In message , at 00:34:27 on Fri, 9 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.

The existing "good reason" is that the mobile data terminals haven't
been designed yet, let alone deployed. And the previous generation has
at least 10 years life left in them.

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.

Far from it, data service on what's a perfectly good voice service can
be excruciatingly slow. There's vast areas that still only have 2.5G
You'd actually need to use SMS for it to work at all.

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

Assuming he can find them. It's not uncommon for trains to be standing
room only.

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.

In the UK you'd only get fees (rather than the agreed interest rate) on
an unapproved overdraft.

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.

Yes, an overdraft facility in the UK is the same as your "line of
credit", and once set up would have to be specifically revoked with
notice to the accountholder.

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.

It's an interesting aspiration, but what happens if such a return is
*impossible*, given the development, manufacturing and operating costs
of the equipment. There's no *extra* revenue stream here - just reducing
Credit Card fraud a little, and the "acceptable ROI" solution here was
C&P, not "being online all the time".

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.

Read the OFCOM report I linked to a couple of days ago. And by the way,
we have four separate networks (used to be five, but two merged),
because apparently competition and a free market is best (!). Or if you
count GSM and 3G, it's actually seven networks (one is 3G only).
--
Roland Perry