Tom Anderson wrote:

I had that. Or rather, i tried selecting the 'debit card' option, which
failed, then tried again with 'credit card' (still using my debit card),
which worked. I suppose Visa Delta looks enough like Visa to the machine
that it was happy.

That's about right. Visa Delta can be processed as if it was a credit
card when abroad, which means it is very widely accepted. Before
Switch became Maestro, it was probably more useful for international
use.

In fact, we need to sort out a single worldwide payment system. All this
Maestro-but-not-Delta, Visa-but-not-AmEx, etc, is just retarded. We've
manged to settle on single global standards for almost everything else
that matters, so why not payment?

We mostly have, certainly in the UK - the technology exists to support
the lot. The reluctance to accept AmEx tends to be because that
organisation imposes much more punitive charges on the retailer than
the credit cards do, which only AmEx can sort out.

Double-deck trains! Wheee!

In a nice big loading gauge. Very basic (and sometimes somewhat
garish) interiors, though.

I really liked the display boards on some of the trams (line 1, i think) -
a stack of about four or five LED displays, showing the next stop, the
three stops after that, and the final destination. The layout of the
board, with big obvious arrows, makes it obvious what the relation between
each display is, so you're never worrying about whether you'll recognise
your stop.

Seen those. That kind of thing would be *very* useful for buses, where
the stops are even less clear.

Oh jesus christ, yes. They don't take cards. Okay. They also don't take
notes. THEY DON'T TAKE NOTES. PEOPLE PLEASE.

It is ridiculous. The technology exists to accept notes and coins, and
to give change in both notes and coins; Tesco's self-service checkouts
appear to do this day-in day-out with no problems at all. It's time
this was applied to ticket machines. Granted, there are security
issues that don't exist in a supervised supermarket checkout area, but
there are ways and means.

I don't have any first-hand knowledge, but some reading suggests that
holders of Maestro cards may be shafted good and proper - our Switch
system is being (has been?) rebranded as Maestro, but the system is still
different to what's called Maestro on the continent, so *you can't use a
European Maestro card with a British Maestro till*. The fact that people
stupid enough to make a decision like that are in positions where they're
able to make a decision like that tells you a lot about what's wrong with
British business.

That is really rather silly. Did you have any experience the other way
around - i.e. do UK Maestro cards work fine abroad? (I wouldn't know -
mine's a Visa Delta, but for various reasons, mainly due to fraud
susceptibility, I vastly prefer to pay by credit than debit cards).

Neil