Fenway to be fully cashless, among other changes for 2022
- Thread starter soxhop411
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Looking forward to the first person having cash refused at a concession stand.
And for my favorite usher having a credit card machine when I tip him $5 for directing me to my seat and cleaning it off for me
And for my favorite usher having a credit card machine when I tip him $5 for directing me to my seat and cleaning it off for me
The former Aramark vendor - or "hawker" (???) - in me wonders how tips will be affected by going cashless.
I certainly wouldn't like it.
I certainly wouldn't like it.
Yes. But it's not illegal discrimination. Much like the golf course requiring collared shirts or whatever.
Right. Until someone makes it illegal, I think San Francisco made it illegal a few years back.
Still seems like a strange thing to do.
I assume that, like most things, the team thinks they will make more money doing it this way.
So instead of passing cash down to the end of an aisle, I'm supposed to pass my credit card down the aisle and have them all pass it back? This seems like a plan that would work for the box seats, but be much worse for the grandstand and bleachers.
My biggest peeve with cashless is that it is basically a stealth price increase now that menu boards won’t include 7% tax. (Assuming they follow TD Garden and Gillette’s lead)
That would work against the speed claims. The vendor could only handle one sale at a time.
Speeds up transactions
Reduces risk of theft
Increases amount of purchases because you're not seeing cash out of wallet. Although accepting credit cards years ago probably squoze most of the money out of that stone already
It's actually against the Massachusetts Constitution.
I assume Fenway probably got some sort of waiver on this? Any law experts here?
https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/partiii/titleiv/chapter255d/section10a
It was more of an anachronistic comment than anything else. The lower box ushers do quite nicely with tips
I know when they did this at the Trop they had places where you could buy gift cards with cash that would work at the concessions, wonder if that'll be set up at Fenway as well. Pretty good way to get a nice little surcharge for people who put $20 and only spend $18 and are stuck with $2 they can't spend anywhere.
Waiting behind someone in line while they’re counting out exact change drives me insane. Cashless will eliminate that
Oh, I know. It always makes me laugh when they make a big show of wiping off a completely dry seat after walking someone down two rows from the aisle. When it's a rainy day, they earn whatever gets thrown their way.
Honest question, is there a meaningful % of the public that doesn't carry at least a credit card imprinted debit card anymore? Do banks even offer standard ATM cards anymore? I know that the poorest among us can't generally even maintain a bank account. But in terms of lower income, working people, will this be an impediment to being able to attend and enjoy game at Fenway? If so, they need to re-think this, or at least offer a couple of dedicated concession stands where cash is excepted.
Edit: Looks like that concern has been addressed.
Edit: Looks like that concern has been addressed.
The Fenway cards are MasterCard debit cards, so even if you can’t zero it out at the ballpark, worst case scenario you can buy a $2.01 Amazon gift card to add to your account balance.
They should have announced this before trying to sell tickets.
The 65+ crowd, who make up a significant part of the clientele, isn't going to love this.
The 65+ crowd, who make up a significant part of the clientele, isn't going to love this.
How does this work for 50/50?
Can you also elaborate on reduced theft (not disputing, just want to know why)
Watch the 2010 documentary The Town that @cornwalls@6 mentioned above. Cash is really easy to steal, either by from a heist (not very common), or by just not inputting a transaction.
NYC did in the past few years, IIRC.
If it's like a Visa giftcard you can get at CVS it'll be more like $20 + $3 activation fee.
I know the Sox wanted the big press release with all their "improvements" and needed to wait until construction projects etc were finalized, but with this late a notice (particularly for those less tech-leaning folks who aren't online that often), this first week might be a shitshow at the concessions. I won't be there until next week so I'd be interested in observations from those going during this first series.
Edit: Not necessarily affecting the speed of concessions except for those that want to berate the workers who did not make the policy, but a lot of pissed off people muttering "this is bullshit" as they leave the stand.
Do kids go to games anymore without adults? I know when I was 12-17 I went to Fenway with friends lots of times without a grownup (of course tix were $1 for General Admission then) and had a little cash to buy a hotdog or similar
I have sent an email to a friend who still does the 50/50 (I haven't been in Fenway since early May of 2019). I know they were supposed to get CC machines last year, not sure if they did, but that technology exists. Will they refuse cash? I'll let you know when I hear
Reduced theft is easy. Cashiers can steal cash much easier than they can steal from a credit card. Or just calculate change wrong with cash, not an issue with CC
I will predict there won't be any activation fee.
At least not for the first year
My experience as well. I think from about age 13-14 on, I probably went to more games with buddies than I did with my father. Though I'm guessing most kids in 2022 are more than tech-savvy enough to manage the cash to card kiosks if they need to.
50-50 will still accept cash, but last year a 'large percentage' of their transactions were already cards
Both of my siblings. Hell, I only got one about 6-7 years ago.
My brother has a smartphone he could use to pay. My sister just got a new flip phone last week, but her husband who she almost always goes to Fenway with has plastic.
My experience dealing with teenagers spending money in my shop is they are almost all cashless. Either they have a card or apple/google/samsung pay on their phones. It's their parents (and grandparents) that tend to still tend to shop with cash.
That probably doesn't go for all kids, especially ones from lower income families in cities, but it feels like Fenway has probably priced out the neighborhood kids hanging out at the ballpark on their own.
Put this thread in the time capsule for "how old was the SOSH demo in 2022."
This is the future. It's happening. In fact, it's not even the future. This is like 2018. I've done two week trips to Europe without needing a single Euro. I can't remember my last cash transaction. I have a stack of ones and fives that I can use when I have to have a valet situation or a housekeeping tip, which annoys the shit out of me.
The most important issue is figuring out an easy and fee-free way to protect the unbanked and I fully support that. It looks as though they have though of that. But otherwise, this seems like kind of a big non-issue.
Although, I do think there's actually a cultural difference at play here and there are regions in the country where cash is still important, and I think New England is one. I'm always surprised when I go back and visit how cash is still a thing. It had been a long time between Fenway visits and I had become a left coaster in the meantime, and I remember buying a beer and getting the end of the line and seeing this huge cash drawer and watching how proficient the guy manning it was at figuring out whatever the exact change was for a $10 or a $20. I remember saying "uh, credit cards ok" and the guy looking at me like I had two heads.
This is the future. It's happening. In fact, it's not even the future. This is like 2018. I've done two week trips to Europe without needing a single Euro. I can't remember my last cash transaction. I have a stack of ones and fives that I can use when I have to have a valet situation or a housekeeping tip, which annoys the shit out of me.
The most important issue is figuring out an easy and fee-free way to protect the unbanked and I fully support that. It looks as though they have though of that. But otherwise, this seems like kind of a big non-issue.
Although, I do think there's actually a cultural difference at play here and there are regions in the country where cash is still important, and I think New England is one. I'm always surprised when I go back and visit how cash is still a thing. It had been a long time between Fenway visits and I had become a left coaster in the meantime, and I remember buying a beer and getting the end of the line and seeing this huge cash drawer and watching how proficient the guy manning it was at figuring out whatever the exact change was for a $10 or a $20. I remember saying "uh, credit cards ok" and the guy looking at me like I had two heads.
Every teen I know has a debit card attached to their parents' bank account. Just another way parents nowadays can track everything their kid is doing/spending money on.
It's every bit as reflective as the regions SoSH represents and the color of skin most posters have. There are literally hundreds of law suits about this issue making their way through the courts, and there are also many municipalities that have outlawed the practice. It is unconstitutional to put practices into place that have disparate impact among protected groups of citizens. This practice almost certainly does. But as others have pointed out the Sox may have found their way around this by setting up those kiosks to exchange cash for cards.
Yeah, protecting the unbanked is a huge issue, as I tried to say, but not one that I think is particularly acute inside sports venues that sell tickets that are both expensive and hard or impossible to buy with cash anyway.
Lawsuits to provide access to cash usage seems to me to be just another case in which we have to talk about band aids for a more fundamental societal problem instead of addressing the issue itself. But I think it's the best we can do if not prepared to address poverty head on, though I understand I'm veering into V&N here.
There are at least two stores I go to a lot that only take cash, one is Raffetto's on Houston St in Manhattan (the best raviolis in Manhattan) and another is my corner deli in Jersey City.
Or Italy. A lot of places in the town I lived in wouldn’t take credit cards. All cash and that was as of 2019.You clearly haven't been spending time in Berlin
The pandemic did move some intransigent businesses to start accepting cards, but there are still a lot of places where you can't use cards here. I'm sure part of it is taxes (nobody batted an eye when I took out like 8000 euros and when they asked why, I told them it was to pay for a closet or something), but it's also unbanked people. It doesn't help that the word for debt in German is the same as "guilt".
A friend of mine told me that you could sell a 500 euro note for 600 euros in some parts of Paris.
Scandinavia. Never had to pull out a Euro, kroner or shilling or whatever.You clearly haven't been spending time in Berlin
Actually, the one downside to not carrying cash in Europe is that it's pretty much the only way I know the form of government. Like I'll pull out a Kroner and think "they have a king"?
I guess the mob still hasn't figured out how to launder credit card receipts. :0) They will probably move straight from cash to bitcoin soon.
I think you are asking about someone like me and my family. We cannot afford cable packages with NESN, let alone a trip to Fenway and 3 tickets.
That said, I cannot see the cashless option being much of an obstacle though.
Say we were gifted tickets to a game:
Considering I haven’t been to a game since 2003 (Papi extra inning walk off after a Todd Walker homer to tie it!), and my wife and daughter have never been to Fenway, exchanging cash for a prepaid is totally worth waiting in line. I’d even miss the first half an inning just to be at the park!
But generally, we eat before we go places and would probably settle for shared concession snacks, if anything at all. This goes for any event we attend.
Last year in Portland, my daughter was fine with just an ice cream sandwich.
We like to eat, but we look at those prices as a rip off; so it’s a meal before, then a full belly for the game.
As someone who cannot get a credit card, I wouldn’t be bothered one bit with the prepaid card thing. Being priced out of many events leads to a mindset of “just happy to be here.”
What is the contingency plan for any system outage? I have no clue how prevalent those are, but I could envision a 30 minute outage being a shitshow.