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This is the first time I've ever heard anyone say this about Trader Joe's. Mediocre at decent prices has always been my experience. I have one 2 blocks from my apartment and shop there MAYBE once a month. Garbage produce and bland processed foods.

Not to mention all the recalls for tainted food. I wouldn't buy meat their, fresh or frozen.
 
I've heard EMV support is coming in August, but locally the Contactless is turned off still and no one knew what the plans are about Contactless, as they only knew about EMV. I hope it really is May 20th company wide, but Trader Joe's has always been slow on tech so I bet nothing will change.

I hate to sound like I work for Trader Joe's by making statements that sound like I am defending them, but I statements like "but Trader Joe's has always been slow on tech so I bet nothing will change." just bugged me a great deal in general. What does that mean exactly? How are they slow on tech compared to another big grocery store like Safeway, United, Ralph, Costco, or whatever chain near where you live? You get to the check out, you pay with plastic, like 99.999% of the people. What is it about TraderJoe that is low on tech? Is it because they have actually helpful human on virtually every aisle to answer your question and walk you to the location of the item you are looking for? Yes, if that is the kind of low tech you are talking about, I hope they never change.

As for checkout, there are 2 Trader Joe's within 7 miles of each other where I live, and they are always busy because people love them. Yet I can be among the 30 people waiting to pay, each with a shopping cart of grocery for a week, and move through the cashier faster than a typical grocery store with 2 checkout line each with 3 customers waiting.
 
I've already become accustomed to putting my phone away when it's time to pay out of the whole social stigma of not being rude.

BTW, any info on how well the security is on credit cards with embedded chips? My MasterCard has this, but many terminals still don't have a chip reader, so I have to swipe it anyways, which defeats the purpose of it (although I'm told they use it a lot all over the rest of the world)

So 2 questions I'd have with Apple Pay are:
1) not Apple nor the vendor gets your cc #? It sounds like Pay Pal where they do a thing (using tokens) to make the transaction work without sharing this info?

2) if you lose your iPhone or need a replacement, you're hosed? Or at the very least, need to fall back on credit cards until you get a replacement phone?

Actually most terminals do have a chip reader they're just deactivated. They won't be on until This summer through October but Walmart and Home Depot already have theirs on. Also on top of that, many mom and pop merchants have it on as well.

And yes you're right, in other countries the slot is already on.

1) Apple Pay uses EMV tokenization so nobody gets the number but your bank itself.

2) if you lose your iPhone, your regular cards still work. No need to cancel any cards.

3) you will find yourself using your chip in more places as time passes, especially after this October and you shop at a major store like Target/Walmart.

Target's chip readers are coming online this summer.
 
I hate to sound like I work for Trader Joe's by making statements that sound like I am defending them, but I statements like "but Trader Joe's has always been slow on tech so I bet nothing will change." just bugged me a great deal in general. What does that mean exactly? How are they slow on tech compared to another big grocery store like Safeway, United, Ralph, Costco, or whatever chain near where you live? You get to the check out, you pay with plastic, like 99.999% of the people. What is it about TraderJoe that is low on tech? Is it because they have actually helpful human on virtually every aisle to answer your question and walk you to the location of the item you are looking for? Yes, if that is the kind of low tech you are talking about, I hope they never change.
It has zero to do with the employees as they are always so nice, and they often open another register to get you through. I will also keep shopping at Trader Joe's, but I'm a bit annoyed that they would heistate rolling out contactless to all stores, especially when the equipment they just installed has the technogly built in, but they turn the contactless off immediately after installing the new equipment. If they would just come out and just say we will support it at all stores, that would be enough for me, instead they only did a limited rollout and are completely silent about the whole thing, pretty poor communcation for sure. Also today is May 20th, anymore of the Trader Joe's stores support contactless, or no change at all? I'm going to remain pessmistic about it so I won't be let down if they don't have it enabled yet.
 
It has zero to do with the employees as they are always so nice, and they often open another register to get you through. I will also keep shopping at Trader Joe's, but I'm a bit annoyed that they would heistate rolling out contactless to all stores, especially when the equipment they just installed has the technogly built in, but they turn the contactless off immediately after installing the new equipment. If they would just come out and just say we will support it at all stores, that would be enough for me, instead they only did a limited rollout and are completely silent about the whole thing, pretty poor communcation for sure. Also today is May 20th, anymore of the Trader Joe's stores support contactless, or no change at all? I'm going to remain pessmistic about it so I won't be let down if they don't have it enabled yet.

I see your point. I don't see them making a big deal about their support for Apple Pay because that is their culture: they are more about being down to earth and practical, so if Apple Pay help in that regards then they will implement it, but at the same time they don't want to make a big deal about it and alienate those customers who think paying with your phone is too fancy for their taste.

In the end, it's just another way of making a payment. Why make a big deal about it? They are a grocer, not a hipsters hangout.
 
It has zero to do with the employees as they are always so nice, and they often open another register to get you through. I will also keep shopping at Trader Joe's, but I'm a bit annoyed that they would heistate rolling out contactless to all stores, especially when the equipment they just installed has the technogly built in, but they turn the contactless off immediately after installing the new equipment. If they would just come out and just say we will support it at all stores, that would be enough for me, instead they only did a limited rollout and are completely silent about the whole thing, pretty poor communcation for sure. Also today is May 20th, anymore of the Trader Joe's stores support contactless, or no change at all? I'm going to remain pessmistic about it so I won't be let down if they don't have it enabled yet.

There's more to it than buying a new terminal. The merchant service provider must also acknowledge contactless messages (eg Apple Pay, contactless cards, etc)., and the POS system itself (not to be confused with the payment terminal) must properly pass these messages to the merchant service provider.

If their existing merchant service provider does not support it, they'll have to seek a new one also.

If they left contactless on, it will be like at the UPS store where the terminal acknowledged it, but then it declines instantly. So therefore it's switched off to prevent confusion until all of the necessary backend items are done.
 
Just got our new terminals at the Trader Joe's in Albuquerque. They won't accept Pay yet though :( Hopefully in the next few weeks they'll activate it.
 
The Trader Joe's by my house still has the old terminals as of yesterday. :(
Are they still using the old terminals at your Trader Joe's? Today I walked into my local Trader Joe's who has had the MX925 since like April 25th, still saw zero signs about Apple Pay or Google Wallet, so I walk up the the cashier, start asking her when they get Apple Pay, she was like what? Then I look at the screen and see all three of the logos so I tap, press credit, done, and she thinks that its neat and was more surprised than I was. :p Two weeks ago it wasn't even turned on there, so they are indeed rolling it out to all stores a lot more soon than the end of summer.
 
Are they still using the old terminals at your Trader Joe's? Today I walked into my local Trader Joe's who has had the MX925 since like April 25th, still saw zero signs about Apple Pay or Google Wallet, so I walk up the the cashier, start asking her when they get Apple Pay, she was like what? Then I look at the screen and see all three of the logos so I tap, press credit, done, and she thinks that its neat and was more surprised than I was. :p Two weeks ago it wasn't even turned on there, so they are indeed rolling it out to all stores a lot more soon than the end of summer.

No idea. Vons and Haggen are the closest to me and TJ is fairly out of my way so I don't go to TJ that often. I can report back next time I go though.
 
Trader Joe's near me has finally updated. Used the watch to pay for my transaction. I find they have a fair amount of items that are reasonably priced.
Safeway, since the acquisition, has been improving their quality and have started being more aggressive in their pricing. waiting for them to update their terminals as their Safeway Rewards card does offer some decent values.
 
Are they still using the old terminals at your Trader Joe's? Today I walked into my local Trader Joe's who has had the MX925 since like April 25th, still saw zero signs about Apple Pay or Google Wallet, so I walk up the the cashier, start asking her when they get Apple Pay, she was like what? Then I look at the screen and see all three of the logos so I tap, press credit, done, and she thinks that its neat and was more surprised than I was. :p Two weeks ago it wasn't even turned on there, so they are indeed rolling it out to all stores a lot more soon than the end of summer.

Update: mine finally has MX925s, but just "please swipe card" shows on the screen.
 
Update: mine finally has MX925s, but just "please swipe card" shows on the screen.
When they turn it on, and your ready to pay with your phone the only difference is that it will say swipe or tap otherwise the screen has nothing else on it, but I will try to get a picture of what it shows next time. http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2015/05/traderjoesapplepay.jpg That is there to show you your total and that they support Apple Pay and Google Wallet, but once they push the card button and get to the really plain screen where it says something simple like 'Please swipe or tap' you can of course tap if it says that and it will work. Only took them like a month to get it here, so they are moving pretty quickly to turn it on across all stores, but I'm wondering what happens when they turn on EMV which I've heard will happen in August at my local Trader Joe's.
 
The Santa Monica TJ's just activated it and now has the Apple Pay logo on the terminal and it works. When they first got the new terminals a few months back it would work but then the charge would get denied.
 
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