The cards can be stolen, but the money represented by those cards are protected by guarantees that if you report it as stolen or improper, you will not be liable for charges, etc. made against those accounts. The only loss then, is the inconvenience of getting those replaced. Thus, it is not the same as having cash taken from you.
I got charged for ~$90 from a car rental company in Europe several months after I vacationed in Europe and well after I returned to the US. I had no idea what the charges were, was not sent any notification about, etc. I simply called my card issuer, notified them that I didn’t recognize the charge, they temporarily refunded me the money and initiated an investigation. A few weeks later, they notified me that the refund was permanent. End of story. For all I know, someone skimmed my card in Europe and attempted to use it at the car rental company. But it took me all of 5 minutes to get my $90 back.
Souperman, You are definitely in the minority. I passed Señor S’s truck the other day, and the line of customers waiting was at least 1/2 block long. I thought to myself: Espero que ellos tengan suficiente comida.
Just because there is a long line at Senor Sisig does not mean Souperman is in the minority. Even you would have to admit that there are a lot more people NOT going to Senor Sisig than are going.
That’s exactly the kind of poor and potentially context-less comparison that should be avoided.
That there are more people not going somewhere could be said for pretty much any physical seller anywhere.
Are you comparing against a different food truck in particular? One that’s parked in the spot? On the same day? With the same pool of ppl in the area? Give us some numbers or a reference to understand your statement instead of just waving hands in the air.
For example, Senior Sisig is the 3rd most rated food truck in SF on Yelp (with a small gap between it and #1 & #2 but a much larger gap between it and #4 and lower). A search for “food truck” in SF on Yelp, note that since Yelp doesn’t have food truck as a filterable category, this search shows a bunch of non-food truck results
A Google search for most popular food trucks in SF also shows Senor Sisig in these lists. Foursquare lists Senor Sisig as the number 2 rated food truck at 9.3, but with 10X the number of ratings as the #1 truck, Primavera, rated at 9.5.
Wrt @Souperman’s comment on “who’s paying for the POS”, that is one of the key points of the cashless vs. cash discussion. Cashless proponents argue that the overall cost or TCO of cashless is lower in the form of reduced labor,reduced mistakes,reduced loss potential. From where I stand, i would say the labor aspect is the biggest - that merchants value their time more than the incremental savings in marginal profit, especially given the time they need to dedicate to social media and other hats they now have to wear.
I am not making any kind of comparison at all, nor judging the quality of Senor Sisig food truck or any other food truck. I was merely pointing out a fallacy in the logic employed by Fillmoe; that is, that since many people patronize the food truck, therefore the opinion of Souperman that cash ought to be accepted as a form of payment is a minority opinion. There is simply not enough evidence to support that opinion.
The point of your rebuttal is lost on me.
Cashless is a business decision for SS, and alienates a small enough % of their customers for it not to be a commercial problem for them. Fine.
However, whilst they’re not a welfare provider, have they thought through excluding those in reduced circumstances, without plastic? I might feel a little uncomfortable about that.
Your analysis is as devioous as Devin Nunes’. If you are talking about most rated (not most highly rated) that rating is almost a direct function of longevity, and almost meaningless. The trucks that have been around the longest have the most reviews.
There is in fact a food truck category filter, and if you sort by most highly rated (more important to me) SS comes in about 10th. Try this:
I generally discount Yelp reviews wrt quality, as I can’t easily determine the context of reviews or the reviewer’s frame of reference when rating something. As we’ve seen others post here about restaurants getting poor reviews when the food is not actually that poor, Yelp reviews are not something to live or die by. While I can’t trust and do not go by the reviews, what is not at question necessarily, is the fact that the data exists.
Disregarding my personal feelings about Yelp reviews, if we are to believe the Yelp data represents some truth about these merchants, and specifically, that the reviews accurately represent the quality of these locations, I would suggest that we have to believe that the number of data points represents how popular these merchants are.
While the volume of reviews is generally a function of longevity, we can do some maths and figure out average# of reviews/yr since first review, making a lazy assumption that it represents when the merchant first opened (doesn’t apply for merchants that existed before Yelp existed).
that The Chairman and Senor Sisig are the most popular within their span of existence by a decent margin - ~175 reviews/yr compared to next best merchant at ~115/yr
Roli Roti has been popular over a long period of time
A large cluster of merchants that opened near or after Chairman and Sisig are not nearly as popular as the latter.
Curry Up Now is popular but not as popular as Chairman & Senor Sisig
Some other general thoughts/disclaimers/notes:
Sisig has mulitple trucks afaik
Chairman has a brick and mortar location as do some of the others (Curry Up Now, Garden Creamery, Frozen Kuhsterd, afaik)
there are a lot of assumptions in this data set - I am not a statistician, data scientist, data something, etc.
I wanted to understand how popular Senor Sisig was in relation to other food trucks amongst the Yelp user base
I do not care for Senor Sisig generally (I like saving my carb budget for rarer food)
I don’t believe that I am trying to deceive anyone, and definitely not attempting to emulate Devin Nunes
I am still confused by @Souperman’s claim of arrogance, would love to understand where the line is drawn in your mind
HK’s cashless payment system, the Octopus card, is dominant and widely adopted and I have not heard claims of class discrimination
similar in Mainland China where beggars post their AliPay/WeChat Pay QR codes - it’s enabled them instead of disabling them
Again, you missed the point. It’s all about CHOICE. I’m all for having options (and cherish my charter Octopus Card from 1997) but do the “beggars” (your word) in China who accept AllPay have signs saying, in large letters, “NO CASH PAYMENTS ACCEPTED”?
Unapologetic denial of choice is arrogance. It’s Charles E. Wilson all over again on a petty scale. “What’s good for Senor Sisig is good for San Francisco” NOT.
It’s mostly anecdotal, based on a couple of viral videos. But it could happen here in California, too, where the poor can get free cell phones and cell phone service, including a data allowance. There’s no rationing ingenuity, as my uncle used to say. Amazement at such an eventuality would be “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
And yes @Souperman, nothing exceptional about the transition to cashless, but the question remains why the animosity towards those that want to get there faster.
WRT panhandler, beggar, what term do you want to use?
WRT choice, if you want to frame the person asking for money as the provider/merchant, they made a change in how they operate to follow their customers (samaritans) and how they wanted to pay, this is what Senor Sisig is doing. Do you think the samaritans gave the beggars/panhandlers the CHOICE of how to get paid?
@Souperman I’m trying to understand your bar for arrogance - if it’s an apologetic tone that you’re looking for, how apologetic? Do you want the operators to kowtow outside on the sidewalk next to the sandwich sign board while you order your food? Does that make the choice to not order from them harder for you if you saw them doing so?
As the consumer, you have already made the choice of not patronizing this merchant, that’s your choice, under your control - just like all the various other choices that you make daily due to situations out of your control. I noted it previously but does a business have to cater to every individual in existence? Does Senor Sisig have to offer a $2 option so they are not taking away the power of CHOICE from those who can’t afford a $4 option?
