YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Why should I have to pay more for buses if I don't use a smartphone?

21 points DamonHD 1 hour ago 18 comments

chimneychanga 35 minutes ago | parent

I have the same issue but regarding paying for groceries. I have to pay more because I don't have access to the grocery store's coupon app because I don't use a smartphone.

lopis 31 minutes ago | parent

People with the app are paying with their person Al data. Seems like a fair deal.

LetMeLogin 11 minutes ago | parent

Not really, I still have physical fob with barcode.

bell-cot 31 minutes ago | parent

Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare. Vs. the easy route of trusting a cheap & convenient app ecosystem (helpfully run by SpyCo, CreepTech, and DataHarvest Ltd.) do all the hard bits. While the authority basks in feeling cool and trendy. Plus, smartphone fare fraud looks really complicated (vs. counterfeit metal tokens or whatever) - so the authority feels no pressure to do anything about it.

Less cynically, a good national policy might be to treat all "excess" revenues collected by organizations providing better deals to those passing various wealth/class/fluency tests ("has bank account", "has smart phone", etc.) as "poor taxes". Which are totally legal...but must be accounted for in excruciating detail, and every last farthing turned over to the greedy nitpickers staffing the Poor Tax Dept. of His Majesty's Revenue Authority. Every month, no excuses. So, to avoid that monthly misery for their so-privileged selves, the managers at every org with the paper power to collect poor taxes work hard to make sure that they are not doing so.

unified101 30 minutes ago | parent

The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash, or payment methods beyond the ones that cover 99.9% people well. You pay more for the extra hassle the whole system has to serve that .1%

You may not like or disagree with it. But it's the true answer.

metalman 10 minutes ago | parent

£264.00 per year, per head extra, is operational theft, and it will be MUCH higher than 1% of rides, and further more , cash rides will exist in perpetuity as there is NO OTHER WAY to deal with edge cases and contingencies of public transport, making the 'extra' cost look more like some wienie frustrated managers little play at despotism.

bell-cot 10 minutes ago | parent

I don't know Britain, but in my part of America the extra costs of taking credit cards are so high that most gasoline (petrol) stations give a ~3% discount to customers paying with old-fashioned paper cash. And I know little grocery stores with signs by their register, asking customers to please pay with cash - because margins are tight, and the bank takes an X% cut of every credit card payment and a Y% cut of every debit card payment.

graemep 6 minutes ago | parent

That is illegal in the UK.

CGamesPlay 4 minutes ago | parent

I don't' know what "that" you're referring to, but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a tort.

takipsizad 9 minutes ago | parent

You dont have to handle cash directly, you can have kiosks that are dedicated to adding cash to a public transit card and they will solve the problem you are talking about.

Elfener 10 minutes ago | parent

I find it weird that you have to pay every time you get on a bus in the UK it seems?

Are there no passes? e.g. in Budapest I have a monthly public transport pass and I just board the vehicle when it arrives without having to validate or purchase a ticket every time.

graemep 7 minutes ago | parent

The article is about the cost and availability of passes. The cheaper passes are apps.

zahirbmirza 7 minutes ago | parent

What is the non-standard OS that the writer is using?

girvo 6 minutes ago | parent

Graphene or similar, probably. Annoyingly a tonne of apps lock themselves out of working on it.