[LCA2019 Chat] [Brian May] Bus from airport

[Brian May]

Andrew Donnellan <andrew at donnellan.id.au> writes:

> The vast majority of places that tourists will care about accept
> Visa/MasterCard these days, but you will still *occasionally* run into a
> store that has an EFTPOS terminal at the register but doesn't take credit
> cards, so be aware of that before you try to buy something and have no way
> to pay. Having a little bit of cash doesn't hurt.

Been there done that at the last LCA in NZ. My earlier research had
suggested that EFTPOS in AU and EFTOS in NZ are the same network when
nothing can be further from the truth - they are two seperate networks
that happen to have the same name (I really find it hard to find out
solid facts on these financial networks... Often banks will say there
cards will work overseas but not actually say what networks are
supported for example)

We warned the employee beforehand that it may not work. No problem. It
wasn't until after they dished up our icecreams that we found it didn't
work. Employee said they couldn't take AUD either, and referred case to
the manager.

The manager was about to give us the icecreams "on the house" when he
spoted we had AUD cash, which he said he could accept. 1:1 exchange
rate, so we missed out a little bit, but glad we were able to pay (and
also get the drinks we wanted).

In hind sight, we probably should have insisted on paying first or
placing a small test transaction just to check it really worked.
-- 
Brian May <brian at linuxpenguins.xyz>
https://linuxpenguins.xyz/brian/