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A few years ago, I left a $1000 tip at the restaurant up the street because Chrome filled out the tip field with my zip code (which thankfully merely defaulted

A few years ago, I left a $1000 tip at the restaurant up the street because Chrome filled out the tip field with my zip code (which thankfully merely defaulted to max $1000 instead). The tip field was off-screen, and the ordering software didn't have a confirmation screen, just a "we just charged your card $X amount" screen, which made my eyes boggle. EDIT: Looking at the original March 17th, 2015 bug, it would have been at exactly around that time...In fact, checking my emails, this happened on March 18th, 2015. I had ordered from them several times before this with no problems (they used "chownow.com" for their ordering backend).

1570949436970 7y ago
Fun fact: something similar once happened in production in the early days of an iPad-based point of sale startup. In certain cases, a previously-entered zip code was interpreted as the number of cents to tip.
mehrdadn 7y ago
(How) did you resolve this?
- lugg 7y ago
  Switched to Firefox.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    They give you back $1000 if you do that?
    - TylerE 7y ago
      Chargeback.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        Is that allowed given that you appear to have authorized it and they have proof (it's obviously not fraud or something like that)?
        floatingatoll 7y ago
        It’s allowed once, at the very least, if the merchant is hostile or unreachable.
        joecool1029 7y ago
        Of course it's allowed. It would be under one of the Merchant Error chargeback codes since the intent was never there to tip $1000 (and it happened due to an error in their software). If it's not classed under that code there's also 'Friendly Fraud' code for misrepresentation.
        braindeath 7y ago
        Most credit card companies it would be no problem at all. It shouldn’t be necessary though, a quick call to the merchant should be all that is necessary for them to void it.
    - haasted 7y ago
      The story might easily be worth that in marketing for Firefox.
      - tus88 7y ago
        I really want to know what the flagged comment said now.
        vidarh 7y ago
        You can see dead/flagged comments by going to your settings page and setting "showdead" to yes.
        colejohnson66 7y ago
        “Switched to Firefox.”
dmethvin 7y ago
This has a lot of really serious implications. I built a form for a charity that allowed users to buy a subscription but include an additional donation amount. Chrome was sometimes filling that field with the two-digit year. The charity got a lot of complaints and it ruined the trust relationship with the donors who didn't understand what was happening and thought it was intentional.
- mikorym 7y ago
  Chrome has other behaviour that I think violates a sort of trust relationship. One of which is that Youtube would ask you "do you want to install Chrome"? Almost as if your current browser is not "what you need to access Youtube". This is especially a problem for elderly people who often use the web but don't really understand how things fit together (the way 5 year olds actually do).
  - smt88 7y ago
    > Almost as if your current browser is not "what you need to access Youtube" This is not just confusing. It's intentionally misleading and unethical. And it doesn't just affect old people, or YouTube wouldn't have come up with it. Lots of young people grew up with computers and understand how to do what they want to do, but they never develop a systematic understanding of what they're using. It gets worse, though. While we tech-folk know that all modern browsers are supposed to have near-parity, Google optimizes its sites for Chrome, leading to additional confusion for both knowledgeable and lay users.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
sedatk 7y ago
How do you pay with Chrome at a restaurant?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Probably for pickup or delivery.
jbeales 7y ago
We have trouble in our org with autofill on our New Customer forms. Depending on the browser it can be very difficult to remove the saved autocomplete values.
userbinator 7y ago
The tip field was off-screen I wonder how much the [1] hiding of scrollbars and [2] UIs with excessive amounts of whitespace, increasing the need to scroll also contributed to you making this error.

1570949436970 7y ago

Fun fact: something similar once happened in production in the early days of an iPad-based point of sale startup. In certain cases, a previously-entered zip code was interpreted as the number of cents to tip.

mehrdadn 7y ago

(How) did you resolve this?

lugg 7y ago
Switched to Firefox.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  They give you back $1000 if you do that?
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Chargeback.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Is that allowed given that you appear to have authorized it and they have proof (it's obviously not fraud or something like that)?
      - floatingatoll 7y ago
        It’s allowed once, at the very least, if the merchant is hostile or unreachable.
      - joecool1029 7y ago
        Of course it's allowed. It would be under one of the Merchant Error chargeback codes since the intent was never there to tip $1000 (and it happened due to an error in their software). If it's not classed under that code there's also 'Friendly Fraud' code for misrepresentation.
      - braindeath 7y ago
        Most credit card companies it would be no problem at all. It shouldn’t be necessary though, a quick call to the merchant should be all that is necessary for them to void it.
  - haasted 7y ago
    The story might easily be worth that in marketing for Firefox.
    - tus88 7y ago
      I really want to know what the flagged comment said now.
      - vidarh 7y ago
        You can see dead/flagged comments by going to your settings page and setting "showdead" to yes.
      - colejohnson66 7y ago
        “Switched to Firefox.”

dmethvin 7y ago

This has a lot of really serious implications. I built a form for a charity that allowed users to buy a subscription but include an additional donation amount. Chrome was sometimes filling that field with the two-digit year. The charity got a lot of complaints and it ruined the trust relationship with the donors who didn't understand what was happening and thought it was intentional.

mikorym 7y ago
Chrome has other behaviour that I think violates a sort of trust relationship. One of which is that Youtube would ask you "do you want to install Chrome"? Almost as if your current browser is not "what you need to access Youtube". This is especially a problem for elderly people who often use the web but don't really understand how things fit together (the way 5 year olds actually do).
- smt88 7y ago
  > Almost as if your current browser is not "what you need to access Youtube" This is not just confusing. It's intentionally misleading and unethical. And it doesn't just affect old people, or YouTube wouldn't have come up with it. Lots of young people grew up with computers and understand how to do what they want to do, but they never develop a systematic understanding of what they're using. It gets worse, though. While we tech-folk know that all modern browsers are supposed to have near-parity, Google optimizes its sites for Chrome, leading to additional confusion for both knowledgeable and lay users.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

sedatk 7y ago

How do you pay with Chrome at a restaurant?

Scoundreller 7y ago
Probably for pickup or delivery.

jbeales 7y ago

We have trouble in our org with autofill on our New Customer forms. Depending on the browser it can be very difficult to remove the saved autocomplete values.

userbinator 7y ago

The tip field was off-screen I wonder how much the [1] hiding of scrollbars and [2] UIs with excessive amounts of whitespace, increasing the need to scroll also contributed to you making this error.