Central Maitland business owners are understandably tearing their hair out over ongoing interruptions to mobile coverage that has rendered many EFTPOS machines either unreliable or unusable.
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In The Levee precinct over the past few weeks, signs have gone up in many store windows and next to cash registers advising prospective customers that they can’t pay with a card – they need cash to buy their lunch, cup of coffee, item of clothing or whatever else it is they have chosen to spend money on. The problem has become so dire that Patrick Lane, of Ken Lane Menswear, has had to resort to standing outside, in front of his store, and waving his wireless EFTPOS machine in the air to tempt enough mobile reception his way in order to process some payments.
“It’s embarrassing that we live in a first world society but we have a third world telecommunications network in Maitland,” he said.
Mr Lane said it could take as long as 10 minutes of trying before a transaction was successful – that’s an awful lot of awkward small talk required to stop a customer from giving up and leaving.
What an embarrassing state of affairs for Mr Lane (pictured) who is simply trying to make a living.
But, like other business owners in the CBD, he has been hampered by hurdles that are far from his fault.
It’s a similar story next door, at Sweet Retreat Cafe, where some customers have opted to leave rather than walk down the street to pull cash from an ATM – it can be all too difficult when they could simply go somewhere else. It’s even more astonishing when you consider that business operators are reporting that the problems have been going on weeks, in some cases.
Our economy is increasingly becoming a cashless one. With the tap of a piece of plastic, these days, you can buy anything from a soft drink to an expensive piece of electronic equipment.
The days of handling wads of cash are increasingly becoming a thing of the past.
So it’s understandable that many people simply carry a debit card, credit card or bank card and assume that, in a modern regional city like Maitland, everything will be fine.
The technology is reliable elsewhere. The onus of fixing this problem shouldn’t be on business owners, just as customers can’t be blamed for not carrying cash. The coverage simply has to get better.
