Looking for the right shop to buy your favourite sausages? beer? computers? chocolate? This section contains a (partial) list of shops for common and not-so-common needs. Please send us more addresses and tips through dinners@tarma.com. Some general information on the current page:
On other pages, you'll find the following categories of shops:
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Opening hours in Bradford vary; most shops in the city centre open between 9am and 9:30, close around 5:30pm, and are closed all day on Sundays. However, many Indian and Pakistani shops are open until much later, and for example ASDA (a supermarket) is open on weekdays from 8am to 10pm (Saturdays until 8pm), and from 10am to 4pm on Sundays. There are also plenty of off-license shops that keep all sorts of (late) hours.
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In most cases, you will pay cash in shops. However, many shops also accept cheques or credit and debit cards. The latter are also very handy for online shopping.
Paying by cheque
This requires that you have an account with a British bank who gave you a
cheque book and that you have a cheque guarantee card. In many cases,
your debit card (not credit card) doubles as a cheque guarantee card.
You can recognise a cheque guarantee card by looking at the cheque limit at
the back of the card (usually £100, £250, or some such amount).
If you pay with a cheque, you either fill in the amount and name yourself,
or (as many larger shops do) have the cash register print it on. Then sign
the cheque and show the cheque guarantee card for verification.
Note: Foreign cheques are not accepted by shops. Eurocheques used to be an exception, but they now have all but disappeared from the scene.
Paying by debit or credit card
Debit and credit cards from well known companies such as VISA or MasterCard,
or from banks are very popular in the UK and accepted almost universally.
When you pay with a card, you must sign a receipt (you'll get a copy). Basically,
this authorises the merchant to debit your card for the indicated amount.
This differs from the approach in some other countries, where you use your
PIN code to authorise the transaction. In the UK, the PIN code is only used
at cashpoints (automated teller machines).
Note 1: Beware that some shops only accept debit cards (usually from VISA, Delta, Switch), not credit cards (such as MasterCard). The reason is that debit cards guarantee almost immediate payment to the merchant at a fairly low cost, while credit card transactions may be more expensive or slower.
Note 2: If you pay for online shopping with a debit or credit card, please make sure that you use a secure Internet connection when it comes to transferring your card details etc. You can recognise a secure connection by the fact that its address starts with https:// instead of http:// (note the extra "s"); most browsers will also indicate a secure link with an intact key symbol (instead of a broken one) or a closed padlock.
Other methods of payment
Digital cash, Chipcards, etc. are unknown phenomena in the UK.
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Copyright © 1999-2000 Anne-Wil Harzing
and Ron van der Wal. All rights reserved.
Legal notices and colophon. This page was last modified on 7-11-99 19:03 |
