Technology is meant to make life easier for us all but for many independent retailers recent developments are only serving to make it worse. As we report this week (p4), long gone are the days when the humble ATM was just a place to get your cash. Camelot is investigating the possibility of using cashpoints to dispense Lotto tickets, while mobile phone operator Vodafone is the first to test the use of Link ATMs to top up phone airtime. Both these are lynchpins of many independent retailers' businesses. Lottery sales are believed to add at least 10% to the turnover of a c-store, while retailers gain 5-6% on electronic top-up sales for mobile phones and 3.5% on paper vouchers. Any rival, even one of the metal kind, will not only impact these sales but more importantly affect footfall and therefore extra impulse sales. The result could be losses of thousands of pounds for independents. At the same time the new chip and pin technology, whereby customers key in a personal identification number at the till instead of signing a receipt, is causing concern for independents. As the British Retail Consortium warns, upgrading to the new technology is expensive and this will be a prohibitive factor for many smaller independents. The concern is that fraud will migrate to retailers without the equipment. Add to this the fact that retailers, rather than banks, will be liable for card fraud from 2005, and it makes grim reading for independents, for whom crime is a very real fact of life. A survey by The Grocer shows nearly 70% of independents' businesses have suffered from customer theft and nearly three-quarters of independents say crime has got worse over the past 12 months. And a third say they or their staff have been a victim of violent crime. It all adds up to a raw deal for independents particularly when they have played an important role in building up Camelot and the mobile phone operators' businesses. Now is not the time for them to desert the sector, because if they do, others will certainly follow. {{COMMENT & LETTERS }}