But the computer says...



  • @bstorer said:

    I'm not exactly sure what the hell you're talking about, but your basic premise is wrong.  The credit card companies really do care that their merchants follow their agreement, and they will exert pressure on the merchants when they receive complaints.
     

     

    It's along the same lines of those "2% surcharge for credit card orders". It's against the ToS-- a merchant isn't allowed to charge the end user for the processing fee.

    A lot of people complained, and a lot of merchants got smacked by the CC companies.

     Of course, all what the merchnats did was increase all their prices 2%, and offer a 2% "cash discount".  It's an ass diaper by any other name, but all the CC companies cared about was that no one was selling things labelled 'ass diaper'.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @bstorer said:

    @halcyon1234 said:
    How do you make a store sell you something?
    Ultimately, you can't make them sell you something, but you can notify the credit card company, because the store is probably violating their merchant agreement.
    You could use cash.  They may not accept other forms of payment because they're not sure they'll get their money for it, but cash is as good as ... well, cash.

    At that time I was traveling with my family and was already preserving my cash reserves. ATM Card and credit card atm cash advance did not work because of [href="http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/09/16/10245267.html"]this[/href] - my bank actually cut all international ATM transactions on their cards (and still do for all I know). So I had to go with a traditional credit card purchase. My bank actually called me back to validate the transaction within ten minutes while I was still on the store's parking lot (at least my mobile's international roaming worked).

     



  • @cklam said:

     And that is where you failed. It's a government, s*****d. If you want to hand write on forms, use the paper-only process. If you want to do things "e-", then do them purely "e-". Otherwise you just confuse them and your case - they are government case workers and not e.g. rocket scientists.
     

     

    {sigh} Fine, I'll feed the trolls:

    1) It's not an e-form. It's an offline PDF. And even their "online" form is just a PDF generator. In both cases you have to print them, add ink information, and physically mail it in.

    2)  From the passport site: "The following electronic forms in <acronym title="Portable Document Format">PDF</acronym> format can be completed interactively and printed for submission, or [b]printed and completed by hand[/b]."

    3) The "missing" information was not missing, and it was located directly BEFORE the phone number information for my guarantor, which they were able to find.

    4) If I'm a shithead, then you sir, are a motherlicker. So there.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Cash can be counterfeit and stores are free to refuse it if they want.  With a credit card, the merchant is pretty much guaranteed payment which is why the card companies don't insist on positive ID. 
    So if a charge gets challenged and the challenge succeeds, who takes the hit?  I thought it was the store for accepting the card without properly identifying the purchaser.

    The credit card company takes the hit if the store followed procedure: making sure the receipt and card are signed and that the card is not expired. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

     

    The credit card company takes the hit if the store followed procedure: making sure the receipt and card are signed and that the card is not expired. 

    My favorite part of the procedure is that if the card is unsigned (or has "Ask for ID" written in), the store is supposed to make you sign the card in front of them.


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    The credit card company takes the hit if the store followed procedure: making sure the receipt and card are signed and that the card is not expired. 
    I see.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    making sure ... the card is not expired
    Wait, what?  You mean only if the card is authorized "analog" right? (with the roller machine and carbon paper contraption).

    I cannot imagine that the authorizing entity wouldn't reject a expired card, relieving the clerk of that responsibility.



  • @halcyon1234 said:

    @cklam said:

     And that is where you failed. It's a government, s*****d. If you want to hand write on forms, use the paper-only process. If you want to do things "e-", then do them purely "e-". Otherwise you just confuse them and your case - they are government case workers and not e.g. rocket scientists.
     

     

    {sigh} Fine, I'll feed the trolls:

    1) It's not an e-form. It's an offline PDF. And even their "online" form is just a PDF generator. In both cases you have to print them, add ink information, and physically mail it in.

    2)  From the passport site: "The following electronic forms in PDF format can be completed interactively and printed for submission, or printed and completed by hand."

    3) The "missing" information was not missing, and it was located directly BEFORE the phone number information for my guarantor, which they were able to find.

    4) If I'm a shithead, then you sir, are a motherlicker. So there.

     

    I apologize for my mistake: I meant to say "stupid", not "shithead". Stupid because you apply common sense when dealing with a government bureaucracy. Government bureaucracies work by rules and regulations. Rules and regulations are the direct opposite of common sense and that is a fact. For empirical evidence: there so many posts here in the forum and upstairs in the WTFs I don't even now where to start quoting.



  • @PeteyF said:

     @Aaron said:

    @PeteyF said:

    The barcode is not a checksum, per se, it contains the actual data. There's no need to OCR the (typed) fields if the data is in the bar code. It likely loads the data straight from the barcode into the database, and then minions have to verify the handwritten bits that are vital, like passport numbers.

     

    I sincerely doubt that they've found a way to compress the contents of an entire form into a single bar code.  It's a checksum.

    Edit: Actually, maybe I'm wrong, some of those 2D bar codes can apparently accomodate a few thousand characters per square inch or something.  Weird.  But then that's the problem, isn't it - how in the world is a layperson supposed to know that that's where the actual information is, and that nobody's even going to look at the information they type/write in except to double-check what's in the weird symbol in the corner?

    By reading the FAQ/barcode links above the form downloads-
    (Which exposes yet more clunkiness...)

    What information can be found in the barcode?  Barcodes on passport application forms will contain the following fields of information:

    • Surname
    • First Name(s)
    • Surname at Birth
    • Date of Birth
    • Place of Birth (City, Country)
    • Permanent Address
    • Mailing Address

    Passport Canada officers, as per the current process, will manually enter all other required data. (<==emph added!)

    Yes, it contains data, but very little actual data. And there's probably a checksum for what is in there.

    The Real WTF (ignoring the scan your passport step!) here is the damn PDF. Let's take the worst of the worlds of user interface and paper forms and combine them together to miss the point even further.... A layout for a paper form has no relevance to optimal screen user input, and this form doesn't take advantage of eliminating duplicate data entry; 'Surname at birth' is likely the same as 'Surname' for 50+% of the people, have it default to the Surname entry but be editable to a newer name if necessary. Likewise with 'Perm Addr' and 'Mailing Addr' - likely the same or to have shared elements to be worthy of defaulting one from the other.

    Instead of a series of fields grouped logically/optimally on a webpage screen, this thing forces you to meet the space requirements of the paper page.

    And then you end up receiving any number of hybrid results from the user, from all hand-written to anywhere from one typed field and the rest hand-written to all typed and only printed for signatures.

    Which have to be 'MANUALLY ENTERED' by government workers or contractors. !!!!

    Canadians, Your tax 'Loonies' at work.  (Perdon l'double-entendre/Forgive the double-entendre...)

    How about a web app that shits out a completed PDF at the end of the process? Well, then Adobe wouldn't get $10,000US for Live Cycle designer, that's why...

     

    My nokia e71 has a nifty little barcode scanner on it and here is the exact data from the barcode, if you were wondering (i filled in bogus info all starting with MY):

    $FORM$153(08-04)M02$V$1.3$SN$MYLAST$GN$MYFIRST$DOB$1901-07-18$PB$MYBIRTH$PBC$USA$SX$M$PAN$29$PAS$MYSTREET$PAC$MYCITY$PAP$PA$PAPC$90210$CS$3940$C$55



  • @Welbog said:

    @Aaron said:

    Travelers with Canadian passports that raise any of these red flags will be detained and forced to eat a full bag of ketchup-flavoured potato chips while watching Rick Mercer to prove that they are in fact Canadian.
    Ketchup-flavoured chips are a crime against humanity. Can I devour a stack of pancakes and maple syrup instead? Or perhaps salt-and-vinegar fries?

     

    Salt-and-vinegar fries!?  You must be one of those damn English.  Go home to your queen and your cups o' tea, chav!

    You may substitute ketchup chips for dill pickle chips, flipper pie, or a stack of a dozen Canadian Maple donuts each followed by a can of Clamato.  For the last option, you must also be able to name the last 25 Stanley Cup winners in chronological order.



  • @cklam said:

    I apologize for my mistake: I meant to say "stupid", not "shithead". Stupid because you apply common sense when dealing with a government bureaucracy. Government bureaucracies work by rules and regulations. Rules and regulations are the direct opposite of common sense and that is a fact. For empirical evidence: there so many posts here in the forum and upstairs in the WTFs I don't even now where to start quoting.
     

     

    Fair enough. That makes sense. (Or doesn't, or-- makes sense because it doesn't... or-- ow, my brain!)



  • @halcyon1234 said:

    @cklam said:

    I apologize for my mistake: I meant to say "stupid", not "shithead". Stupid because you apply common sense when dealing with a government bureaucracy. Government bureaucracies work by rules and regulations. Rules and regulations are the direct opposite of common sense and that is a fact. For empirical evidence: there so many posts here in the forum and upstairs in the WTFs I don't even now where to start quoting.
     

     

    Fair enough. That makes sense. (Or doesn't, or-- makes sense because it doesn't... or-- ow, my brain!)

     

    Welcome to the beautiful world of the civil service where making sense does not exist and the brains hurt all the time.

     BTW, I wish that you would retract the "motherfucker". I'd agree to "jerk" instead since my post was concededly a bit trollish.



  • @PeteyF said:

    [large snip]

    How about a web app that shits out a completed PDF at the end of the process? Well, then Adobe wouldn't get $10,000US for Live Cycle designer, that's why...

    Er, actually they have (something like) this too.  There is an online application process, which does spit out a printed form, ready for you to take to your guarantor to fill in their details and sign, and then take it all to the passport office.  I'm not sure if you can use this to mail in your application, but I would assume so.

    It's relatively painless, as far as government web-ware goes (which ain't saying much).  The big bonus is that when you get to the passport office to apply, you get bumped to the front of the line ahead of the poor slobs who don't use the on-line process, presumably because most of the details on your printed form are already in their computers and all the clerk has to do is retrieve the info rather than do manual entry, plus the common steps of confirming your pieces of ID...



  • @Aaron said:

    You may substitute ketchup chips for dill pickle chips, flipper pie, or a stack of a dozen Canadian Maple donuts each followed by a can of Clamato.  For the last option, you must also be able to name the last 25 Stanley Cup winners in chronological order.

    I can pinpoint the exact moment when a young Morbs lost faith in the Canadian people as discovering a drink called a "Bloody Caesar" which is basically a Bloody Mary (already a horrible drink) but with Clamato instead of regular tomato juice.  At first, I simply could not believe there was a product called "Clamato" which consisted of tomato juice flavored with clam juice and even once it was proven to me I refused to accept that there were actual humans in the world who would ruin perfectly-good vodka with the flavor of clam.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Aaron said:

    You may substitute ketchup chips for dill pickle chips, flipper pie, or a stack of a dozen Canadian Maple donuts each followed by a can of Clamato.  For the last option, you must also be able to name the last 25 Stanley Cup winners in chronological order.

    I can pinpoint the exact moment when a young Morbs lost faith in the Canadian people as discovering a drink called a "Bloody Caesar" which is basically a Bloody Mary (already a horrible drink) but with Clamato instead of regular tomato juice.  At first, I simply could not believe there was a product called "Clamato" which consisted of tomato juice flavored with clam juice and even once it was proven to me I refused to accept that there were actual humans in the world who would ruin perfectly-good vodka with the flavor of clam.

     

    I lost my belief in Canucks when I read through the complete "spectateswamp" thread. Spectateswamp and now Clamato. To top it all off: the "Bloody Caesar" is considered the national drink of Canada.



  • @cklam said:

    BTW, I wish that you would retract the "motherfucker". I'd agree to "jerk" instead since my post was concededly a bit trollish.
     

     In all fairness, it was "motherlicker"... but agreed.



  • @operagost said:

    @halcyon1234 said:

    Complain as much as you want about Canada being a tyranny-- but really, when it comes down to it, the only reason I need the passport is because someone else's president is an insane, paranoid nutjob won't let me into their country without one by air-- or by land in 2009. Not naming any names, or anything, of course.

     

    What other countries can you get into without a passport?

     

     

    What other countries does Canada share a border with?  There is absolutely no reason for passports at the Canadian/US border.   Last time I checked, the two countries were friendly.   US or Canadian driver's license is more than adequate.  If someone wants to sneak in to the US from Canada without being detected, why would he use a border crossing?  There is about 3,000 miles or more of wilderness to choose from, where there is maybe 1 border agent per 50 miles.



  •  I flew to the UK (Glasgow) from Germany (Düsseldorf-Weeze... SIC!) in 2005, and I only had a German temorary ID, because I had lost my other. No problem at all.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I can pinpoint the exact moment when a young Morbs lost faith in the Canadian people as discovering a drink called a "Bloody Caesar" which is basically a Bloody Mary (already a horrible drink) but with Clamato instead of regular tomato juice.  At first, I simply could not believe there was a product called "Clamato" which consisted of tomato juice flavored with clam juice and even once it was proven to me I refused to accept that there were actual humans in the world who would ruin perfectly-good vodka with the flavor of clam.

     

    I think most of us just call it a Caesar - we like to downplay the resemblance to a Bloody Mary.  And as a rule, it's not perfectly-good vodka being used, it's the cheapest off-brand you can find.  The kind where you count yourself lucky if you still have your vision after taking a swig.

    I enjoy a good vodka martini or black russian as much as the next guy, but you really can't use the cheap stuff for those.  And if you're mixing it with juice then you're just a lush.

    Anyway, don't hate us just because we like the taste of clam.  Keeps the ladies happy.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    but cash is as good as ... well, cash.
    I take it you've never tried paying for coffee with a $100 Platinum American Eagle the size of a half-dollar, have you?



  • @Salami said:

    What other countries does Canada share a border with?  There is absolutely no reason for passports at the Canadian/US border.   Last time I checked, the two countries were friendly.   US or Canadian driver's license is more than adequate.

    Why do people keep thinking this is so?  You don't need to be a citizen to get a driver's license (in most/all jurisdictions that I'm aware of), you just need to be a resident.  You need proof of citizenship to cross borders.  That's always been the case across Canada/US borders, just fairly loosely enforced.  Driver's license was never enough, in theory.  You'd need a birth certificate too, or some other proof of citizenship.  Soon that proof will need to be passports, and nothing else.

    Now, if they would change the darned licenses to have a "Citizen" field on it (Yes/No/FileNotFound), then it might be useful.  (Assuming licenses are improved to passport standards.)



  • @cklam said:

    But they need physically see your card. It is my understanding that CVV2 and similar things are more aimed at "securing" online purchases and traditional phone-in mail order (if the merchant is trustworthy - which is an issue that can open a completely other can of worms entirely).

    Yep. That's the problem, actually: if you go, say, to a restaurant and pay the bill with your CC, the waiter takes the card to the cash register. Given enough time, he can merrily jot down the CC number, expiration date and CVV2; then go on an online shopping spree with the pilfered data.

    Some idiot merchants sometimes require the CC's photocopy as part of their practices, whats to stop them from xeroxing the backside? Or just taking a second copy and writing down CVV2.

    The closest thing to something actually "secure" would be those MasterCard Securecode / Verified by Visa schemes, and even those are vulnerable. Sheesh...



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    if you go, say, to a restaurant and pay the bill with your CC, the waiter takes the card to the cash register. Given enough time, he can merrily jot down the CC number, expiration date and CVV2; then go on an online shopping spree with the pilfered data.
    And if they're sufficiently stupid, they'll have all the merchandise delivered to their residence and under their name.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @danixdefcon5 said:
    if you go, say, to a restaurant and pay the bill with your CC, the waiter takes the card to the cash register. Given enough time, he can merrily jot down the CC number, expiration date and CVV2; then go on an online shopping spree with the pilfered data.
    And if they're sufficiently stupid, they'll have all the merchandise delivered to their residence and under their name.
     

    And if they're sufficiently smart, they'll wait about eight months from jotting down the numbers until they use it, so there's no chance that someone would say "hrm, I just used my credit card at Fuzz You Restuarant."

    And they'll have it delivered to their neighbours address, intercept the mail, then let Mr. & Mrs. Smith take the fall.

    The real solution is that you shouldn't be able to make a payment with the same data that you take a payment with.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    @bstorer said:

    @halcyon1234 said:
    How do you make a store sell you something?
    Ultimately, you can't make them sell you something, but you can notify the credit card company, because the store is probably violating their merchant agreement.
    You could use cash.  They may not accept other forms of payment because they're not sure they'll get their money for it, but cash is as good as ... well, cash.

    Cash can be counterfeit and stores are free to refuse it if they want.  With a credit card, the merchant is pretty much guaranteed payment which is why the card companies don't insist on positive ID. 

    Not here. Cash is legal tender, and stores are required by law to accept anything that's legal tender in this country. It's the same in the US.

    So stores here (even if they have signs stating otherwise, such signs are possibly illegal) are required by law to accept any Euro coins or bills, and in the US the same would apply for any US dollar coins or bills.

    They only get away with refusing some small coins and large bills because to most people it's not worth the trouble to take a store to court over such policies.



  • @jwenting said:

    Not here. Cash is legal tender, and stores are required by law to accept anything that's legal tender in this country. It's the same in the US.

    So stores here (even if they have signs stating otherwise, such signs are possibly illegal) are required by law to accept any Euro coins or bills, and in the US the same would apply for any US dollar coins or bills.

    They only get away with refusing some small coins and large bills because to most people it's not worth the trouble to take a store to court over such policies.

    Not true, in the US private businesses, persons and organizations can accept anything they like. This can be easily verifed at (for example) the US treasury website. Legal tender just means that you have to accept it to pay off debts. It doesn't necessarily apply if no debt exists prior to the time when you pay, although in some states/jurisdictions this is the case. You are just required to post a sign, which is completely legal.

    I don't know about the entire EU, but in Finland for example, it's OK to refuse large bills and small coins [or whatever], if you put up signs stating such. There's some information at the Bank of Finland website about it.

    It's funny really, almost everything you wrote is completely wrong.



  • When I was a clerk in a past life, I was told to accept the fake bill and "take a description."  I don't know if this is common among clerks across the country, but this was at an amusement park owned by a very large company.

    I never did figure out how they were going to single out one guy out of the (often) 40 thousand plus that were in the park based on a simple description.  They were probably more concerned with public relations and employees stealing money than fake $100 bills.  I should have stabbed him in the arm and told the security guards "The guy with a stab wound in his arm".

    For the record, I never did get a fake bill (that I could tell) but one of my coworkers did.  It didn't even feel like a bill, and the color was off.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    When I was a clerk in a past life, I was told to accept the fake bill and "take a description."  I don't know if this is common among clerks across the country, but this was at an amusement park owned by a very large company.

    I never did figure out how they were going to single out one guy out of the (often) 40 thousand plus that were in the park based on a simple description.  They were probably more concerned with public relations and employees stealing money than fake $100 bills.  I should have stabbed him in the arm and told the security guards "The guy with a stab wound in his arm".

    For the record, I never did get a fake bill (that I could tell) but one of my coworkers did.  It didn't even feel like a bill, and the color was off.

     

    Good opportunity to distribute some counterfeit stuff though ..... :)


Log in to reply