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Comment by jefurii | Hacker News Reader

Our apartment uses one of these "services" for laundry. It requires you to be online to start the washer and my phone can't connect to my wifi from the laundry room. FAIL.

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There’s a lot of underground restaurants and bars in Sydney, and many of them have started using QR code only ordering. Only problem is phone reception is really spotty in a lot of the basement venues, and not all of them have wifi.

Yeah the QR crap was understandable during the pandemic (though a bit stupid because surface spread was discredited very soon).

But I don't understand why so many restaurants still hang on to it.

It used to be impolite to mess with your phone in a restaurant. Now it's mandatory. Luckily it's not so common anymore now in Spain, only the Asian restaurants still do it. And McDonald's are trying to force their app by removing ever more ordering screens.

> But I don't understand why so many restaurants still hang on to it.

It's cheaper than having to deal with paper that gets dirty, torn apart by kids or outright stolen. And "daily special" doesn't need to be manually inserted into menus any more.

I've mentioned it in another thread about ice cream machines already: restaurants and hospitality in general are absurd cheapskates. Whenever a tiny avenue opens that saves them money, they'll do it, legal or not - the only thing that matters is that it looks acceptable to customers.

> restaurants and hospitality in general are absurd cheapskates.

You've never run a bar or restaurant have you. What do you think the profit margins are?

I have never run a bar, but worked in stage lighting, as a bartender and as a cleaner.

And no matter where I worked at, if you'd send in the health department, fire safety inspectors, plumbers, electrical inspectors or cybersecurity experts, you'd find a truckload of code violations, not to mention constant issues with getting paid.

Also, not sure about the US but hospitality industries in Holland tend to be a front for money laundering of criminal enterprises. Especially the really busy city bars/discos. All the cash going around and hard to track numbers of visitors makes it easy to do a number on the tax people.

Also, they can use their enforcers as doormen. Where I'm from most of them had a criminal record even though they managed to obtain the "Tickmark" security logo (though I don't know whether that was legit or fake). Really, that should never be granted to anyone with any kind of violent crime history.

It's the same with a lot of Chinese restaurants. Lots of laundering there :(

It saves time, potentially a lot of time during busy hours. I've waited an easy 10+ minutes for a server to come and ask for drinks and another 5-10 to come back and take orders.

Phone based ordering, which can include pictures of all menu items, is a huge win in comparison.

Most of them here don't do this though, they just link to a PDF with the menu.

> But I don't understand why so many restaurants still hang on to it.

In some Chinese cities you can walk all day without finding a restaurant/shop that can give you change if you try to pay with cash or that accepts your western credit card.

Without Alipay/WeChat you will be stuck in your hotel unable to do anything.

However unlike the crappy western solution, where each business wants to have their own app, the experience is extremely smooth: Scan a QR code with WeChat, the menu opens in the app, order, pay.

Want a bottle of water in a small shop? Grab it from the cooler, scan the QR code on the cooler, type in 2 CNY and hit send money. Cashier gets a ding that you paid 2 CNY. Confirm with a nod and just leave.

Ride hailing (Didi - which ate Uber's lunch here), airplane&train tickets, and much more is also done right through WeChat/Alipay.

The problem comes when you become an enemy of the state (real of metaphorical, it doesn't matter) and you instantly get denied access to those apps.

Do they let non-Chinese people use WeChat or Alipay’s payment services these days?

Last time I was there (2019) you had to tie your account to a Chinese bank account. You can only get a Chinese bank account if you have a resident ID. You, for obvious reasons, cannot get a resident ID if you’re not a resident or there on a work visa.

Effectively, I couldn’t even go down to the corner store and grab a snack without an escort because I had no ability to pay for anything.

Escorts are usually hired for other things than a trip to the corner store. Saying for a friend :D But pretty creative solution!

> Do they let non-Chinese people use WeChat or Alipay’s payment services these days?

Both Alipay and WeChat allow that now. I had no issues using my Visa with Alipay, and while WeChat was a bit confusing, it worked in the end.

I recommend setting it up 2-3 days before you're going to need it because especially WeChat may want to do some manual verification.

Why do you talk about the pandemic in past tense? The pandemic is still going on. If QR code menus don’t make sense now, then they never made sense.

I'd say it is now endemic, and the emergency is over.

Why? What’s the difference between now and 2021, other than the fact that most people decided to stop caring?

Is the Spanish flu still an emergency because a related strain still exists?

Covid still exists, but most everybody has natural or induced immunity, and it just isn't as severe (new strains) or as much of an unknown.

It's not going away. If you want to live in a state of emergency in perpetuity, go for it, just don't expect the world to not move on.

> Covid still exists, but most everybody has natural or induced immunity

That’s why I compared to 2021, not 2020. In 2021 anyone who wanted a vaccine could get one.

> it just isn't as severe (new strains)

AFAIK this is still unproven, do you have a source?

> If you want to live in a state of emergency in perpetuity, go for it

I don’t, and never did. You’ve understood my point exactly backwards. I don’t think QR code menus make sense, and, along with a lot of other pandemic theatre, I don’t think they ever made sense, as evidenced by the fact that once people decided to stop using them, nothing catastrophic happened, despite the fact that the state of the pandemic is not meaningfully different from 2021.

Yeah if anything we could have stopped caring when the South African variant came out. That was really the turning point and many countries kept ignoring the evidence of how mild it was.

They also never made sense after May 2020 at the latest, when it was clear to the well-informed that surface spread was not a significant vector (nor were droplets, only aerosols).

You are correct.

I have a love-hate relationship with those kinds of restaurants. I hate having to look at the menu and order using my phone, but on the other hand, I love that I don't need to tip them (because there's no service being provided to me -- no, carrying my food over from the counter doesn't count).

But your phone can use non-wifi in the same spot, or is it a total deadzone?

We had the same problem but the HOA installed a cell phone repeater/extender on the roof. It was like $200, one time purchase, works great.

Also the washers and dryers take quarters too but that can be a pain too

If they are willing to go so far as to install repeaters, why not a credit card reader?

I wonder if whole thing is bought SaaS. So it is up to provider to get it to work.

WaaS (Washing as a Service)

They don't want to deal with credit card fraud and pci compliance when everyone can use the service on their phone or get quarters

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