[HN Gopher] Samsung won't sell you a phone if you live in East F...
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Samsung won't sell you a phone if you live in East Fairview, North
Dakota
Author : DanAtC
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-03-09 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hardfault.life)
(TXT) w3m dump (hardfault.life)
| infotainment wrote:
| Another annoying fact about billing address verification is that
| it's mostly unique to the US, and so if you try to use your US
| card on an international website that doesn't specifically
| support US cards, the transaction will fail due to lacking a
| billing address.
| cstross wrote:
| What this is saying is that the US zip code system is broken (by
| design), especially compared to other countries' postcode system.
| Which is also used for credit card billing location but is
| generally much more fine-grained and corresponds to a small
| geographical area, usually within a town or city, with a second
| section specifying a delivery area. ("Usually": here in the UK
| the first part of a postcode is almost always a two letter code
| for a town or city, then a number for the large area within it,
| _except_ that London is so big and densely populated that it has
| multiple virtual town codes allocated to different areas.)
| infotainment wrote:
| The article seemed pretty clear that the author feels that zip
| codes _as a credit card verification method_ are broken, not
| the zip codes themselves.
| codingdave wrote:
| No, it is just saying that a system designed for delivery of
| mail has annoying edge cases when used for billing
| verification.
| op00to wrote:
| Zip+4 removes all the ambiguity in this situation.
| anakaine wrote:
| The zip code issue is not unique, and nor are the post codes
| broken. Postal codes are for mail routing. They get your mail
| to the correct mail centre for sorting and distribution. There
| is no need for the postal codes or mail centres to align to
| rational boundaries like states, counties, localities, suburbs,
| or any other reasonably controlled, surveyed, and relatively
| consistent dataset.
|
| The real perversion here is a software developer deciding to
| use postal codes, which were designed for something entirely
| different, and which are maintained by a postal carrier, to
| locate and veryify addresses physical location. They've not
| recognised that within a post code could exist multiple towns,
| or towns in multiple states, etc.
| torstenvl wrote:
| The U.S. zip code system is not remotely broken. I'd ask you to
| refrain from flamewar, as that's boring and not what the site
| is for.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _What this is saying is that the US zip code system is broken_
|
| The "Z" in ZIP is "Zone." If ZIP Codes were supposed to line up
| with cities, they'd be called CIP Codes.
|
| _compared to other countries ' postcode system_
|
| And by that you mean "compared with the single small area of
| the country in which I live, which somehow makes me an expert
| of every method of routing mail in every one of the 200+
| nations on the planet."
|
| _here in the UK the first part of a postcode is almost always
| a two letter code for a town or city_
|
| The first part of some of your UK Post Codes don't indicate a
| town or a city. They indicate a nation, like JE _n_ for Jersey.
|
| _then a number for the large area within it_
|
| Which is not always true. PCRN and ASCN are UK Post Codes, but
| have no trailing numbers.
|
| _London is so big and densely populated that it has multiple
| virtual town codes allocated to different areas_
|
| In the U.S. if the address density gets too high, we just roll
| out another ZIP Code. I used to work in a building that had
| enough offices that the building had its own ZIP Code. No need
| to confuse people by inventing imaginary towns like in London.
|
| Are you _sure_ your country 's post code system isn't the one
| that's broken?
| TMWNN wrote:
| >What this is saying is that the US zip code system is broken
| (by design), especially compared to other countries' postcode
| system.
|
| How is a published author so illiterate? The bottom of the post
| specifically praises the US zip code system's efficiency for
| its designed purpose at the end! The UK postcode system is
| similarly used (and abused) by many entities for purposes that
| have nothing to do with mail delivery. You know this, yet bleat
| this nonsense.
| smelendez wrote:
| This is probably partly a consequence of our complicated
| federal system.
|
| Municipalities are established by states but the postal system
| is federal. Depending on the state, it's possible for an
| address to be in multiple municipalities (New York has villages
| inside some towns, for instance) or none. It's not always the
| case that residents use the innermost municipality in their
| address.
|
| Some US addresses refer to a place, sometimes called a hamlet,
| that may have no legally defined boundaries. Basically the
| equivalent of a city neighborhood, but at a rural or suburban
| level. Levittown, New York, is a famous example.
|
| There are also Census-designated places, which are basically
| simplified versions of this weird geography used for the
| federal census. They won't always match what local residents or
| state governments consider to be in a certain place.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is probably partly a consequence of our complicated
| federal system._
|
| I don't blame the postal system. I blame the people who made
| the Samsung web site.
|
| Computers are supposed to work for people, not the other way
| around.
|
| One of the more atrocious things I've noticed recently is
| that there's a address verification backend that more and
| more companies are using that is actually built on
| crowdsourced data. Think about that: Crowdsourced
| verification.
|
| The next time you're on one of those sites where you type in
| the name of a city and it tries to auto-complete with a bunch
| of suggestions, enter "Houston" and see if it suggests
| "Clutch City" as an option. Yep, somehow a sports slogan from
| last century is considered a valid mailing address by some
| online stores.
|
| I have a friend I send Christmas gifts to in Houston, and
| I've run into it three times so far on web sites in the U.S.
| and Europe, so I presume that it's some kind of back-end
| plug-in that multiple companies subscribe to.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Haha. Slack.
|
| Someone at work with Slack admin privileges has set the login
| expiration to something less than 24 hours. I think it might be
| 12 hours, but no one can determine it exactly. No one knows who
| has done this, or who has privileges to fix it. We have 2 factor,
| but when it redirects me to a webpage, it doesn't redirect to the
| page where I can just put in the password... it redirects me to
| some other page where I can log in "passwordlessly". I have to
| hunt around for the correct link. On my phone, the app doesn't
| log me out ever, so I use the phone app. But I'm nowhere near as
| responsive, and I can't really do anything but answer
| questions... trying to read code or look at screenshots on the
| tiny screen doesn't work for me.
|
| On the "app declares my phone too old" thing, for me it's
| restaurant apps. Chicfila, McDonald's, etc. At least 3 or 4 of
| them. I don't even understand why, the backend rest api just
| sends a signal one day that says "you're kicked the fuck out",
| and their UI picks up on it and blockades me. The customer
| hostility seems so deliberate that I don't know what to make of
| it.
| binarymax wrote:
| I've been happy to take my business elsewhere when apps
| arbitrarily stop supporting my phone.
|
| It boggles the mind that the endless pursuit of feature growth
| leaves loyal customers in the dust.
| andy99 wrote:
| My bank (Royal Bank of Canada, never use them) recently
| started holding customers money for ransom if you don't
| install their app - you can't do a transfer without using it
| as part of 2fa. I'm switching banks, but what do you do once
| all the banks realize they can drive up app usage metrics buy
| abusing their customers that way?
| andy99 wrote:
| On the slack thing, yeah, screw them. I've gone a different route
| and just stopped using slack. It's a super poor communication
| medium anyway, combining the worst of distraction with horrible
| knowledge management. I'm hoping to push my company to drop it as
| well.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I'm sure those 73 people are furious.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Fairview%2C_North_Dakota
|
| I more post that as I find it amusing the picture is of the store
| that exists as ND has a low tobacco tax.
| andy99 wrote:
| The whole point of algorithmic discrimination is it screws all
| the people who are edge cases in the same of efficieny. Saying
| it's ok because only a few people are effective is ridiculous
| and just encourages the consumer hostility that now dominates.
| Companies are happy to only cater to the 80% or whatever that
| has the highest profitability, and we need strong consumer
| protection laws to avoid a situation where everyone who doesn't
| fit the mold is screwed. Obviously the US has failed at this so
| far (independent of this example) personally I don't want it
| getting worse.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm sure those 73 people are furious_
|
| Everyone becomes an edge case eventually. Just wait. You'll get
| your turn.
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(page generated 2024-03-09 23:02 UTC)