Yeah I’m pretty sure it’s the same as last year.

The ludicrous thing is the bars where you can only return 2 during each round - so if you’re buying for 4 people, you can’t just buy the beer and swap cups.

Ludicrous - surely it’s actually easier if the transactions are cashless?

I think I know what's happening regarding the people returning 2 glasses & ordering one pint. The Point of Sales terminals (yes, they're known as PoS for a reason!) will probably be programmed by provider with two buttons per drink. One is the price including the £1 for the glass, and the other is for the drink with the £1 taken off for a returned glass. So, if someone brings back 2 glasses & orders only one drink, it's harder to do in a single transaction. Instead, the software would expect two transactions: A sale of one drink at the reduced price and a separate refund of £1 for the other returned glass. It's rare that you process a refund and a sale in the same transaction, and the software probably isn't written to do this.

Yes, it's technically do-able for the bar staff to do the two separate transactions, but that takes up extra time, which is what they're trying to reduce. Plus there's the chance that the cash gets given back to the customer, but the staff forgets to process the second transaction of the refund, so the till doesn't tally up at the end of the shift.