sne of those days today at work, the credit card machine went wrong, Monday morning technology, we managed to fix it by lunchtime, so apologies to the bookshop customers who had to go off and find a cash machine.
Most of the problem here relates to a mixture of customer security and keeping the prices down, back in the day paper credit card vouchers impressed using the raised digits on the plastic card, mixed with trust and the logistics, meant these things were much less of an issue.
When the first credit cards were introduced I think I was working part time for a bookseller called S.P.C.K. or this may be anecdotal from working for them at a later date. Anyway S.P.C.K. were the main booksellers to The Church of England - supplying candles, communion wine, hymn books and even vestments.
This meant that most churches bought things from them on credit and I don't think some of them had ever actually paid their bill since 1698 when S.P.C.K. was founded. Part of the deal setting up Barclay Card was the all these churches accounts were transferred to Barclay Card accounts.
The vicars who then had to pay off these old accounts or face the punitive rates of interest were some of the most demanding customers for the shop assistant.
Sorry I digress, eventually we got it sorted (both our card reader today and the angry vicars of the 1960s) think learnt a lot of things we didn't really want to know.
Work wise we have been working on the part of the bookshops website that shows pictures of the books on the shelves this is the link to it this is partly so I know what we haven't got when I am out buying, as far as I know we are the only bookshop in the world that does this and also puts up photos of the books we put out on the shelves this is the link to that
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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.