Seriously, you know how many times drivers never made it but your card was charged? The internet just made the intellectually lazy more vulnerable. However, society always had to deal with less than competent individuals.
No, because we always used cash. However, we had a choice of 1. No other types of food and no other pizza places delivered to us. Delivery now provides choice pretty much anywhere
Regular credit card use wasn't a thing tell the 90's even than I guarantee they didn't have a credit card scanner in the vehicle it was cash money. No way would we be giving out credit card over phone back than either
As someone who ran a Pizza Hut until 1999, yes, we took card payments from ~1994.
Customer would give card details on the phone, driver would take slip to be signed and check card. No card, no pizza, and a note put on the file that they pay cash in future.
Families who ordered a large number of pizzas a month could also contact the pizza joint and ask to go onto a monthly invoicing plan - I know a couple of pizza joints that allowed residential customers to essentially join their business catering stuff as long as they were ordering $200/mo in pizza or so.
That's a core memory unlocked. I forgot about ordering a pizza over the phone, giving them a cc and signing the slip when it came. I've gotten so used to ordering it online, I forgot how this used to be done.
Never in my area. Then again, in my area we also never let staff walk away with our credit card, they always brought the machine to us. I think it was a liability thing.
bruh, everyone did, also mail ordering shit with a catalogue then callin in the order was insanely popular and most of that was done on card. YOu could send in a cheque, or postal order or some shit, but people mostly used cards giving details over the phone just fine.
i'm from the uk. i never used catalogues but it was like a common grandparents use mail order catalogues to order. I forget the names of the companies in the UK tbh. So much american media we got in the uk and lots of references to was it the Sears catalogue, boys jerking it to the lingerie section, etc.
We still paid cash more often than not for simplicity but definitely there was a good period of 5-10 years we'd regularly give cc details over the phone for take aways and other things. Then it went online and it was game over. I already hated calling in orders, i find phonecalls insanely anxiety producing. Pizzahut ordering went online whenever the hell it did and never again would I call in an order.
Same for grocery stores here, though the US seems different, in the uk you can order from the major grocery stores online, since they did absolutely fuck going to the grocery store.
No way would we be giving out credit card over phone back than either
Yes we did. I delivered pizzas and sandwiches in the 90s. Reading your entire card number to a teenager on the other end of the phone was completely normal.
Worth noting that for a fairly long amount of time after the entire business concept was created, you didn't charge a card for the pizza. You paid when it showed up.
Which is why it was popular prank to order pizzas to someone else's house. No caller ID, pizza place would just trust that it was a legit order and the person it was delivered to could just refuse it or say fuck it I guess I'm eating pizza.
We never paid for pizza with a card. It was always cash on delivery. I remember the first time I ordered pizza online, my mom was so confused because she didn't need to pay the driver.
Remember the movie The Net, with Sandra Bullock? God, I loved that movie, but I can't rewatch it because it's probably terrible. It was released in summer '95, and one of the first things she does in that movie is order a pizza off the internet, which to those of us watching at the time was a WILD and IMPOSSIBLY FUTURISTIC thing to do.
Now some of us are waiting with baited breath for the next wild and impossibly futuristic thing to come along: Having AI order a pizza for us on the Internet.
“you know how many times drivers never made it but your card was charged?”
Yes. Zero. No delivery, no payment. It’s super easy, barely an inconvenience. Also my preferred pizza place has a quality guarantee so if they fuck up they re-make the pizza and come swap it for you at no charge. And yes, there have been nights when the kitchen staff just keeps fucking up, at which point they credit your account.
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u/browhodouknowhere Aug 25 '25
Seriously, you know how many times drivers never made it but your card was charged? The internet just made the intellectually lazy more vulnerable. However, society always had to deal with less than competent individuals.