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Comment by strict9 | Hacker News Reader

Seeing more of this at museums and institutions as well which is really disheartening.

Gone are the days where you could pay at the door. Now you must go to their website and fill out a long string of forms and manually type in your credit card number, all so you can get a QR code and wait even longer to enter.

Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.

Once a refuge from always-connected society, restaurants and museums now require it and I'm finding myself not returning to these places.

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I usually hate the cliche "vote with your wallet" solution, but in this case, it's the right way. Now is the time, while this garbage is still trying to get a foothold and there are still many alternatives that do not treat their customers like shit. Loudly refuse to do business with those companies that require unnecessary technology, and complain to the right people. Not the faces behind the counter making minimum wage.

I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.

The issue is we want restaurants and museums. If we vote with our wallet and boycott than they will look at it as a disinterest in the venue and not a failure of their IT team.

You need to tell them why. "I'm not visiting your museum because you demand the use of an app. I want to pay cash for admission at the door"

If you happen to be disabled, and cannot use a mobile app (most do a woeful job with accessibility and even if they don't, some people just cannot use the devices), threaten an ADA lawsuit.

This is the right way, only I would reword it to “I want to visit your museum but I’m unable to use the app due to disability, would you mind taking cash or debit?”.

Try not to start conversations in the negative. You’ll get a lot farther.

It is only shitty for people who haven't learned how to use email. Saving $10 in exchange for using email is a great deal for most.

I think in this case the poor option is using Ryanair at all.

Yes, and demand alternatives. I went to an urgent care clinic last year, they wanted me to provide all my info on an app using my phone. I refused, said give me a clipboard. They were reluctant but eventually agreed.

Restaurants, just screw them if they demand apps. No restaurant is that good, and across the board the apps make the ordering experience much worse.

I can call Dominos and say "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza for carryout," give them my name, and be done before the app finishes loading and showing all its promo/coupon deals.

So yes, do business with companies that still have some vague notion of what customer service is. I have stopped expecting businesses to exceed my expectations (used to be the norm for most) but it's nice when it happens and they will definitely get my business again.

Ryanair is sufficiently bad that, as it's the only airline flying from where I live to where most of my friends live in the UK, I am likely to use the train next time.

Last time I used them, mass-cancellations from 1cm of snow combined with the next alternative flights being a week later, meant that I had to get home via a combination of ferry and train.

From Stansted to Berlin.

(I'm glad work was understanding).

> I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.

In defence of RyanAir, they are upfront end honest about this and you know what you're getting with them. Whether you think it's a good deal is a subjective matter you can decide for yourself, but I do think it's a fair deal.

That said, I would have used my discretion as a RyanAir employee here: the heavy fee is to encourage people to not "lazy out", which is clearly not what happened here.

That's kinda the problem with the current consumer capitalism destruction of life support systems. Everyone has principles, until they look at the price tags and just chose the cheapest option. And it's perverse because for most people budgeting is a matter of survival.

So we're stuck in this death spiral where only companies that find ways to exploit us and the ecosystems survive, and even tho we know this, we can only patronize companies that exploit us and the ecosystems because the ones that don't are a luxury/lifestyle signaling tool for the affluent.

I don't see any way out. The current civilization paradigm will crash and burn and only then something different will emerge.

This has not been my experience. Paying for admission to museums/sporting events I apple pay from safari on my phone then am presented with a QR or a pass to add to my apple wallet. It's really nice and I much prefer it to standing in line.

no turn it around

your phone just broke/stolen/lost, do you forfeit your right to enter these places and use their services some of which might be "essential"?

This. Apart from not wanting to be tethered to my phone 24/7, I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some. The most terrifying prospect to me is governments that want to switch to digital IDs. No thanks. I don't need to lose access to existence just because my battery died or I forgot my phone at home.

> I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some

I also have a cellular Apple Watch that also has a copy of my digital wallet....

cool story bro. You must be wealthy

And once these devices become required for participation in society, is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them, or are they going to become yet another burden suffered disproportionately by the poor, just like car ownership?

> is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them

Yes

https://www.dmas.virginia.gov/media/1252/lifeline-telephone-...

And 94% of the homeless have cell phones. I would assume that the penetration of cell phones among the poor and not homeless would be higher.

https://priceschool.usc.edu/news/homeless-los-angeles-cell-p....

Aren't these preloaded with crap/scamware by shady providers?

No turn it around, you lose the piece of paper saying you have a yearly pass, do you forfeit your right to enter these places?

Maybe, yes. Lose that piece of paper and you forfeit your right to enter that concert...

...but lose that piece of paper and you haven't also forfeited your right to access your hotel room, to catch the plane back home, to pay for your parking space where you left your car, to take public transport, to enter your gym...

I've never been to such an event where using your smartphone to pay was mandatory, it's usually just much faster and more convenient.

At many smaller venues, a credit card (or tap-to-pay) is required, and I'm 100% in favor of that. We should be doing more to help provide unbanked people with credit cards. Requiring small businesses to deal with cash is increasingly a burden; cashless enables them to save a lot of time and money.

This is the wrong approach, because the laws around payment cards require they be strongly linked to ID, allowing point and click shutdown/freezing of anyone's ability to transact.

When you can't pay a lawyer, and you can't pay a taxi to get to your lawyer, and you can't buy food, and it's all because the government pointed a finger without evidence, prior to trial, the system is a bad one.

The ability to use cash must be preserved. You really don't want to live in the world where the only payments are the ones the government explicitly allows.

I see it as similar to what happens when your credit card gets messed up or won't read anymore. It's a similar level of inconvenience.

That said, I have found it easier to replace a phone on short notice than a card. Banks seem to want to do everything through the mail, where I can walk into any carriers store and walk out with a replacement device the same day.

In the future, how does one pay to replace a lost device at the store after losing the device that is the exclusive holder of all your payment details, as well as the exclusive holder of all the credentials to all your accounts?

One day or an other, your proprietary pocket tracker and his mandatory connectivity will fail. What if the device is broken (yah, go buy another) ? What if the upstream service don't work ? What if the GSM network is locally in maintenance ? Overall, why should we require obsolete-when-bought, extremely costly and polluting locked-down devices you don't even control to access public places ?

So why, any concrete response capable of holding up in practice ?

Not to discount the other issues, but apple wallet being offline is one of my favorite features and side-steps many of the issues related to connectivity of bandwidth issues when you're at a large event/venue.

It would be much better to have varied and robust options though.

Glad this feature works for you.

What works for me, if I need to pay something: I use my credit card (contactless under 50, over I need to type a code) or some bills which both are in my physical wallet (protected against rfid, it just looks as a normal wallet).

I don't see any benefits adding third parties to the mix apart the fashion of "Oh yeah I can pay with my tracker watch".

I just see that as really pathetic.

I agree with you in principle, but one of the problems is that some exhibitions are so popular that you really have to book weeks in advance if you want to get in.

Case in point: A friend suggested the biggest ever Yayoi Kusama exhibition in Manchester[0], which I relayed to my girlfriend because we would be in the city 3 weeks later.

She sent me a frantic sms Get Tickets Now! since the exhibition was sold out weeks in advance.

And that's an issue you see with a lot of popular exhibitions. You can't just walk into a David Hockney exhibition at Centre Pompidou on a whim, because the time slots are sold out for weeks in advance.

That may not be fair and super inconvenient if you don't book far in advance. But popular exhibitions in big cities are so overwhelmed by visitors that there's really no other way than selling time slots well in advance.

The Kusama exhibition was totally worth it. But we wouldn't have stood a chance if we hadn't organized the tickets weeks before the visit.

I think the insistence on smart phones for basic services is much worse than asking the public to organize a museum visit well in advance if the exhibition is super popular.

[0] https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/yayoi-kusama-you-m...

I've been to a lot of venues where that's the preferred option.

I recently took my kids to the county fair. There was a big line of people waiting to buy tickets, and a short line for ticket holders.

We went to the line of ticket holders, I popped up the website, and thanks to browser autofill, I completed the transaction in less than a minute, and we had our tickets by the time we reached the front of the line.

I 100% agree that this shouldn't be the only option. But I think it's a great alternative, and for many events it makes sense for it to be the default option.

Yeah, which is stupid

Museums could have a booth that takes cash/card and prints the tkts instead of a random/poorly maintained website that'll do who knows what to you CC number (which probably costs more than having the person selling tkts)

>Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.

Don't worry, they will have paper copies if you don't have a phone or are insistent you want to handle a grubby, contaminated piece of paper before you eat your meal.

Not everyone has paper copies and if I’m going out to dinner with my wife the last thing we want to do is pull our phones out and figure out a pdf menu

If there's a concern about grubby contamination, that bridge was burned when the diner decided to go out to a restaurant.

Indeed. If the menu bothers you, better hope you don't catch a glimpse of the kitchen.

How much should museums waste on customer service staff to take your money? And security staff for managing the queues?

They still have the same customer service staff, but they're now just scanning your QR code instead of taking cash.

And security staff and queue management is always going to be needed if the place is large and crowded.

The time it takes a scan a code is a lot less than ringing up a transaction.

when everything is perfect first time maybe.

Yes, but the time it takes the visitor to get a QR code is a lot more than ringing up a transaction. The museum has offloaded work on the visitor and this is not acceptable. The visitor, after all, is the one paying the bill.

Before that the phone system offloaded work to their subscribers, who now needed to listen to and understand the various tones (dial, ringing, busy) and remember phone numbers.

Right? What next, ramps for wheelchair users? /s

In all seriousness, there is a point to be made about equity at a minimal viable level, and if you don’t want to enable access for everyone, you’re not permitted to operate. Very similar to how some jurisdictions have outlawed not accepting cash (because this policy impacts the unbanked, underbanked, and low income disproportionately). Streamlining, efficiencies, and improved experiences via digital delivery are welcome, but once you start tiptoeing into disenfranchising cohorts by doing so (even unintentionally), that’s where regulation comes in.

“You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.

> “You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.

Is you must have an ID to get on plane also unreasonable? A modern smart phone (at least an iPhone) has all sorts of affordances that make life easier for the disabled.

Yes, of course - an iphone is so much cheaper and easier to use than a passport or a paper boarding pass.

Wow, a $1000 dollar phone is cheaper than carrying a paper document? I guess that logic escapes me.

I meant it to be sarcasm, obviously failed

Yeah sarcasm generally fails. Sometimes I put <sarcasm>...</sarcasm> :)

Sarcasm fails sometimes because there are indeed some people that genuinely hold such ridiculous views.

A brand new iPhone can be purchased for as little as $429.

I actually think it's unreasonable, and it never used to be required for a domestic flight. If you had a ticket, you could get on the plane. Same as trains and buses still work at least in most places.

> you must have an ID to get on plane

You don’t. You can show up at a TSA checkpoint without ID and they’ll identity proof you on the spot. As an identity nerd, I’ve done it just to try it to experience and confirm the TSA’s process. Next time you pass through a checkpoint, ask!

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequently-asked-questions/i-forg...

With that said, a physical credential and a smartphone are wildly different from an accessibility perspective. You can get a REAL ID compliant state credential for under $100. Poor comparison.

> because this policy impacts the unbanked, underbanked, and low income disproportionately

Imagine the absurdity of forcing banks to universally provide what ended up being an essential service by their own design?

That's the problem, they haven't changed staffing. Customer service is still there. Staff for managing queues is still there. The wait has increased, and hasn't decreased the need for staff.

Presumably this is all done so they can get a verified email address for marketing purposes, as proof of entry only arrives via email.

Neither one of those roles has become obsolete with the introduction of said apps, I wouldn't even say there's any difference in staffing requirements. You've simply replaced one problem with another, instead of simply taking your money, the worker now has to figure out why the app doesn't accept your card/phone/address/etc which is arguably much more time consuming.

> waste on customer service

I hate to say it but there needs to be some regulation about customer service, ie not allowing companies to not provide it by pawning people off on digital solutions. So many businesses are only viable because they don't provide customer support, and I don't think that's un society's interest.

Make those who want it pay for it then, like with Ryanair.

So long as they are getting my tax money, as much as I want.

I don't think this is really an issue, but even if you do it's trivially solvable. Vending machines have [somewhat surprisingly] been around for hundreds of years. Single slot generic items, like generic tickets, could easily be 'automated' by a vending machine. Few to no places do this because it's not a meaningful bottle-neck or labor issue.

Isn't the entire point of a museum customer service? What else are they doing other than preserving the stuff? Isn't a museum with bad customer service more properly called a "warehouse"?

What's wrong with QR codes for restaurant menus? Here are the pros I can come up with off the top of my head:

- Restaurants can experiment with more food options and more frequent updates to their menu

- Real time info on what's in stock

- Cuts out the cost of having to constantly reprint the menu

- Easier for customers to find the menu online when searching for restaurants (huge issue pre-COVID)

What are the actual downsides? Sure, there may be a tiny fraction of people without a smartphone, but they're likely accompanied by someone who does have one. Despite that, restaurants would likely keep a few physical menus on-hand.

I find menus on phones harder to read. And it just feels annoying to have everyone’s face in their phones at a meal.

I have no issue with it being default, but since covid ended, the places that still use qr menus seem not to have paper menus on hand.

It’s not the end of the world but it makes your restaurant feel cheap.

Still 100 times better than places that make you order on your phone.

A major con for me is that I don’t want to get my phone out. If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications, they may distract me even if only by making me think about them. I’d rather just not check my phone for the duration of the meal.

Also I have friends and relatives who have never owned a smartphone, some who would be essentially unable to do so.

That said, another benefit is more scope for accessibility. I would bet that most restaurant sites are terrible for accessibility, but implementing screen reader or large font support would apply everywhere, whereas I’d also bet that most restaurant never have braille or large print menus.

> If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications

You can turn on do not disturb until you leave the current location on iOS. I do that a lot. You have all of the tools you need. It's like someone complaining that the sun is too bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.

> It's like someone complaining that the sun is to bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.

It's more like you're saying that it shouldn't be a problem to require someone to stare directly into the sun because they should have brought eclipse glasses and be fine with using them

If that were the case, 95% of the US population would be going blind.

It amazes me how many people are railing against technology while posting on HN...

It amazes me that you cannot seem to realise that many people have problems with the inappropriate uses of technologies.

And they are free to make choices and accept the inconveniences that come with those choices.

I’m sure people complained about those horseless carriages years after cars became mainstream

why do you think that so many people here are proposing that the choices you suggest are toxic? because they are stupid?

Well, if you stay in the HN bubble you would think that in normal life, people are complaining that they can't run Linux on AirPods....

But in the real world, smart phone penetration is 95%, including 94$ of the homeless (I posted a citation earlier)

> why do you think that so many people here are proposing that the choices you suggest are toxic?

People also think that alcohol sales shouldn't happen on Sunday, and all other crazy stuff. I'm simply suggesting that if your choices are out of the society's norms, it's not society's responsibility to make affordances for you.

somethings that you don't seem to understand:

- this is not entirely about the homeless

- this is not entirely about the elderly

it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.

If we made a law forbidding companies from using software badly, every single SaaS business would disappear.

> it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.

Would you believe that my wife and I refuse to use American Airlines partially because the app and the website is so bad? I stay away from a lot of services, software and hardware because of a bad user experiences.

People are complaining about cars now. Walkable cities and bike lanes are the fashionable wave in urbanism.

We have the tools, but QR code menus override the most basic tool – keeping my phone in my pocket. When I have to take my phone out and haven't pre-planned by switching to DND, I'm likely to see notifications.

It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.

Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.

> It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.

You really didn't know that in 2023 you might have to use a QR code to see a menu? That's like going to Seattle and being surprised that it started raining.

I'm not from Seattle or the US so don't know that stereotype. In the same way, I don't expect restaurants to use QR codes for menus because it's fairly rare in my experience, so no I would not plan for it.

I prefer it when venues like restaurants design for all and don't expect knowledge of local customs.

> Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.

This is not the conclusion most would draw from this. If anything it seems fairly well understood that QR menus are mostly beneficial for restaurants not diners.

If I open Scarface's Pork, Beef and Spirits should I be forced to design my restaurant for people who have a religious conviction against eating beef and pork?

>If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications, they may distract me even if only by making me think about them.

This is my concern as well. When someone is at a table with people, put the damn phone away and actually be present for those around you.

QR code menus make "phones out" the default state of a table. So of course people will get distracted and split their attention between notifications and those around them.

- Paper menus are much easier to browse.

- Lots of restaurants have no WiFi and may also have poor cell reception for certain networks. This either makes the menu slow to access or impossible to access.

- I shouldn’t have to pass my phone around the table to people who can’t access the online menu. That slows everything down and most people don’t want others on their phones anyway.

- When they throw in payment with their online menu there are inevitably issues. I’ve had this fail numerous times (money taken, order didn’t go through).

- Lots of restaurants have PDF menus designed for a computer screen. They’re awful to browse on a phone.

The usual downside is the menu was designed to be printed and not viewed on a screen that is 1/4 or less the size.

So I see part of the drink menu horizontally and vertically. Another example: Non-alcoholic is on the "back" of the menu but wine is on the "front".

And now the restaurant needs to hire a UX designer.

The problem is that most of the time a "QR Code Menu" means a QR code pointing to a PDF hosted on Google Drive or alike, a digitized version of a paper menu which was never meant to be read on tiny phone screens and is a pain to read with no reflow. You have to squint at your screen to figure out what you want, and then the rest of the process is the same, someone comes down and takes your order.

What you presumably mean by "QR Code Menu" is a QR code pointing to a website where the content is optimized for screens and perhaps interactive, allowing you to order from your table without involving wait staff and thus streamlining the entire ordering process for you and the restaurant.

So what people actually have a problem with is shitty implementations, not the idea of "QR Code Menus"? Why don't they just say so?

Because they're talking about their experiences with QR Code Menus, the majority of which are the way I described them.

If 95% of all practical implementations of a concept are bad implementations then I don't have a good idea implemented badly. What I have instead is an idea that fails to work when faced with the real world. I'd say it's warranted to call that "a bad idea".

Don't be intentionally obtuse. Reframing the parent comment as "the _only_ concern (all) people have is poor QR code menu implementations" is disingenuous and myopic.

In addition to all the other downsides listed, here's another more basic one: I don't want to order food from a smartphone!

If I wanted to push a button and get food, I'd eat out of a vending machine or order with DoorDash. One of the reasons I go into a restaurant or some other meatspace "event" is to escape technology for a tiny bit of time and enjoy life. I want to sit down in a comfortable place, enjoy a conversation with my family, or bask in the ambience of the restaurant. I want to have a pleasant, human interaction with a human server. With these digital-only menus, now I'm yet again pulling out my smartphone and scrolling-scrolling-scrolling. Sorry, due to work I've got screens blasting at me for hours every day. I'm not going to go out in the evening to look at another screen.

Remind me in 20 years when the majority of HN loses their near vision and their 3 month old prescription isn't working.

The future is going to be hysterical as the US ages out.

I'm already there. I cannot read my phone without glasses. And I often misplace my glasses, or leave the house without them.

We need to bring the monocle back. Very portable.

Printing costs so little that you can do completely unique menus for each patron for less than a full time software engineer.

> What are the actual downsides?

Surveillance. For those of us who still care, that is.

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