Monday 11 June 2007

They don't, though. They DON'T jar.

I don't understand the Maestro credit card ad campaign. I mean those black and white posters with slogans like: 'There's a reason machines spit out coins', 'R.I.50p' and 'Coins Jar'. What are they trying to get us to do? Stop using coins? Coins are really useful! How do Maestro think they're going to brainwash us into not believing coins are useful? Is their advertising agency's dream that one day, I'll fancy a Kit-Kat, and thanks to their clever indoctrination think to myself: 'Oh no, here comes that dreadful and laborious business of getting a fifty pee out of my pocket, and giving it to the man! I can hardly bear the sheer tedium and difficulty of it... Ah, but wait! I've just remembered - Maestro, so I am reliably informed by those helpful posters, is the new cash! No more terrible coin-handing-over ordeal for me - all I have to do is produce my Maestro card, watch the assistant sigh, put it in the chip and pin machine, wait for it to be recognised, no luck, take it out and rub the magnetic strip with the corner of my shirt, put it back in, ah, that's better, enter my pin, wait for that to be recognised, enter it again because I absent-mindedly put in my credit card pin not my debit card pin, wait for it to be recognised.... oh dear, slow connection today... Ah, there we go, take out my card, wait for the reciept, and the Kit-Kat is mine! R.I.50p indeed! Sorry, mate, what was that? Big Issue? Yeah, ok! Where's your chip and pin machine?'

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

think the point is you won't need a PIN with Maestro; plus coins are a real pain. they're also very expensive for merchants to handle.

i'm all for electronic cash. sooner the better. coins are a pain.

Anonymous said...

Haha,
You are so right. I think that people who are really that bothered by coins are too rich.
Besides, the thought of a shop without a cash machine is weird... It's like a house without windows.

Anonymous said...

Cash will never go away. Why? Example:

"Hello Mr. Friendly Local Drug Dealer. I'd like 2 grams of your finest Nicaraguan cocaine please."

"Certainly sir. Please enter your debit and/or credit card here."

The only way a Maestro will be useful in this scenario is so that the Patrick Bateman type can impress the idiot girl he's trying to finger by racking up the lines with his expensive-looking card.

Except it's a Maestro card, so he'll look like a cheap-ass tool.

Anonymous said...

50p forever, plastic never!

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Kat said...

Sounds like the Wage Works cards we have across the pond in America - and they haven't caught on either. I'd rather have my cash in hand thank you, than trust it to some banking institution that might shrivel up and blow away as many have done.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to think they invented contactless card payments as a direct result of this blog post. As if they said "I hear you Finnemore! Leave it with me..."