Checkout systems at 7-Eleven convenience stores across Taiwan were restored yesterday morning after crashing late on Friday, President Chain Store Corp said.
The company runs the largest convenience store chain in the nation.
Operations of more than 6,000 7-Eleven stores have returned to normal after the company took measures to fix the technical problem, it said.
Photo courtesy of Chunghwa Post via CNA
The checkout systems went down at about 10:40pm on Friday, forcing staff to use calculators to manually calculate orders at the cash register.
Customers were only able to pay with cash, as barcodes on the goods could not be scanned into the sales systems.
Customers were also only given written receipts for their purchases, although they can return to the stores and exchange the manual receipt for a uniform invoice to be eligible for the Ministry of Finance’s cash prize draw.
A 7-Eleven clerk in Taichung on Friday told the Central News Agency that it felt like she had gone back to the era of “grandpa and grandma’s old grocery store.”
“As we all depend heavily on the checkout system and cannot remember the price tag of every item, we had to go to the shelves back and forth to check the prices before adding the prices of the purchases using a calculator,” she said.
Some customers did not have enough cash with them and had to leave stores empty-handed.
The convenience store chain also could not offer other services it normally provides, such as payment of electricity and water bills, as well as deliveries from online shopping.
The first two F-16V Bock 70 jets purchased from the US are expected to arrive in Taiwan around Double Ten National Day, which is on Oct. 10, a military source said yesterday. Of the 66 F-16V Block 70 jets purchased from the US, the first completed production in March, the source said, adding that since then three jets have been produced per month. Although there were reports of engine defects, the issue has been resolved, they said. After the jets arrive in Taiwan, they must first pass testing by the air force before they would officially become Taiwan’s property, they said. The air force
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
STRIKE: Some travel agencies in Taiwan said that they were aware of the situation in South Korea, and that group tours to the country were proceeding as planned A planned strike by airport personnel in South Korea has not affected group tours to the country from Taiwan, travel agencies said yesterday. They added that they were closely monitoring the situation. Personnel at 15 airports, including Seoul’s Incheon and Gimpo airports, are to go on strike. They announced at a news conference on Tuesday that the strike would begin on Friday next week and continue until the Mid-Autumn Festival next month. Some travel agencies in Taiwan, including Cola Tour, Lion Travel, SET Tour and ezTravel, said that they were aware of the situation in South Korea, and that group