed that if you bought the card on the festival, the refund costs 20kr extra (makes it then up to 70kr compared to the online order).
If you want to load your money from the card back to you account, you need to do that as long as the card-charging-stations are in place. When we woke up the next morning on the day after the last festival-day: all were gone. No chance of re-transferring the money.
You have a minimum amount of money you need to fill in: At the festival: 50kr, if you order online: 200kr. That leaves you always with an amount of money that you hardly get down to zero, since all drinks, etc. mostly costs something like 78kr, 39kr, etc… That rest amount will be lost if you don’t start a refund which again costs 20kr if you bought the card on the festival.
If you loose your card, the money is gone. No difference to cash made here.
The reason why you should use the card (according to the vendor) is “Det går raskere å handle og det blir kortere køer med Cashless kortet. Resultatet er en bedre konsertopplevelse. (FAQ)”.
Translation: “It goes quicker to shop and the queues are becoming shorter with Cashless cards. A better concert experience will be the result.”
I was still standing in a queue on the festival and the time saving was IMHO down to a minimum for me. The salesmen on the other hand could sell a lot more, since it summed up on their side.
When you pay you basically have no control over how much they take from the card. Since the whole process is speeded up you basically handover your wallet and wait for the cashier to take what he needs and then return it to you. This might have gone well most of the time, but there was no real way for me to check that.
According to the website you automatically agree to their conditions when you agree to have a card. You don’t get that information when you’re on the festival and are facing the information that you can’t use cash on the festival area and you need to have a card like that in order to pay for your accommodation as well.
I’m now sending my card back, pay the 20kr they want to have for that service and will make sure not to use that system deliberately again. It’s a matter of principles now.
Update 2012-08-17:
The money has arrived on my bank-account. And they haven’t withdrawn the 20kr they mentioned for that service on their website. So the only costs is time and a stamp.
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