Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Updated. Local grocery stores throughout the Northwest, including Super 1 Foods, used a payment processing firm that got hacked. The Missoulian has the best story. Now our debit and credit cards are at risk. Am I steamed? You bet. I’m protecting myself by paying cash, and through the following open letter to Super 1 Foods, I’m lodging my complaint about this preventable debacle.
Sirs:
This is a complaint, a bitter complaint, and a complaint from a customer of many years who has shopped at Super 1 Foods because of its quality food, clean stores, friendly employees, fair prices, and no customer loyalty card. Those are good things.
But as I’ve just learned, Super 1 Foods has no effective security. That’s a very bad thing, and the reason for my complaint. Your lax payment processing system may have compromised my debit card — and I won’t know until strange charges start draining my bank account.
Now that you’re aware of the problem, you’re advising customers to pay with cash or a check — which is half bad advice. Only a fool would trust you with the information printed and embedded on a check. If I shop at Super 1 again, and that’s a big, big “if,” I’ll pay only in cash.
You’ll receive from me neither forgiveness nor forgetfulness. This was a preventable error. You employed a payment processor that failed to employ state-of-the-art encryption and security. Neither of you did sufficient due diligence. And because you didn’t, those of us who swiped our cards at your stores may have had our cards swiped.
Now, perhaps you did everything right, but were outwitted by hackers with NSA level skills and computers. That’s possible, but less likely than pigs flying and smelling sweet. A betting man would put his money on an inside job or either not encrypting data or not using strong enough encryption, with most of his money on the latter.
There’s no good outcome to this situation. At best, your customers will lose sleep worrying whether their cards were compromised and their money stolen. They’ll probably need to obtain new cards with new numbers, a considerable inconvenience. And if their cards were compromised, if their money was stolen, if their identities were ripped-off, they’ll face months, perhaps years, of trying to recover their assets and good financial names.
But long as that might take, earning the right to be trusted again by your customers will take even longer. Speaking for myself, I doubt I’ll ever again trust you. In fact, I’m strongly considering never again setting foot in your store.
Appropriate regards,
James Conner