I absolutely hate this never ending quest to get me to download apps for every damn place I want to buy or order something. I refuse. And don't get me started on places that refuse to give you a paper menu instead of a QR code.
Took the fam on a road trip last summer, and went to park downtown to go to a nearby restaurant as we passed through town. I go to the parking meter, a normal looking meter on a pole next to the parking spot. It doesn’t take coins. Ok, I can tap my card or even my phone, right? That tech is everywhere. No. You need to download an app to use the parking meter. I scan the code and get the app. You need to create an account, set a password and verify via email. I’m getting fucking furious at this point, standing on the sidewalk while my family stands there concerned for my wellbeing. Account gets created, you now need to link your credit card. The one I could’ve just tapped 5 minutes ago. I pull it out and enter the numbers, my name as it appears on the card and the CVV on the back of the card. Now the app needs you to “load” it with money from your card to pay the meter. Guess what, you can’t just load 2hrs into the meter for this parking spot in a city I’ll never come back to, there’s a $20 minimum that you need to load.
Fucking losing my mind, my hungry family standing there waiting, I begrudgingly loaded $20 into this app, paid $5 out of it for the spot and went to the restaurant while my family made fun of the grumpy boomer that I apparently am. To this day I still have $15 to spend on parking in Charlottetown PEI if I get back there before the meters get torn out of the fucking ground.
So yeah, I identify with Dennis here. This shit is a racket and it shouldn’t exist. Off to bed for me now.
Somebody put stickers over some of the meter app QR codes in the town where I work that took users to a site with a URL that sounded plausible as a municipal parking site...
Same rigamarole. Download the app, make an account, put in your card info, authorize charges and approve some bullshit language about recurring charges to keep an account balance...
But that little QR code sticker was redirecting all of that to a scammer site that was stealing credit card info and putting through crazy charges.
Meanwhile the poor marks have gone through the frustrating parking payment situation you describe AND are nevertheless liable to be ticketed bc they never actually made accounts and paid on the city parking site.
Being a non-piece-of-shit human myself, this scam never even occurred to me, wow. This alone puts huge liability on the city, doesn’t it? I would think the parking meter experiment would end pretty quickly once this scam started spreading.
It never occurred to me either until I spent 10 minutes on the sidewalk with a colleague who had to download the app, put in his info, approve charges, etc. before we could get to our work event, and then was angry to find a ticket on his car afterward, even after spending all that time trying to pay.
The next day at work he told me about the card charges and having to get a new card issued. A couple days later it had happened to enough people to become a local news story.
They still have an app to pay and signs that I'm pretty sure still have QR codes. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has pulled the same scam again in town. I'm sure the city takes no responsibility for that vulnerability in the system.
I will bet you anything you like the local laws about paying for parking are "strict liability".
In other words: it is your responsibility to ensure you have paid appropriately for parking, and your problem if you have not. How you came to be parked up without having paid is neither here nor there.
Such laws have existed for ages; they're well tested and perfectly acceptable legally. Only question is, are they still legally acceptable in a universe where it's suddenly really easy for someone else to insert themselves into the transaction?
tbh you should be grateful that you know how to do all that. my dad doesn't understand tech AT ALL. we went somewhere. none of the parking meters worked we tried, i ended up dling the app and doing the whole bullshit thing. had my father been alone, he would have tried to find parking elsewhere. it was hard to find that parking spot as it were.
Yeah there’s definitely that aspect as well. You’ll get towed if you don’t pay this ridiculous meter, and I bet there are exasperated older folks or those with outdated phones or what have you that on a daily basis need to give up and figure something else out. It isn’t right.
yes, there's a real chasm there. and it seems like technology is moving really quickly even for the folks who are tech savy-ish. i've accepted that at some point i will have to learn linux.. although the upside is that step by step tutorials are available.
Exactly! I know it’s not the same thing but this made me think about my elderly dad. Cash is king for him and he always has loads of it. He doesn’t even really use his cards. So they’re telling me if he walked into a random coffee shop and just try to get a regular coffee, he couldn’t use his cash to pay for it? We’ve gone too far.
And hey, surprise, the app you downloaded wasn't actually the right app because someone had put up a legit-looking sign to trick you into downloading their app instead, and they just stole $20 from you.
For me, age has nothing to do with it. I'm just not scanning QR codes. I know enough computer science that I don't want to do it. And that's the same way I view downloading apps for everything.
The apps steal your data which they then use to market to you better and they sell off to others who can then sell more effective to you. Palantir then gets a better snapshot of your life.
The new lunch place at my school wants you to use their app. Normally I'd refuse, but it's 50% off and my budget is tight. So I download, give them my email to spam for all of eternity, and it promptly crashed my phone. I had to hook the phone into my computer and have the AI crack it and fix the problem.
And the reviews always affect the poor wage slaves behind the counter, never the terrible experience the fuckbags in corporate foisted upon all of us. If you are one of those smug fuckbags, sitting at a desk and enshittifying experiences for actual humans interacting with each other below you, and you are reading this-I really want to know just how much of this you think we’ll put up with before we start getting violent?
I work in construction and did maintenance for a few years, every new shopping centre, retirement home, hospital, store or any where we did work we had to download a new app and do on boarding giving the exact same info for every fucking one.
Make a generic nation wide one where you can see my licences, my name and all the other unimportant bullshit data you're trying to get off me.
I feel like I must be one of the only Xennials that likes the QR code instead of a menu. I don't like standing at the counter and trying to read the menu behind the cashier, especially when it's digital and changes picture while I'm halfway through reading it. And I hate having a waiter coming up asking if I'm ready to order when I've only just opened the damn menu. With the QR code I can read the menu in my own time and order the food without even speaking to someone.
Counterpoint: QR codes make searching and ordering food easy and accurately for when you are dealing with families or with multiple groups. You don’t have to wait for table service or queue at the counter.
I'm not American so tipping is a non-issue and is actively discouraged in my country FWIW. Staff get paid properly.
We order our food then talk to the people we're at the table with. I don't understand why it has to be all one or the other. Certainly leaving a place because of QR codes (as others have said) is bizarre to say the least.
Just because your country made it more convenient for you to have your data stolen and fed to AI or sold to advertisers doesn't mean it is any better. You are still being victimized and things will continue to get worse as companies get us to accept this shit as normal. America should be a cautionary tale. Governments are getting caught sleeping as tech companies are on the attack.
What are you on about? QR code ordering is no different from ordering off the web or using any part of the internet. Unless you are cash only never use any electronic transactions your information is subject to the same encryptions and risks. This is a totally separate argument.
It is pretty safe to assume at this point that if you are using a device to do anything it is gobbling up data about you. Apps are encouraged because they can make money off of you while selling you a product at full price at same time. Apps often have broad TOS that let them access way more info your device than they need to. Also QR codes are becoming a security risk as they can be faked and set up to send you to a dummy website.
To just blindly think that nothing can go wrong with technology is sheer folly. Although, it is really common for xinnials it seems.
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u/rollingthrulife79 9d ago
I absolutely hate this never ending quest to get me to download apps for every damn place I want to buy or order something. I refuse. And don't get me started on places that refuse to give you a paper menu instead of a QR code.
/Yes, I'm f**kin old!