Cash back? What cash back?

Millwall Rugby Club’s Clubhouse abounds with nicely handwritten posters and advices highlighting all of the good things that are coming up at your local venue.

Well, last night, another one appeared and it hangs above the door to the kitchen.

It says, “From 1^st July Millwall Rugby Club will no longer be providing cashbacks” or words to that effect.

It is unsigned.

I’m not going to explain why cash backs are a good idea although the following wikipedia page outlines the history of, and rationale behind, the idea.

WIKI ENTRY BEGINS “Debit card cashback (known as 'cash out' when using EFTPOS in Australia and New Zealand) is a service offered to retail customers whereby an amount is added to the total purchase price of a transaction paid by debit card and the customer receives that amount in cash along with the purchase. For example, a customer purchasing $18.99 worth of goods might ask for twenty dollars cashback. They would pay a total of $38.99 ($18.99 + $20.00) with their debit card and receive $20 in cash along with their goods. Many customers find this a useful way to obtain cash, instead of making a separate trip to a cash machine. The idea was originally that of British-based retail chain Tesco in order to reduce the amount of cash banking the stores needed to carry out, the customer service aspect being a side effect of this.^{[citation needed]}

The service is offered by both banks and merchants in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Poland, the Netherlands and Australia because of the fee structures in use in these countries:
1.        When accepting payment by debit card, merchants pay a fixed commission fee (as opposed to a percentage) to their bank or merchant service provider. (This is because the commission paid by the merchant for accepting debit cards, unlike credit cards, does not need to fund interest free credit or other incentives).
2.        Accepting payments in cash can be costly for merchants, given that many British banks charge around 0.5% for depositing cash into a business bank account, along with the costs of transporting and insuring the cash.
The combination of these two factors means that the retailer can save money by offering the cashback service. It does not cost the retailer more in commission to add cashback to a debit card purchase, but in the process of giving cashback, the retailer can "offload" cash which they would otherwise have to pay to deposit at the bank.
Merchants do not offer cashback on payments by credit card because they would pay a percentage commission on the additional cash amount to their bank or merchant service provider.
Some vendors enforce a minimum purchase amount or add a fixed fee when providing cashback to a customer.
In many cases, retailers require customers to initial the cashback entry on the till receipt to confirm they have received the cash. This system is used to prevent cashiers surreptitiously adding cashback amounts to a transaction and keeping the money for themselves (or accusations of same), but more importantly, to ensure that customers cannot return to the store with allegations that the attendant "forgot" to hand over the requested cash.
Cashback can have benefits for the customer in many scenarios. In locations where there are no cash machines nearby, or the nearby machines are out of order or empty, a local retailer may be able to supply the required cash instead and to offer more flexibility in note denominations. Sometimes it is simply more convenient to combine the transactions at the retailer and ATM into a single cashback transaction with the retailer.
Additionally, although fees for debit card ATM usage are very rare in countries such as the UK, where cashback originated, this is not the case in some other countries. In Canada and the United States, fees of $1~2 are typical when using an ATM from a different bank than the one with which the customer has an account. The fees in some other counties are even higher. In Germany, for instance, usual fees are €4~5. This gives rise to another potential cashback advantage for the consumer: by making use of the cashback procedure, this ATM fee can be avoided for the cardholder.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debit_card_cashback" END OF WIKI ENTRY

So there you are, from where I’m sitting, which I admit is precariously on the verge of sanity, providing one’s customers with a cashback facility appears to be a win win.

And that is before you begin to account for the warm, fuzzy feelings you get when you feel that your club is looking out for you. Even if the charges made by our card provider meant that it costs the club a few pence per transaction, would that be too high a price to pay for such a useful service to members. Heaven forbid one would want to instil loyalty.

Obviously, I’m not privy to the inner workings of Millwall Rugby Club and there may very well be extremely good reasons for withdrawing this facility. However, until Millwall Rugby Club uses it’s much vaunted communication processes (which one might recall was quite loudly trumpeted at the AGM, and I quote, “We give out much more information than before, in fact people complain at how much information we give them.”) to explain why what appears to be a straightforwardly, beneficial symbiotic relationship between a retailer and customer is not acceptable to Millwall Rugby Club, then we will have successfully turned a win win into a loss loss.

Thanks very much and I look forward to hearing the tortured logic which makes this decision rational.

The 'Bring a snack to Touch' campaign.

The ‘Bring a snack to Touch’ campaign.

I have a cunning plan.

If, like me, you’re fed up with falling for one of SV’s dummies or being fooled by his ridiculous swivelling hips then I entreat you to bring a small snack with you to Touch.

If, like me, you’re not that keen of him making a fool of you more often than he currently does, then the idea of a smaller, more mobile SV is the stuff of nightmares.

Now you may or may not know that SV is currently hungrier than usual for reasons which I am not at liberty to say. So if we all pull together and make one of our pitch corners a pile of chocolate and Ice Cream, I suspect that SV’s mind might not wholly be on the game. Just imagine, a world in which none of us fall for an SV dummy. If that’s not worth fighting for. I don't know what is.

Hello, good morning and welcome.

Hello everyone and welcome to this blog. It’s going to be a slightly sideways look at Millwall Rugby Club and with any luck, more humourous than not. That is, unless you’re taking yourself a little bit too seriously, in which case, hard luck.

The first thing to note is that it is an entirely unofficial and deeply personal viewpoint about all things Millwall. Under no circumstances should you think that the words here represent the opinions of the Committee. They do not.

Unless, and this isn’t entirely unthinkable, there are occasions when the two are in accord.

I, by the way, am Nigel Webb and there are 10 very important things you need to know about me;

1) I am not and never have been a Communist.

2) I have played more times for Millwall Rugby Club than anyone else.

3) I fervently hope that the Club lasts long enough for that record to be taken from me. (note – the player appearances have been forwarded onto our Head Communications Honcho AH to find someone to continue compiling the statistics). My advice is volunteer.

4) I know that they are not perfect, but they are close enough and should be kept. It is history. However, I am including last year’s stats so that you can all look at them and point out the errors. You’ll notice that the first half of the year is particularly patchy. Any verifiable information you can remember will be used. https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvnShiJAnJ1RdEk5WUo3ZWNjWVlVMFI3WlZZa25ENEE&hl=en_US#gid=0

It's a bit unwieldy in this format but let me know if you'd like to help and I'll send the file out to you

5) My favourite television programme is Major League Baseball.

6) I like looking at maps and girls.

7) I haven’t bought any new clothes since 1987.

8) Sometimes I wear odd socks.

9) I understand excel spreadsheets.

10) Oranges are the only fruit. Apart from Apples, Lemons, Bananas etc.

Anyway, let’s kick off with an open invite for contributions. I’d be delighted to hear about what anyone else thinks about Millwall Rugby Club and I am perfectly prepared to publish anything that anyone cares to contribute, except maybe bomb making recipes. You can never be too careful these days. You can choose to remain anonymous or not, that’s entirely up to you. Please send all contributions to, well, here. I’m pretty sure you can, other than that, an e-mail to flex@millwallrugby.com should reach me (unless this gets seditious). If you’re a little nervous, don’t panic. It really isn’t that important. Not many, if any, are reading this anyway. Pour encourager les autres, I’d like to offer a free Millwall mug to anyone who contributes something. If I’m not a complete luddite, there should be a picture somewhere. A contribution, by the way, has to be a little more substantial than an invite to do something. Asking this blog to alert people to a party will not be considered a contribution and it will also mean that no-one will turn up.

Millwall RFC is after all a Club of the people. It is both our club and your club (please refer to Fact No. 1) and it is a Club worth preserving and worth persevering wit.

As this is going to be about Millwall Rugby Club, it’s probably going to be a bit dull until the season starts so, until then, I’ll probably make some observations about our preparations for the upcoming season. For example, it’s nice to see that there’s a full programme of pre-season for both the Venus and the Youth sections. They have come out of the blocks and the omens are good, particularly for the youth. Venus, less so, but that’s purely a function of numbers, recruit one more per week and they’ll be looking good. Not that they aren’t already. Damn, I simply don’t know what I can or can’t say any more.

The adult men’s section is currently, I believe, er existing, although I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps you could help? Although a team did go missing last year, it’s surely within us not to be so careless again.

That’s it for now, Until the mood takes either you or I. A bientot.