6 ms·

The promise of Coin is that you don't have to carry anything else. It is a fantastic idea. However, unless it worked at least 95% of the time, it's useless, be

by ndaiger 10y ago

The promise of Coin is that you don't have to carry anything else. It is a fantastic idea. However, unless it worked at least 95% of the time, it's useless, because you have to carry at least one backup card. My experience with the Coin 2.0 is that it worked about 20% of the time and was very, very frustrating in every respect. It went in a drawer after a week.

deedubaya 10y ago
Same here. My Coin only ever worked once before I gave up.
gkoberger 10y ago
If my credit card failed one out of every 20 transactions (95%), I still wouldn't use it. At a restaurant, you'd be stuck having consumed the food but with no way to pay for it.
- lettergram 10y ago
  I work at a bank, we have the minimum of 5 9's rule for every app and transactional entity. Basically, it needs to be up 99.999% of the time. Currently, we have a 99.9998% uptime for the main transactional cluster/mainframe/computer/etc. and that still means 20 minutes of down time in the last 20 years. That doesn't sound like a lot, but that's like ~$1 million of transactions lost for every minute it is down.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    That's kinda baloney. Reality is that a minute or 2 of downtime will result in much less than a total loss because people just wait and retry.
    - lettergram 10y ago
      You can't wait at a register... people will try swapping the card 2 times (maybe 3).
valarauca1 10y ago
Got a Coin 2.0 because of the hype and peer pressure. Took 2 days to set up because I typed address information incorrectly and had to verify my identity to unlock my coin account (this was on me largely). Already souring on the Coin experience the first place I used it, it failed. Haven't put it back in my wallet since then.
eterm 10y ago
I don't understand coin. I have a debit card, I don't need to carry anything else. It does contactless payments, chip + pin payments, ATM widthdrawls, verifies who I am at the bank and has my account details on it. What else could I want, a credit card for things which belong more on credit? OK so now I have 2 cards, but really beyond that what else is there? No amount of mobile hardware / phone apps are going to replace 2 cards both of which fit easily in a wallet and don't require charging, don't wear out for 5+ years (by which time the bank has replaced it free of charge), and I don't need to take out of my pocket for any other reason (so I'm not likely to lose it or leave it elsewhere).
- jodah 10y ago
  > I have a debit card, I don't need to carry anything else. If your card hasn't been stolen (via a hacked merchant) and your account wiped out yet, consider yourself lucky. You might want to carry a credit card as your primary instead. When (and I do mean when) it is stolen, at least it's only credit instead of your bank account balance that is impacted (and which can takes weeks or more to get back).
  - alonmower 10y ago
    As jodah points out, it was attractive for me because at minimum I have a credit card, an ATM card, and a parking benefits card. I also have additional cards that have better benefits for things like gas/groceries so it's nice having the flexibility to choose to use one for a particular transaction. That said, my experience with Coin was abysmal. It worked maybe half the time, when it did work it took the cashier and embarrassing number of swipes while I stood there wondering if it would work at all. When I wrote in to support they said that there was a certain set of POS machines that the card wasn't recognized on. At that point Coin becomes completely and utterly worthless because I now have to carry the other cards in case it fails. If someone made a card that worked in 100% of the places that I can currently use an ATM or credit card I would get one in a heartbeat. The fact that Coin claimed to and wasn't even laughably close to delivering on this makes me hate them
  - rconti 10y ago
pbreit 10y ago
No, it's not a very good idea. Carrying around 2 or 4 credit cards is really not that burdensome and substantially more reliable.
hkmurakami 10y ago
Imo it has to be way higher than 95%. The thought of having it fail on me even 1% of the time at the time of purchase (say, I'm buying $300 worth of things at Costco) makes me unable to ditch backup cards, which makes its value proposition poor.

by ndaiger 10y ago

deedubaya 10y ago

Same here. My Coin only ever worked once before I gave up.

gkoberger 10y ago

If my credit card failed one out of every 20 transactions (95%), I still wouldn't use it. At a restaurant, you'd be stuck having consumed the food but with no way to pay for it.

lettergram 10y ago
I work at a bank, we have the minimum of 5 9's rule for every app and transactional entity. Basically, it needs to be up 99.999% of the time. Currently, we have a 99.9998% uptime for the main transactional cluster/mainframe/computer/etc. and that still means 20 minutes of down time in the last 20 years. That doesn't sound like a lot, but that's like ~$1 million of transactions lost for every minute it is down.
- pbreit 10y ago
  That's kinda baloney. Reality is that a minute or 2 of downtime will result in much less than a total loss because people just wait and retry.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    You can't wait at a register... people will try swapping the card 2 times (maybe 3).

valarauca1 10y ago

Got a Coin 2.0 because of the hype and peer pressure. Took 2 days to set up because I typed address information incorrectly and had to verify my identity to unlock my coin account (this was on me largely). Already souring on the Coin experience the first place I used it, it failed. Haven't put it back in my wallet since then.

eterm 10y ago

I don't understand coin. I have a debit card, I don't need to carry anything else. It does contactless payments, chip + pin payments, ATM widthdrawls, verifies who I am at the bank and has my account details on it. What else could I want, a credit card for things which belong more on credit? OK so now I have 2 cards, but really beyond that what else is there? No amount of mobile hardware / phone apps are going to replace 2 cards both of which fit easily in a wallet and don't require charging, don't wear out for 5+ years (by which time the bank has replaced it free of charge), and I don't need to take out of my pocket for any other reason (so I'm not likely to lose it or leave it elsewhere).

jodah 10y ago
> I have a debit card, I don't need to carry anything else. If your card hasn't been stolen (via a hacked merchant) and your account wiped out yet, consider yourself lucky. You might want to carry a credit card as your primary instead. When (and I do mean when) it is stolen, at least it's only credit instead of your bank account balance that is impacted (and which can takes weeks or more to get back).
- alonmower 10y ago
  As jodah points out, it was attractive for me because at minimum I have a credit card, an ATM card, and a parking benefits card. I also have additional cards that have better benefits for things like gas/groceries so it's nice having the flexibility to choose to use one for a particular transaction. That said, my experience with Coin was abysmal. It worked maybe half the time, when it did work it took the cashier and embarrassing number of swipes while I stood there wondering if it would work at all. When I wrote in to support they said that there was a certain set of POS machines that the card wasn't recognized on. At that point Coin becomes completely and utterly worthless because I now have to carry the other cards in case it fails. If someone made a card that worked in 100% of the places that I can currently use an ATM or credit card I would get one in a heartbeat. The fact that Coin claimed to and wasn't even laughably close to delivering on this makes me hate them
- rconti 10y ago

pbreit 10y ago

No, it's not a very good idea. Carrying around 2 or 4 credit cards is really not that burdensome and substantially more reliable.

hkmurakami 10y ago

Imo it has to be way higher than 95%. The thought of having it fail on me even 1% of the time at the time of purchase (say, I'm buying $300 worth of things at Costco) makes me unable to ditch backup cards, which makes its value proposition poor.