During the recent heat wave, thankfully now over, we have all suffered from power cuts and low voltage due to everyone wanting air-con on full blast, and a fan plugged into any socket not being used for other purposes.

However, Fethiye Times picked up this interesting little story from a Turkish news agency the other day – the power problems are also causing chaos at the check-outs.  Apparently, when the electricity is cut or voltage drops, everyone starts phoning TEDAS to complain.  This then overloads the phone lines and those little gadgets that read the credit cards at the check-out can’t get a line and the cards can’t be read.  Now Fethiye Times feels quite strongly that credit cards are over-used for small purchases.  We run an unofficial competition for the smallest purchase by credit card and it currently stands at 1.10YTL (40 pence) – for 2 loaves of bread!  I digress.  When the card can’t be read the customer then has to pay cash and, if s/he hasn’t got any, a major humiliation then takes place – and while all this is going on the check-out queue is getting longer and longer.  Good job the stores’ air-con runs off a generator or all this would be happening at high temperature and tempers would be even more frayed.

Have any of our readers witnessed this kind of thing?  If so, we’d love to hear from you.