Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
More than once, I've received an email with a link that goes to a PDF with a QR code, which leads to a website for usually making reservations or a payment or some such thing. Why would anyone want that??? I understand why someone might print a QR code for a paper poster, or in-person presentation, but in an email link?!? Multiple people have done this since Covid, including multiple school administrators.
When I receive these emails, I open up my computer and phone, load the PDF on my computer, scan the QR with my phone, load the site, copy the URL, email the URL to myself, then open it on my computer. Am I missing something essential about how this is supposed to work?
Relatedly, the schools around here have gone cashless. I can see how that would be convenient. But instead of using Square or something that charges 3% or so, they use a payment processor I've never heard of before that charges $1 per transaction, mostly for transactions of $5 - $10. Is it providing a real service of protecting the schools from liability somehow?
There are a tiny number of use cases where it makes some sense. If you're expecting students to receive e-mail through school accounts only accessible from (public) school computers, you don't want them putting private or especially financial information (b/c PCI DSS almost universally prohibits that) on those computers no matter how sure you've keylogger-proofed them, and you can't trust students to transfer even prettified URLs from one computer to another by mark I eyeball. Then your workflow, stupid as it seems, makes sense; the only trusted computer most people bring with them is the phone, and scanning a QR code in is the only viable way to pull the URL in.
In rarer cases, the school (or vendor) might be required to pretend that's the use case, either by regulation or internal norm, even if nobody does it.
Of course, if you were building such a system and not hilariously incompetent, PDFs support links, and you can just offer both. In many cases, the IT administration, or their leadership, is just incompetent. It's a funny joke, but it's not a joke.
Most vendors have a minimum flat fee; the difference for a 10 USD transaction would be closer to 0.4 USD at current fees. Sometimes this can have better processing, or review standards on chargebacks, or have given them a good enough deal on payment processing systems or security reviews that it's worth the slightly higher fee, especially if the school uses the same system for large transactions for non-physical goods or for some (overtly) credit-like system, which can get messy from the lowest-overhead-common-denominator. PoS systems in particular can be very expensive (>1k USD/unit, usually need to be replaced every 2-5 years depending on use levels), which can be a massive hassle and expense for an organization that has to authorize individual purchases in a slow method but can get a contract with service requirements through at the same rate. This can even pop up if you aren't seeing those point of sale units: I've seen a volunteer org that only used a physical payment processing system once a month for sports game consumable sales have to do some very complex math to figure out what made economic sense.
But if they're charging you for the fees, it's as likely or more likely that they like the system because it lets them pass the charge onto purchasers explicitly, which ranges from disfavored to banned by terms of service to potentially illegal depending on payment processor and state (and even type of card). Officially, this can get into somewhat gray areas really quickly, but it's very rare for the rules to be enforced and a lot of actual accountants don't know the rules.
Interesting, thank you!
The colleagues I've spoken with and I are generally pretty hostile to any processes that require a phone (like two step authentication and emergency notifications), since they do not provide us with phones, and there are areas of the school that do not have reception. It's interesting that someone might think of their phone as more secure in some important sense. I have made transactions by phone, but it is an absolute last resort.
It does kind of make sense that the entire point is that the purchaser has to pay the fee, they are very explicit about that, and write on flyers things like Hot Dog: $6 ($5 to school, $1 to payment processor). I got a permit to visit a government park area, where the receipt said something like: $2.00 ($0 to for access to the area, $2.00 for the reservation system). The school seems pretty serious about never paying taxes on anything, it's possible that somehow this system, while much more expensive, is somehow easier for the Finance office than normal payment processors.
Normal surcharges, like when a restaurant announces on the menu an additional 4% for using a card makes more intuitive sense to me, because someone can avoid it by paying cash. Or sales taxes, since they can sometimes be avoided (though I'd much rather they were integrated into the price, as I've seen in Eastern Europe). It seems especially petty because there is no option to pay in cash for either the park pass or the school food.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You are supposed to dispose of your desktop computer and do everything on your phone. Age of computer is over, modern youff computer skills make average boomer look like hacker wizard.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I do not want to give my children phones, I hope by the time they are teens this nonsense is past, and I can give them boring phones where they can only call, text, and use maps. Things seem to be heading back that way among the people I know and read, which heavily overlaps with the sort of person who reads Jonathan Haidt. Unfortunately, it seems about as likely that by the time they are teens we will be living in an oligarchy ruled over by AI systems.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My gut says that people are usually provided PDFs as "printable" documents; the online link is just a bonus. There's a few situations where it could be of use:
Side note: it's a very millennial trait to not want to do purchases on your phone.
With regards to the payment provider; in all likelihood, it's the only one they could get approved. Governments have a lot of weird rules around exactly who you are allowed to use especially for handling payments - I'd guess that there is something specific about this one that ticks a weird box that no one else knows/cares about (once, when working on a government website, I had to copy all their font files out of Google Fonts, and store them locally on the build because they were not allowed to access any servers that might be in the US; they also have a super weird tracking service I'd never heard of before instead of using GTM or Google Analytics, for the same reason).
Yeah, I don't have a huge problem with QR code tickets, and then I can choose to print them out, or load them on my phone. QR code coupons generated by apps that constantly change them or invalidate them when they are shared within a family unit are annoying, but they are coupons, and annoyance is expected.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Most likely the payment processor came to the school with a deal where the processor will provide and install all the hardware and software needed, while giving the school a chunk of that fee.
What would they install? It's web based, no cards are run in person, and the users type in all their information for each transaction. If someone wants to buy something live at an event, they scan a QR code, and put in their information themselves on their phone (Though that's only theoretical, everything has been preorder by phone interface, actually). People can't bring their physical payment card and run it, like retail.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link