On 05-Mar-12 01:50, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:49:52 on Sun, 4 Mar 2012,
Stephen Sprunk remarked:
There's always a small risk, and sometimes the ticket vendor will make a
[mobile] phone call if a particular cardholder raises suspicions.

If mobile service is available, why not just authorize every card and
avoid the risk of being sued for discrimination--which will cost far,
far more (even if you win) than losing the occasional fare?

Because authorising transactions with a voice call is time consuming,
and may not even be possible as a routine thing.

There is no good reason to do the authorization as a voice call when
there are mobile data terminals that can do it in seconds.

Of course, if there is no mobile data service, there probably isn't
mobile voice service either, so there is no difference in that respect.

Worst case, the terminal could batch up a series of authorization
attempts for when it next passes into a coverage area; if one of the
responses is a failure, it could notify the conductor, who would then go
back to the customer and demand another form of payment (or throw them
off the train at the next stop). That would be very difficult to do by
voice call in areas with spotty coverage.

and people with credit cards and bank accounts that allow overdrafts
usually do pay these off, the only class where there's a serious worry
is the no-overdraft debit card holders.

Some of our debit cards allow overdraft, while others don't; that is an
option by the account holder.

In the UK an overdraft is a property of the account, not the card.

Sorry, that's what I meant. Banks are now required to give customers
the option of not having overdraft coverage, which is the same whether
the debit is by check, card or other means. Ditto for credit accounts,
for that matter.

In the US, can you have a bank account that allows an overdraft if you
write a check, but a card that won't allow that same account to go
overdrawn (I could see some uses for such an arrangement).

I'm not aware of any bank offering such a setup, though I suspect it'd
be legal to do so.

Note that overdraft (at least in the US) is _not_ guaranteed; the bank
can refuse to honor any debit against insufficient funds at their
whim--but they generally will, since it allows them to charge the
customer massive fees on top of the debit itself.

I seem to recall hearing about accounts in other countries having a
guaranteed overdraft capability; that would be a "line of credit" in the
US, which is separate from a checking account. Note that you _can_ set
up a checking account to automatically transfer money from another
account at that bank (eg. a savings account or line of credit) to avoid
overdrafts.

There is no way to know by looking at the card number whether it does.

That's what we *could* do in the UK, by recognising a card as "Solo" or
"Electron". Now that they are branded as "VISA debit", it's probably not
possible to tell, although the cards are still incapable (in theory) of
pushing the bank account into overdraft. What we haven't established in
this conversation yet is how the banks achieve that Indian Rope Trick if
people buy something from (eg) a vending machine that isn't online.

Our vending machines didn't take cards until mobile data connections
became cheap enough that online verification was feasible. Offline
transactions have never been popular in the US due to how it changes the
fraud liability; if it's not worth the expense to do online
authorization, they simply don't accept cards at all.

Given the cheap and ubiquitous mobile data networks, there is no excuse
for not being able to do online authorization.

They aren't cheap and ubiquitous enough. In particular, the equipment
would need replacing (not just simple upgrading).

It gets replaced every few years anyway, and the cost of adding mobile
data to them should be trivial.

It doesn't seem to work like that. The current machines are relatively
new, dating from 2006.

They should have had mobile data back then; the technology was around
long before that. Poor buying decision.

The previous generation of machine lasted almost
20 years in service (1986-2006).

Technology products are typically amortized over 3-5 years. 20 years?
You're way, way behind the curve in both costs and capabilities, to the
point it's almost certainly costing your business more (in both lost
revenue and higher operating costs) than buying replacements would cost.

OTOH, lots of folks didn't understand this until the 1980s or even
1990s; they had amortized tech on a 10 or 20 year cycle like they would
for heavy machinery--and then got burned when they needed to upgrade and
couldn't because they were still paying for equipment that was only fit
to be used as paperweights.

Speaking as an employee of a tech products vendor, customers are now
demanding full ROI in 12-18 months, which gives them immediate cost
savings even on a 36-month depreciation schedule. "Disruptive" new
technologies can have an ROI of 6-9 months. Nobody sane wants to have
to wait 5+ years to adopt new technology--unless they're a monopoly and
therefore don't have to worry about competitors adopting it first.

I don't believe data
networks are ubiquitous in the USA either, if the very spotty mobile
phone coverage more than a few miles from major cities and highways is
anything to go by.

The main problem in the US is multiple incompatible networks, and it
should be better overseas where everyone uses GSM. Still, US mobile
coverage is pretty good; even a decade ago 96% of the US population was
covered, and nearly all Interstate highways are. Rural areas and lesser
highways are being covered rapidly, as would rail lines if a non-trivial
amount of passenger traffic existed.

That's not our experience in the UK, where people are famous for making
calls "on the train". Coverage is often very bad, despite percentage
rates appearing high because areas of high population are flooded, and
places where people don't live (highways and railways lines) get
neglected especially if the geography is against them (tunnels,
cuttings, valleys etc).

That's odd. Highway coverage in the US is pretty good. I typically
spend road trips talking to friends and family, and nowadays it's not
unusual to go 2-4 hours without dropping a call. A decade ago, I would
hit a dead spot every 20-30 minutes, but even then in most cases I just
had to call back after going over the next hill or two.

I've even got 3G coverage most of the time today, though I can see my
phone drop to 2G occasionally--probably in the same unpopulated areas
that used to be complete dead spots.

I don't understand why the UK hasn't seen the same progression,
especially given you only need to build out one network instead of the
redundant, mutually incompatible networks we had to build.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking