9 ms·

I'll forgive it for being designed a long time ago, but as a tourist I found the MetroCard machines very frustrating because they insist on a 5-digit postal cod

by twiss 4y ago

I'll forgive it for being designed a long time ago, but as a tourist I found the MetroCard machines very frustrating because they insist on a 5-digit postal code when paying by card, but I have a 4-digit one. I tried left- and right-padding it, and entering all zeros, but it wouldn't let me pay. It reminded me of "falsehoods programmers believe about addresses".

grishka 4y ago
I don't remember the vending machines, but I do remember the frustration from having to make several attempts at swiping that thin magnetic stripe card at the turnstile at just the right speed.
- acomjean 4y ago
  You are not alone. 2 minutes of new yorkers doing the double metrocard swipe. (Contains opera) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KExZw3hh1Ic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KExZw3hh1Ic. And a few going over/under…
- nemo44x 4y ago
  It’s how the tourists are sussed out.
  - grishka 4y ago
    I think I got good enough at it by the end of the week I was in NYC.
- relyks 4y ago
  I had the same issue, but for me, now it’s trying to get close enough to the OMNY terminal without actually touching the terminal lol
rexf 4y ago
As a former NYC resident who primarily walked & took the subway, I have no fondness for the MetroCard machines. Using the machines to refill my balance was a clunky (or at best adequate) experience. Seems like the author is nostalgic since the machines are being replaced.
teknolog 4y ago
Try living in Britain which uses alphanumerical postal codes. Confuses the hell out of everybody in the US. (It does have the curious upside that your postal code + street number is almost always a unique identifier, so most forms start by asking for those and then autocomplete the rest.)
- tialaramex 4y ago
  The UK's Post Codes are more than just alphanumeric, they're deliberately designed to make confusables reudndant. So e.g. if SO1 5LI existed, a dedicated postal OCR (or an experienced postal worker) knows that's SO1 5LI it can't be 50I SL1 or whatever such confusions never exist. Historically they were directly functional, the first part (it doesn't matter to a machine how the code is written, but they notionally have an "Out" section first and an "In" section) SO1 told sorters which local postal sorting office to send this to, SO1 would be in Southampton, a port city on the south coast because the first two letters are somewhat mnemonic. But today actually a machine translates post codes into numeric codes that aren't used by the general public (although they are published, and you can mechanically annotate bulk mail with the newer numeric codes for a discount). This is fortunate because once the codes were broadly accepted and used, they became a matter of vanity, like other aspects of addressing in the UK (and presumably other countries) For example, I grew up in Prestwood, an unimportant dormitory village (ie most of the adult population work in London, and just come back to Prestwood to sleep) in Metroland. But the nicest houses in Prestwood didn't consider themselves to be "in Prestwood" at all, they'd argue that since they're on a hillside near the more notable and expensive town of Great Missenden, they're actually living in Great Missenden. And they'd insist their post codes should match this er, Truth. So making the post codes merely a human artefact, and the real coding is numbers humans are normally unaware of, allows a house that is clearly in Prestwood to instead have an address in Great Missenden, complete with Post Code, yet the sorting people can give it to a guy whose job is to deliver to Prestwood, because that's where it actually is. (One downside to the sort of people who live in a dormitory village, beyond the fact that they aren't really around most of the time and so don't care about lack of amenities, is that they see themselves as important and powerful and so they might waste a lot of taxpayer money demanding that some minor bureaucrat "fix" their address and it's just easier to say OK than fight them. There are upsides though, they have plenty of cash, so you get pretty good loot on Halloween and decent donations to charities) Anyway, back to the HN relevant point, there are commercial products which can go from a post code to a list of "delivery points" (addresses, but the postal delivery people only really care about where the post is delivered to, so from their point of view that's what we're encoding) and that can be turned into a drop-down, or it can be auto-completed from the house number if that works, or whatever you customise. This is a place where you can do a poor job, produce a working product but maybe cut your purchase completion rate slightly, because your address entry is annoying and customers walk away. Or you can do a really slick job, but miss one edge edge case and find oops, buying your product from one town in Yorkshire was virtually impossible due to a bug (there's usually a manual entry option, but obviously normal users hate that and won't bother)
cbracken 4y ago
Reminds me a bit of using a Canadian credit card in the US and occasionally being prompted to enter your zip code. Canadian postal codes are an alternating sequence of six letters and numbers (A1A 1A1). Turns out that in most cases, you can enter just the digits from your postal code in order then right pad with zeros. Perhaps not on MetroCard machines though!
- culturestate 4y ago
  Even more annoying is trying to use a card from Hong Kong, which has no postcodes at all. Online shops will usually accept 00000, but if it asks for your zip at a physical terminal you’re screwed.
- derefr 4y ago
  I was just in SF (also from Canada), and I couldn't use their metro's Clipper card app to reload the card, because it assumed my card had a US billing address. (Not just a 5-digit zip-code box, but also a "state" selector with only options of US states, and no "country" selector.) Weird that they even bothered to list the app for download in the Canadian app-store.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    I remember back about a decade ago I went to Vancouver BC on the company's dime. Turns out the corporate card was set to "PIN priority" or whatever so you could not use it as a chip and signature card in Canada. Unfortunately US Bank sent my PIN to me at home the day I left for the trip. The metro had caught on fire the day before so I didn't actually have to deal with paying for transit. Anyways, with the Clipper card if you're going to use the app just add it to your phone's wallet and use your phone to tap the card readers. Alternatively you should still be able to top your card up at any place that sells Clipper cards – but that may take a day or two to update. As annoying as that is, both BART and Muni made paying for a subway ride with cash as excruciating as possible. You were boned if you wanted to pay with a $20 bill. Or if you wanted to use a credit card to pay for a BART ticket at the some of the ticket machines at some of the poorer stations. Reach out to Streetsblog or SFist if you want to bubble up the complaint.
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
When I visited New York (a long time ago), I recall there being an official fallback code (I think 99999). Surely not the most intuitive design, though.
- ThePadawan 4y ago
  There is an interesting time span when even some non-Americans would have a fallback ZIP code memorized - 90210. The original show (Beverly Hills, 90210) ran 1990-2000, and the remake 2008-2013.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I always use 90210 on sites demanding a "ZIP Code" because they indeed seem to notice if you just make one up like 12345. And it's the only real US postcode I know :P It never seems to cause credit card validation issues though. I guess my bank just ignores that field.
- settrans 4y ago
  Well I have good news for you: the next time you’re feeling that ineffable fondness for upstate New York at a point of sale machine, remember that 12345 is a real zip code from Schenectady.
hakfoo 4y ago
Can't the cards be loaded with cash? Every metro system I've seen (DC, Montreal, London), there was somewhere a kiosk where you could feed in notes to buy services.

by twiss 4y ago

grishka 4y ago

I don't remember the vending machines, but I do remember the frustration from having to make several attempts at swiping that thin magnetic stripe card at the turnstile at just the right speed.

acomjean 4y ago
You are not alone. 2 minutes of new yorkers doing the double metrocard swipe. (Contains opera) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KExZw3hh1Ic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KExZw3hh1Ic. And a few going over/under…
nemo44x 4y ago
It’s how the tourists are sussed out.
- grishka 4y ago
  I think I got good enough at it by the end of the week I was in NYC.
relyks 4y ago
I had the same issue, but for me, now it’s trying to get close enough to the OMNY terminal without actually touching the terminal lol

rexf 4y ago

As a former NYC resident who primarily walked & took the subway, I have no fondness for the MetroCard machines. Using the machines to refill my balance was a clunky (or at best adequate) experience. Seems like the author is nostalgic since the machines are being replaced.

teknolog 4y ago

Try living in Britain which uses alphanumerical postal codes. Confuses the hell out of everybody in the US. (It does have the curious upside that your postal code + street number is almost always a unique identifier, so most forms start by asking for those and then autocomplete the rest.)

tialaramex 4y ago
The UK's Post Codes are more than just alphanumeric, they're deliberately designed to make confusables reudndant. So e.g. if SO1 5LI existed, a dedicated postal OCR (or an experienced postal worker) knows that's SO1 5LI it can't be 50I SL1 or whatever such confusions never exist. Historically they were directly functional, the first part (it doesn't matter to a machine how the code is written, but they notionally have an "Out" section first and an "In" section) SO1 told sorters which local postal sorting office to send this to, SO1 would be in Southampton, a port city on the south coast because the first two letters are somewhat mnemonic. But today actually a machine translates post codes into numeric codes that aren't used by the general public (although they are published, and you can mechanically annotate bulk mail with the newer numeric codes for a discount). This is fortunate because once the codes were broadly accepted and used, they became a matter of vanity, like other aspects of addressing in the UK (and presumably other countries) For example, I grew up in Prestwood, an unimportant dormitory village (ie most of the adult population work in London, and just come back to Prestwood to sleep) in Metroland. But the nicest houses in Prestwood didn't consider themselves to be "in Prestwood" at all, they'd argue that since they're on a hillside near the more notable and expensive town of Great Missenden, they're actually living in Great Missenden. And they'd insist their post codes should match this er, Truth. So making the post codes merely a human artefact, and the real coding is numbers humans are normally unaware of, allows a house that is clearly in Prestwood to instead have an address in Great Missenden, complete with Post Code, yet the sorting people can give it to a guy whose job is to deliver to Prestwood, because that's where it actually is. (One downside to the sort of people who live in a dormitory village, beyond the fact that they aren't really around most of the time and so don't care about lack of amenities, is that they see themselves as important and powerful and so they might waste a lot of taxpayer money demanding that some minor bureaucrat "fix" their address and it's just easier to say OK than fight them. There are upsides though, they have plenty of cash, so you get pretty good loot on Halloween and decent donations to charities) Anyway, back to the HN relevant point, there are commercial products which can go from a post code to a list of "delivery points" (addresses, but the postal delivery people only really care about where the post is delivered to, so from their point of view that's what we're encoding) and that can be turned into a drop-down, or it can be auto-completed from the house number if that works, or whatever you customise. This is a place where you can do a poor job, produce a working product but maybe cut your purchase completion rate slightly, because your address entry is annoying and customers walk away. Or you can do a really slick job, but miss one edge edge case and find oops, buying your product from one town in Yorkshire was virtually impossible due to a bug (there's usually a manual entry option, but obviously normal users hate that and won't bother)

cbracken 4y ago

Reminds me a bit of using a Canadian credit card in the US and occasionally being prompted to enter your zip code. Canadian postal codes are an alternating sequence of six letters and numbers (A1A 1A1). Turns out that in most cases, you can enter just the digits from your postal code in order then right pad with zeros. Perhaps not on MetroCard machines though!

culturestate 4y ago
Even more annoying is trying to use a card from Hong Kong, which has no postcodes at all. Online shops will usually accept 00000, but if it asks for your zip at a physical terminal you’re screwed.
derefr 4y ago
I was just in SF (also from Canada), and I couldn't use their metro's Clipper card app to reload the card, because it assumed my card had a US billing address. (Not just a 5-digit zip-code box, but also a "state" selector with only options of US states, and no "country" selector.) Weird that they even bothered to list the app for download in the Canadian app-store.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  I remember back about a decade ago I went to Vancouver BC on the company's dime. Turns out the corporate card was set to "PIN priority" or whatever so you could not use it as a chip and signature card in Canada. Unfortunately US Bank sent my PIN to me at home the day I left for the trip. The metro had caught on fire the day before so I didn't actually have to deal with paying for transit. Anyways, with the Clipper card if you're going to use the app just add it to your phone's wallet and use your phone to tap the card readers. Alternatively you should still be able to top your card up at any place that sells Clipper cards – but that may take a day or two to update. As annoying as that is, both BART and Muni made paying for a subway ride with cash as excruciating as possible. You were boned if you wanted to pay with a $20 bill. Or if you wanted to use a credit card to pay for a BART ticket at the some of the ticket machines at some of the poorer stations. Reach out to Streetsblog or SFist if you want to bubble up the complaint.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago

When I visited New York (a long time ago), I recall there being an official fallback code (I think 99999). Surely not the most intuitive design, though.

ThePadawan 4y ago
There is an interesting time span when even some non-Americans would have a fallback ZIP code memorized - 90210. The original show (Beverly Hills, 90210) ran 1990-2000, and the remake 2008-2013.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

I always use 90210 on sites demanding a "ZIP Code" because they indeed seem to notice if you just make one up like 12345. And it's the only real US postcode I know :P It never seems to cause credit card validation issues though. I guess my bank just ignores that field.

settrans 4y ago
Well I have good news for you: the next time you’re feeling that ineffable fondness for upstate New York at a point of sale machine, remember that 12345 is a real zip code from Schenectady.

hakfoo 4y ago

Can't the cards be loaded with cash? Every metro system I've seen (DC, Montreal, London), there was somewhere a kiosk where you could feed in notes to buy services.