Were you greatly affected by the recent breakdown in NETS and credit card network?

Our local news scene was recently hit by an unexpected and unprecedented island wide breakdown of NETS and credit card network.  This undoubtedly caused great inconvenience to countless customers of that bank involved when people realised that they could not withdraw cash at the ATMs, log on to their online bank accounts, and use their credit cards etc., during those harrowing 7 hours of breakdown.

For me, I was one of those who were affected as I wanted to buy something at a supermarket on that morning.  Fortunately I had enough cash with me then.  That was when I first became aware that such a thing happened that day, before hearing the media report it on tv or radio. 

The upside is that the inconvenience period happened from 3am to around 10am on the same day, whereby many retailers were not opened for business yet.  The repercussions could had been far worse.  Anyway to cut a long story short, the network was restored by noon on that day.  The bank had apologised and would report the findings of their investigations soon.

The above incident led me to think - If I were at a departmental store or at a toy shop where I wanted to buy some toys but I could not use my NETS or credit cards to pay for them, that would have been such a terrible downer for me!  It would especially be so if I had wanted to get those toys for the longest time and that they were on sale or rather hard to come by for me.  I don’t know how else I would react, other than being very sorely disappointed.

How about you?  If you were put in that inconvenient position when you have some very coveted toys to buy, what would your reaction be?  Give up buying the toys, or ask the store to reserve for you till the network is restored or till you come back with the cash etc.,?  Do share your comments here!