My partner bought some clothing in Brazil and wanted to exchange it at the store for something else. Unfortunately she lost the receipt, and the alternative which is providing your SSN is not available to her (not a citizen). The exchange was denied.

We walked into another store location. They were sympathetic to the foreigner situation, and made an exception.

Takeaway: Computers can't see that a process is flawed and go outside it when it makes sense to do so. Computers also can't provide feedback to the company that the process is flawed.

Aside:

Brazilian bureaucracies, even commercial ones are extremely unfriendly to non-brazilians:

- Poor bilingual support (EN or ES).

- Expectation of a SSN for all customers (this included booking pre-flight Covid tests).

- In many situations a foreign credit card will not work for online purchases (SSN & brazilian zip code will be checked against your card). Fry's "shut up and take my money" meme was extremely relevant here, as many times I wanted to make a purchase, but it wasn't possible to do so.