[toddsiegel]

I feel like this too, but only when other people are at the counter.

When I’m at the counter the whole thing never seems to take more than a few minutes. It’s always quick, and smooth, and I’m out of there, seemingly, in no time at all.

I desperately want to know what other people are saying or doing at the rental car counter.

[lowercased]

Same thing at drive up ATMs. it feels like people are applying for a mortgage or opening retirement accounts when I'm behind them waiting. And... I know it's an exaggeration, but often I will time the person or people in front of me. Someone taking up to 1 minute - I don't generally mind (unless theres 3 people ahead of me). However, I've often sat behind someone who takes 3-4 minutes, and I can not figure out what the hell they're doing.

That said, I think I've only used an ATM 3x in the past year, so this may mostly be a thing of the past now.

[CydeWeys]

I have been, in the past, that annoying person taking up lots of time at the ATM. Here's what I was doing: Depositing lots of checks (up to a dozen at once), with an ATM that in theory supported depositing a whole stack at once but in practice spat them back most of the time if you put in more than one. Oh, and you have to key in the value of each check, and navigate menu options after each individual check deposit.

I was very damn efficient considering how much I was doing, but it still took a decent amount of time.

[dustintrex]

As a non-American, the very idea of having to drive somewhere to physically deposit pieces of paper to transfer money around sounds absurd to the point of hilarity.

[frosted-flakes]

You don't have to do that. Most banks have mobile deposit, and cheques are generally only used for larger sums of money.

[kolinko]

Why would you use a piece of paper for any sum of money?

In Poland, I've seen a real-life check only once in my whole adult life (past ~20 years). Any amount, literally from $1 to $10M+ is being sent by a wire transfer, and wire transfers cost $0-$0.25 flat fee, arriving within the same working day, or instant.

This is how it has worked for the past 20 years, and the more recent innovation is having a similar system working all across Europe, and instant transfers within the same country.

Depending on a bank's security policy, the only difference between amounts is that some banks won't allow you to send wires above a certain amount from mobile, and with some banks you have to appear in person for wires above say $50k.

[terinjokes]

> Why would you use a piece of paper for any sum of money?

In the US, sending money to another person's account, especially as an individual, is a difficult process, often requiring giving long account and routing numbers that many of us were told not to give out. It also takes several days to process, and sometimes has fees of $25-30. Also some banks have limitations allowing you to do transfers only to accounts where the name matches.

While many major banks have an online transfer system (eg, Zelle), this is far from being universally supported (my bank is not a member) and many people don't have it setup. Also the transfer limits might be low.

Other options like Venmo or Cash require both sides of the transaction to have an account. They also don't work well outside of friend-to-friend interactions.

My understanding is the US is due to replace the current clearing house system with one up to modern standards, but we'll see how that goes.

[jimmont]

Our (the US) government, primarily the law making arm Congress, has been dysfunctional for so long it erodes various functions of society. For examples look at how the US doesn't have Federal bank accounts for individuals, or expanded services from the US Postal Service, proper simple taxation, straightforward immigration, digital identity management without the need for elaborate expensive physical identity documents--there are a range of issues that speak for themselves. Both of the prevailing parties have effectively the same problem, the Republican one has simply become so excessively backward and activist that it's more distracting, sort of a shiny object. Just consider gun rights and how there's no effective sense of responsibility associated with that right. Or that there's no Federal ballot mailing program for all locales and States (for example Puerto Rican's cannot vote for even the POTUS) despite there being high security and USPS services providing a solution with excellent scalability.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

One reason, not everyone can or wants to open a bank account. Illegal immigrants, for example. Or people receiving food stamps, disability benefits, they often work for cash, because they can't show money in their bank account. You can cash a check at any walmart.

[listenallyall]

> Why would you use a piece of paper for any sum of money?

Because people like the assurance of a check, or a receipt, or a payment confirmation.

How do you initiate a wire transfer? Seems like you would need to know a lot about the recipient -- their bank and account number, for starters -- to be successful. Sure you could do it on a mobile device but seems a lot more time consuming than writing a check. Privacy concern as well.

What happens if the transfer fails or doesn't go through, for whatever reason? If you hand the recipient a check, they have physical proof that you intended to pay them, and they know the payer's bank and account number. What recourse, proof, or evidence does the recipient have for a failed wire transfer?

How do B2B transactions work? Is it all wire transfer or do they pay each other with checks? In the USA, a huge percentage of consumer payments have migrated from checks to debit/credit cards (with near-instant confirmation), but companies still use tons of checks via standard postal mail all the time.

[vidarh]

Last time I used a check was about 15 years ago. And that was after moving to the UK in 2000 and having roughly the reaction above to even being given a checkbook. I'd never had a checking account before as that had stopped being a thing most people had back in the 1980s in Norway. When I got my first "adult" bank account in the 90s my bank didn't offer it even as an option to personal customers any more.

Just to give you an idea how quaint it seems to many of us to hear about checks.

[rags2riches]

Cheques are an anachronism. I think I remember seeing my mother write a cheque some thirty years ago. I have never written or received one myself. I doubt I know anyone under fifty who has. Unless they've lived in the US, of course.

[pjerem]

Cheques are still pretty common in France, especially to transfer money from person to person for occasional transactions.

I really rarely use them but they are honestly pretty useful as a fallback to pay someone you trust (family, friend). It takes seconds to write, your grandmother knows how it works, it doesn’t require smartphone/a computer/a complex banking application, It doesn’t require communicating your bazillion characters long banking information, everyone accepts it for little sums, it works offline, it doesn’t require holding large amount of value, it’s easy to cancel if needed.

Yes it’s the least practical payment method and yes anything is better. But it always works where the rest doesn’t.

[nbernard]

Depends a lot on the country. In France for instance, cheques are still very common, albeit less than before COVID.

[gsej]

In the UK some people still use them. My elderly parents still occasionally send them to us. We don't take them to a bank or ATM though - bank apps will accept a photo of one and make the transfer instantly.

[ryandrake]

I'm in the USA, and I will use a check only if it is the only realistic option, and those cases are surprisingly common. I've probably written about 100 paper checks in the last 5 years or so. Looking through my records, here are some examples of places I do business with that do not accept credit cards, or charge a fee to use a credit card:

Mortgage company

DMV

County tax collector

Roofing company

Pest control company

Child daycare

Air conditioning company

School PTA

Landscaping company

Kid's gymnastics lessons

Pet rescue organization

Dues for a hobby organization

[piva00]

Define large sums of money, I can go right now to my bank and transfer 100,000€ instantly, or I can do a SEPA Credit Transfer if I ever need to, up to 999,999,999€.

[frosted-flakes]

So can I, or so could an American. But a cheque can be written on the spot, and as long as the recipient trusts the writer it's as good as cash. That's the real reason cheques are still around. No one writes a cheque to pay for groceries or a $2 item at a convenience store anymore, the way my mother used to do 35 years ago. For established relationships its often the simplest method, and it doesn't require an Internet connection or technology beyond a pen.

A large-ish cheque is $500-$50 000. Larger amounts would generally go through wire transfers.

Personally, I have never written a cheque, and have only had to purchase a money order once for an rental apartment damage deposit. But I have received plenty of cheques, either from work I've done for small businesses, or as regular paycheques before I set up direct payments with my employer.

I used to think like some here, that cheques are obsolete and anyone who uses them is dumb. But I was wrong; they serve a purpose, and there is no harm in them sticking around.

[nyokodo]

> the very idea of having to drive somewhere to physically deposit pieces of paper to transfer money around sounds absurd

The reason the US banking system is so relatively slow and manual compared to foreign systems is that the US has never felt a need to create a cheap and efficient federal electronic check clearing system. The US is a capital generating superpower and a marginal improvement in banking would be a drop in the bucket. Most other countries either need quick and efficient banking to maintain their capital generating industries or quick and efficient banking is their industry.

[iamtedd]

I bought my current car second-hand from a dealer. The best interest rate I could get by far was the line-of-credit loan I already had for my house. I bought the car on my credit card and eventually paid for it with the loan. Automatically done by the bank, of course. Even handling cash feels slightly old-fashioned to me.

[kleiba]

I live in a country that still mostly prefers cash to electronic money transfers for many transactions. The individual reasons for that vary but mine is that I want to minimize the ability of third parties to profile me through my purchases (neither stores nor my bank).

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

Accidentally, this is the country that is familiar with what happens when government has too much control over its citizens.

[llampx]

Deutschland!

[emteycz]

There is the same thing in EU, widely used by people without internet banking. It just has a different name and is usually handled by the post offices.

[vanviegen]

You're talking about bank transfers by paper order, right? That's different, because you don't give the order paper to the recipient of the money (who should then cash/deposit it at their own bank), but to your own bank, which will wire the money to the receiving account.

Is that still widely used? I think manual transfer orders have largely been replaced by direct debit (companies taking the money you owe them straight from your bank account).

[emteycz]

Here in Central Europe we use "postal money orders". It works almost exactly like a check, the only difference is that the money is transferred to a state post organization first, then the paper slip is given to the recipient, and the recipient can either cash it out or have the money transferred to their bank account.

It's widely used by older people to receive pension and pay rent/utilities (these people often don't have access to internet banking, or don't know how to use it, or don't trust it), and by all other age groups to receive social security money (these people are often unable to have a bank account or would have their money taken from the account due to "executions" - payment orders forced on them by courts).

[kleiba]

> Is that still widely used? I think manual transfer orders have largely been replaced by direct debit (companies taking the money you owe them straight from your bank account).

It depends on how much you trust that company with taking the right amount of money out of your account. Both fraud and honest mistakes on their side are your risks, even though they might be very low risks in practice.

[golergka]

Same, but about using ATM at all. Don't you guys have contactless payment everywhere? It's 2021, what's the use for cash?

[codedokode]

Bank cards have many disadvantages:

- there are fees and commissions for using a card, and there are limits on how much cash you can withdraw daily/monthly

- bank also charges the merchant and it makes prices higher for everyone

- bank knows what and where you buy, collects this information and can resell it

- your name is written on the card and encoded inside, so when you pay the merchant can identify you

- cards have a magnetic tape that is unencrypted, can be easily copied. It seems like the only use for this tape is to allow criminals to copy the card.

- new cards include RFID label that allows reading data about you and charge your account

- if you are suspected to be an "extremist", then the bank will allow you to withdraw only about $150 per month. And you can become a suspect if you post something wrong on the Internet.

Cash is obviously better.

[justsomehnguy]

> there are fees and commissions for using a card

There aren't for you as a customer. Yes, a bank would require the acquiring fee for each transaction but it's already in the price of the item both for the cash and the card.

> it makes prices higher for everyone

While true deep down there, the price of item is usually still covers all the things including returns, inventory spoilage, breakage and shoplifting. Acquiring fees are ~1-2% so most of the time they don't even register over a markup.

> bank knows what and where you buy, collects this information and can resell it

Most people are just fine with using an affiliate cards... which are used for exactly the same.

> your name is written on the card and encoded inside, so when you pay the merchant can identify you

Your card number is a way more unique identifier than some John Doe.

> cards have a magnetic tape that is unencrypted, can be easily copied.

Everyone (except US) moved from tape to chip and paypass systems which are way more secure.

> new cards include RFID label that allows reading data about you and charge your account

Only the card number and it is limited for small amounts.

> if you are suspected to be an "extremist", then the bank will allow you to withdraw only about $150 per month

This is the only thing where cash is obviously better for an ordinary person.

[smabie]

I use cash for:

1) paying my maid / house help

2) buying drugs

3) tips at restaurants / hotels

Also often traveling to 3rd world countries / somewhat corrupt locales. In these cases I make sure to have cash for bribes when the police invariably decide to shake me down.

[golergka]

1 and 2 are easily covered by adequate bank services, 2 is covered by bitcoin.

[Zababa]

We have checks in France too, they're just not very popular.

[vladvasiliu]

Yeah, it depends, though.

A few months ago (in 2021!) I moved, so my old insurance had to reimburse some €40. While they never had any issue with getting paid directly from my bank account, for some reason they couldn't do the reverse and had to send a check.

[kolp]

Here in France, I find that they're still popular with the elderly customers ahead of me at the checkout.

[Scoundreller]

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/8zf31q/anyone_... … supermarket checkout queue

[EdwardDiego]

How common are cheques/checks still in the USA?

All our banks (NZ) stopped issuing cheque books and accepting cheques over 2020 - 2021. There were some rather elderly people who were inconvenienced, but the banks were pretty good at helping them adjust.

And it has been a very long time since anyone really accepted payment in cheque form - just due to the crime associated - back in the days when new chequebooks were mailed out to customers, criminals would routinely check mailboxes for letters that felt like a chequebook.

[tempestn]

Still reasonably common, as it's (amazingly) usually cheaper than sending an electronic transfer. At least, that's my experience doing business banking in the US. (I'm Canadian, so don't have a lot of experience with personal banking there.)

[fabbari]

About the being cheaper: checks are usually free. For Wells Fargo - a large U.S. bank - when you schedule payments online they will print a check and send it for free. If you want to transfer money via wire you are actually charged.

Coming from the EU I was shocked to find out that a lot of the B2B payments for small and mid size companies - are done sending checks in the mail.

Routing and account numbers are considered sensitive information, and normally hidden on online banking. My understanding is that these can be used to transfer money out of the bank account.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

Isn't it easier to just mail checks to the bank? USPS is among a few things that still work in this country.

[Cayde-6]

This sounds like going under the speed limit in the passing lane.

[clairity]

yah, it usually takes me 1-2 uses of any given atm to have the whole flow memorized for getting cash out, so that the next time i go, it's like speedrun time.

even at grocery self-checkout, the quirks of a given checkout machine get embedded in my brain so that i gravitate toward the quickest route through. produce lookup and weight vs. count are usually the biggest stumbling blocks. one nice trick is that the credit card terminal is independent from the checkout flow, so you can do those more-or-less in parallel towards the end.

[pelasaco]

and then the Person in front of you, pull a second card from his/her pocket and do the same procedure wit the second card...

[Ontonator]

The longer someone is at the counter, the more likely you are to see them. You’re biased towards seeing the relatively few people who take half an hour.

[zhte415]

I'm reminded of this train/bus is taking ages to come.

If one comes, say, every 15 minutes, that's an average waiting time of 7.5 minutes (and there's a +/- of around a minute for whether the 'time' is arrival, doors opening, closing, departure, depending on one's perspective of which 'time' is important to them).

If one's already there, or comes within 1-2 minutes, that's perceptively close to time = 0, which pushes out perceived average waiting time to 8-9 minutes with times approaching or exceeding average waiting time having a disproportionately negative perception (your total journey time/connection impact, expectation of unannounced cancellation, etc, increasing).

Nifty modern stuff like indicator boards work to re-align these perceptions.

Passage of time is also quite non-linear - back to the ATM queue. When using the ATM I'm engaged in a series of short-term tasks, just as writing a comment on HN when sitting on the subway causes stations to pass 'faster'.

And back to the ATM - I'm sure there's someone somewhere in a retail banking team that measures average interaction with ATM timings. Do they read HN or would like to comment?

[bobthepanda]

My favorite chestnut regarding this is the one that occurred at Houston Intercontinental: https://archive.ph/Z3gjx

> SOME years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling customer-relations issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of complaints about the long waits at baggage claim. In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers working that shift. The plan worked: the average wait fell to eight minutes, well within industry benchmarks. But the complaints persisted.

> Puzzled, the airport executives undertook a more careful, on-site analysis. They found that it took passengers a minute to walk from their arrival gates to baggage claim and seven more minutes to get their bags. Roughly 88 percent of their time, in other words, was spent standing around waiting for their bags.

> So the airport decided on a new approach: instead of reducing wait times, it moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and routed bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. Complaints dropped to near zero.

[nikanj]

Thanks to this, after your flight you no longer walk 3 minutes and then rest for 15.

You get to partake in a half-marathon, dragging along your jetlagged kids and your numerous bags, jackets, etc. It’s a excellent example of optimizing for metrics instead of optimizing for people.

Imagine your hotel moving the valet service from downstairs to a parking lot two miles away. You tell the reception desk you need your car, and sure enough, your car is ready by the time you’ve made the walk.

Imagine being so detached from reality that you think making your passengers take an extra 20-minute walk around the terminal is an elegant solution

[simplestats]

> It’s a excellent example of optimizing for metrics instead of optimizing for people.

It seems like the opposite. The change directly led to less complaints from people. It's more like optimizing for human comfort rather than giving people what's supposedly best for them via an objective metric. Though I'd say even more specifically (assuming the story is even true) it's optimizing for keeping the small percentage of squeaky wheels comfortable.

[kleiba]

> The change directly led to less complaints from people.

Less complaints about waiting time, that is.

[pintxo]

I would replace "comfort" with "perception" but otherwise I agree.

[bobthepanda]

I mean, I really doubt this story actually happened the way it did, if only because at most major airports gate capacity is so constrained that there is no such thing as a separate gate for arrivals that you can just move planes to. (Planes arrive and leave from the same gate; any more moving around and they'd be wasting precious taxiing capacity and man hours, so if an airplane is getting moved it's usually for maintenance or to standby somewhere else.)

[2143]

While I agree with the point you're making

> there is no such thing as a separate gate for arrivals

You might be surprised. In many of the newish airports I've been to (outside the US) the gates are designed such that arriving and departing passengers for the same aircraft never bump into each other.

They do this by clever design; immediately after exiting the aerobridge and onto the terminal building, there's a split (staircase or a sloping walkway) of some kind. So, the departing and arriving passengers are on different floors.

[helge9210]

> that there is no such thing as a separate gate for arrivals

The passengers from international flights must be routed through border control first.

[himinlomax]

The frustration with waiting at the carousel is not the time it takes but the fact that you have no idea how much time it takes. So you're just sitting there in alert mode looking for your things.

If they had given customers information about _when_ their luggage would be available for pickup, the complaints would probably also have dropped to zero.

[tragictrash]

Love this solution. Make it tougher overall but the perceived impact is less. Ooof.

[ddulaney]

And it has a negative impact for the people without checked bags, but they’ll never realize that something changed — their life just gets imperceptibly worse. Big oof.

[nikanj]

It also makes it worse for people with checked bags. In the past, you got to decide what you wanted to do with your time - taking a long hike around the terminal was always an option. Nowadays everyone is forced to partake in the jetlagged death march

[jacquesm]

Of course, what they should have done is improved the baggage handling time.

[todd8]

There is also the effect that buses arrive imprecisely and consequently may be best modeled as a Poisson distribution of arrival times. If this is the case and buses arrive on average every 15 minutes, then passengers arriving at random will wait not 7.5 minutes but 15 on average.

Intuitively, think of throwing a dart at the time line. We are more likely to hit the line in the bigger gaps between buses’s arrivals than between buses that arrive close to each other.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution

[simplestats]

With buses you will on average end up waiting longer than the average rate when there's heavy traffic because sometimes they get stacked up right behin each other, and two (or once I had three) buses arriving at once is the same as one big one operating at a fraction of the rate. I remember this being relatively common when I used to take the bus.

[ajmurmann]

But those are also the people who ruin it for everyone. Why not heavily optimize for the 90% good case via full automation and discourage time intensive behavior. I'm thinking either only taking online reservations or doing a 30% surcharge for walk-ins. The happy case should be that I book online, I get a parking spot location where the car is and a QR code I show on exit. Hertz Gold at SFO is like 80% there, yet the normal case remains having to walk to a desk. It seems in their interest to discourage going to the desk as much as possible.

[jackson1442]

Would be interesting if they offered a subscription service and/or loyalty tier that gives you "real" reservations. Call it "$BRAND Car Guarantee." That way, you know that the customers are committing to actually get their cars, and you can make a term of service that you don't miss N cars per T time (this would be displayed prominently - call it something friendly like "house rules").

Boom, everyone's happy. Your repeat customers are more likely to stay that way, and people will hear about this and _become_ repeat customers because that's what it incentivizes. You can keep prices cheap by overbooking your non-loyalty cars like you already do.

[llampx]

How would they upsell you on insurance and extras if you didn't have any interactions with a sales agent? Honest question.

[daoismyname]

That's not the interesting part though.

The interesting part is WHY for some people it takes so long that everybody else has to wait.

Imagine being on a high speed train and having to travel at the speed of the slowest train in front or if e-mail were sent using snail mail.

It obviously happens frequently enough that virtually everyone who ever rented a car - even only that one time - noticed it, so why they do not optimize for that?

I used to rent cars very often and I had to wait every single time I went there, it's not really a bias, it's a certainty.

Lately there have been some improvements on that front and a couple of the major rental companies made it almost painless if you are a regular customer, but it's still a lottery most of the times.

[e_proxus]

The key is preparation. It’s the same for me at hotel check-ins. I’m always prepared, I have all my info available in my mobile or on paper, I’ve already thought about the trip several times before and on the way.

Some people seem utterly unprepared. They either don’t have their info at all, or have to login to their web mail, or find some printed paper at the bottom of their enormous suitcase. And then they tend to have tons of questions. I check out the facilities beforehand online so I know what to expect and how to use them.

[cpcallen]

I recently rented a car for the first time, with a co-driver. The rental was paid in advance online (which seemed to be the norm here in the UK) and I thought it was going to be fairly straightforward and quick to collect the car.

Instead, after waiting about 15 minutes for the single person ahead of us in line to be processed, we were met with a series of demands for various sorts of verification and documentation that has not been mentioned in the online checkout process. This included having to use a .gov.uk website to get a code that would allow the company to validate our driving licences, and provide a proof of address (despite our addresses being printed on our government-issued, just-verified-authentic driver's licences.)

The whole process took nearly half an hour just at the desk. I am glad that there was no one waiting in line behind us most of that time.

I've now joined ZipCar and will hopefully never have to deal with a traditional car hire company again.

[avianlyric]

Car rental in the U.K. as a U.K. resident is more complicated than car rental as a non-U.K. resident. Not 100% sure why, but it seems that U.K. residents are required to basically do full IDV (which requires two proofs of address) and prove they have no points in their licence.

None of this applies to non-U.K. residents, which probably make up the majority of customers, so the rental website usually put all these details in the fine print.

Also while your looking at Zipcar (which is great) also take a peek at Virtuo. Only place I’ve ever enjoyed renting a car from.

[llampx]

Seriously, I have seen this phenomenon at government offices as well. Every other appointment seems to take ages, and mine takes a fraction of the time, no matter the outcome.

[mitigating]

They probably didn't rent online

[ajmurmann]

Maybe adding a surcharge for walk-ins or having a separate line for them seems like the way to go. Or maybe don't allow them at all and lay off the staff saved.

[spurgu]

In Europe the companies I've dealt with try to confuse you into buying various insurances, where you were under the impression that you had already paid for it when doing the online booking. Figuring out what the actual situation is takes time.

Tip: Do your research and read the fine print online before you leave for your trip.

[sjg007]

There's always someone trying to get a discount or unhappy with their car or something. This is why you join the rewards program, preregister and do the walk out program where everything is all preset and ready to go.

[bennysomething]

Standing at the counter is June at as bad, I'm still wondering wtf the guy is looking at on his screen