the wisdom of a Danish & German apartment buildings replacing coin-fed laundry machines with the cloud (yikes!)
the wisdom of a Danish & German apartment buildings replacing coin-fed laundry machines with the cloud (yikes!)
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/13133455
It used to be that you could insert a coin into a washing machine and it would simply work. Now some Danish and German apartment owners have decided it’s a good idea to remove the cash payment option. So you have to visit a website and top-up your laundry account before using the laundry room.
Is this wise?
Points of failure with traditional coin-fed systems:
- your coin gets stuck
- you don’t have the right denomination of coins
Points of failure with this KYC cashless gung-ho digital transformation system:
- your internet service goes down
- the internet service of the laundry room goes down
- the website is incompatible with your browser
- the website forces 3rd party JavaScript that’s either broken or you don’t trust it
- you cannot (or will not) solve CAPTCHA
- the website rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
- the payment processor rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
- the bank rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
- the payment processor is Paypal and you do not want to share sensitive financial data with 600 corporations
- the accepted payment forms do not match your payment cards
- the accepted payment form matches, but your card is still rejected anyway for one of many undisclosed reasons:
- your card is on the same network but foreign cards are refused
- the payment processor does not like your IP address
- the copy of your ID doc on file with the bank expired, and the bank’s way of telling you is to freeze your card
- it’s one of these new online-only bank cards with no CVV code printed on the card so to get your CVV code you must install their app from Google’s Playstore (this expands into 20+ more points of failure)
- your bank account is literally below the top-up minimum because you only have cash and your cashless bank does not accept cash deposits; so you cannot do laundry until you get a paycheck or arrange for an electronic transfer from a foreign bank at the cost of an extortionate exchange rate
- you cannot open a bank account because Danish banks refuse to serve people who do not yet have their CPR number (a process that takes at least 1 month).
- you are unbanked because of one of 24 reasons that Bruce Schneier does not know about
- the internet works when you start the wash load, but fails sometime during the program so you cannot use the dryers; in which case you suddenly have to run out and buy hanging mechanisms as your wet clothes sit.
- (edit) the app of your bank and/or the laundry service demands a newer phone OS than you have, and your phone maker quit offering updates.
In my case, I was hit with point of failure number 11. Payment processors never tell you why your payment is refused. They either give a uselessly vague error, or the web UI just refuses to move forward with no error, or the error is an intentional lie. Because e.g. if your payment is refused you are presumed to be a criminal unworthy of being informed.
Danish apartment management’s response to complaints: We are not obligated to serve you. Read the terms of your lease. There is a coin-operated laundromat 1km away.
Question: are we all being forced into this shitty cashless situation in order to ease the hunt for criminals?
I hear you, but also fuck coins.
14Is it that you prefer not to insert coins, or that you prefer not to end up with coins? In principle a machine could take bills, but then you’d be getting coins back if you need change.
I’ve seen a laundromat with a centralized cash machine. You can insert as much in bills and coins as you want, then you tap the numbers of the machines you want to send the credit to. This single transaction made it easy if you needed to start ~3+ washing machines. If you plan diligently, you can ensure you don’t end up with coins, but then you need to bring coins.
I prefer coins because the rejection rate seems to be far lower than banknotes. But euro coins are probably more sensibly denominated than other countries. The US is a bit of an embarrassment in this regard because the $1 liberty coins never caught on, so people need a ton of quaters or small banknotes would can get quite ratty.
3Where I live (London) things are virtually cashless. Nearly everything is just paid for be contactless. I basically never have coins and it would be a huge hassle to get them.
I love it, honestly.
3
My building management uses prepaid cards you have to mail order for the first use. Then you can top them up via credit card and phone verification. My card broke, so I sent it in (on my own cost), but it got lost in the mail, so all money that was still on it was lost. Had to pay for the fee of getting a new card.
..in other news, I am now radicalized
10It really seems to showcase that schools have lost some competency with engineering. It’s a fundamental failure of basic principles when an engineer introduces a fuck ton of factors that can go wrong in place of something simple that just works. It’s an embarrassment to the engineering discipline.
German engineering used to be held in high regard¹.
It’s like the irrational drive to make everything as electronic as possible is somehow causing engineers to miss the KISS² principle.
Consider why cars do not add a supplemental steam engine.
Superficially, you see how much heat energy a fuel combustion engine wastes and might reasonably think: why not use that heat to make steam that powers a steam engine that adds power to the drivetrain? Engineers decades ago figured out that the complexity that adds to the overall system has too much of a diminishing return. Today’s engineers are a regression in their inability to avoid excessive complexity.
¹ To be fair, I don’t know if the machines were designed in Germany.. just that they are used in Germany and Denmark. Nonetheless Germans would have an expectation of high engineering standards to be deployed.
² KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.5
Oh man I went through this before, my apartment building switched to a "simple app" for their washers that adds several steps and naturally didn't work half the time instead of coins.
It's like taking the buttons out of cars in exchange for poorly designed unwieldy tablets that cause distracted driving and you crash and your car explodes and then the car behind you crashes into you because they were foolishly trying to turn up the volume on their dogshit tablet and suddenly there's a thirty car pileup and all you wanted to do was turn on your ac but the entire front half of your car is destroyed now and there's a blizzard outside so a lot of the survivors aren't going to make it anyway.
It's like that.
9My thoughts exactly!
3
Question: are we all being forced into this shitty cashless situation in order to ease the hunt for criminals?
No, we are being forced into it because we live in a technobro world where it is imperative we shove whatever buzzword is trendy at the moment into every part of our lives (aka solutions in search of a problem). Criminals are going to keep doing crime, mass surveillance or not.
Just you wait for AI powered laundromats.
9Just you wait for AI powered laundromats.
Can’t wait for that.. “you paid with an American credit card but the last time you used the laundromat you did not use the tumble dryer which is not American-like. And these are not American clothes; we detect as many scarves as a European would have, and those low crotch pants look Nepalese or African. Please contact our fraud office if you think we have made an error.”
(edit) …15 min later…
“We see that you removed the scarves and low-crotch pants from your load and that you attempted to order tumble dry service in advance. This conformist behavior is inconsistent with your KYC profile. We have therefore suspended your account for your security until you conduct a 30 minute interview with our automated KYC specialists.”
(edit) …2 min later…
“You have just been instantly validated based on personality traits due to the article you just deposited into the washing machine. Unfortunately we do not yet have a cleaning program in the database for human excrement. Please subscribe to our newsletter so you can monitor new developments and new cleaning programs.”
4
In practice this works really well... coins on the other hand have been w major pain for decades!
Dont fear technology itself. It has helped us a lot to get to where we are. Fear it when jerks abuse it to gain power and money but not when it is used to improve quality of life
2It’s not a fear problem. It’s an engineering competency problem. They designed something more poorly engineered than the technology it replaced, so it never should have been rolled out. It’s a shitshow of failures and it excludes people, by design. Everyone should be able to clean their clothes, not just a select group who have the right combination of hardware, software, banking service, and unhealthy disregard for privacy and infosec.
Having dirty clothes because your bank card with matching logo was mysteriously refused for unspecified reasons and having to walk 1km to find a machine that works is a far cry from improving quality of life. Compare that to the quality of life someone feels is hindered when they have to carry coins from their apartment to the laundry room.
Lucky people in the included group should also be wise to realise there are excluded people and refuse to use it on that ethical basis.
Fear it when jerks abuse it to gain power
Misappropriation of power is inherently central to this design. Cash gives you freedom. Electronic payments give banks power over you. And they abuse it, like when they blocked donations to Wikileaks. They abuse it when they block you from using Tor. They abuse it when they lock your account because a document on file expired. Or when they require you to form an info-sharing relationship with Google and agree to Google’s terms just to download an app exclusively distributed by Google. It’s important to always have a bank-free option.
4I understand that you hate the idea and that is fair. In practice though, this is really not a big issue and rarelly causes issues.
I happen to live in Denmark and have experienced this in person. I have had way less issues with it that when using coins. It is very inclusive and many of the apartment complexes that use them have backup solutions for people who want to top up in cash as well as solutions for when the internet is down. In real life, It is really not such a big deal as you make it.
2
OP blocked JS in the browser like a complete caveperson and came here whining.
FK u and your attitude OP. You, and those overly active pensioners is the reason laundry machines still operate on coins.
Your CC got blocked, call your bank and solve it. When everyone else goes to the laundry and doesn't have the right coins they should do exactly what? Take a trip downtown to the bank? Your local cigarettes shop isn't obligated to break you a 20.
Also, explain this to me: I barely use cash and my payments always work. Much less frequently I cannot pay for digital reasons than for "oh fk, I forgot to withdraw cash again". I remember that being a weekly problem. Nowadays I can withdraw a 100 and not worry about cash for two months. What am I doing wrong that digital payments always work for me?
-11Your CC got blocked, call your bank and solve it.
The account was in good standing worked daily, before and after the laundry attempt. When an online merchant blocks me my bank often tells me “it’s not coming from us; your account is fine on our side”.
I was never given the answer. How can you solve a problem when merchants will not tell you what the problem is? They think they are dealing with fraud so they are afraid to inform (who they regard as) a criminal. Getting information out of a merchant about a failed transaction is a social engineering effort on par with what hackers do.
It’s legal to reject foreign cards
One thing I’ve noticed is that some merchants refuse cards on the basis of being foreign issued. It may have been what my issue was with the laundromat, but I can only guess. Rejecting a card on the basis of being foreign violates the merchant agreement with visa and mastercard, but it is not law and merchants often violate the merchant agreement because Visa and MC do not enforce the contract. I have in fact reported instances of merchants violating the merchant agreement and the credit card networks ignore these complaints.
When everyone else goes to the laundry and doesn’t have the right coins they should do exactly what? Take a trip downtown to the bank?
You can, and it would be a good exercise for you to see first hand how banks treat consumers when they tell you GTFO for asking for a small amount of coins. You will see for yourself that banks are unworthy of the power you give them.
Your local cigarettes shop isn’t obligated to break you a 20.
Fuck that shop then. They don’t want your business and have failed to earn it. It’s a worthy exercise just to know where you stand.
I barely use cash and my payments always work. … What am I doing wrong that digital payments always work for me?
You’re living a boxed in life just the way they want you to.
how to live a conventional boxed-in life
You’re not traveling internationally and using a foreign cards, you’re not using Tor, you’re not blocking untrustworthy JavaScript, you solve every CAPTCHA, you’re happy to subscribe to mobile phone service and to share that phone number willy nilly with anyone who asks, you’re willing to transact with Google to install whatever closed-source apps banks and merchants want you to, you’re giving merchants and banks a permanent email address (as opposed to using an @spamgourmet.com address), you’re diligently keeping track of your ID expiry and automatically running the new card over to the bank as soon as you get a new ID card to make sure in advance the bank always has a current copy, you never move without telling the bank your new address which would cause the bank’s annual postal check on your address to fail, you’re not American (which triggers extra poor treatment by banks), you never tried to pay a recipient who the bank politically objects to (Wikileaks), you do not buy cryptocurrency, and you must be using Paypal exactly the way Paypal expects (which means no purchases in certain categories and using the account just often enough to not look suspicious but not so often that you trigger one of their countless fraud false flags). If you’ve failed any of that criteria, you’ve merely been strangely lucky.
Much less frequently I cannot pay for digital reasons than for “oh fk, I forgot to withdraw cash again”. I remember that being a weekly problem.
So the one variable that is easily in your own control and you manage to fuck it up. You got issues. But certainly whatever puts you in a situation where an ATM is far from where you need one, you can fairly blame that on the banks who are the proactive cause for ATM sparsity.
1I had to go check what community we're in because the downvotes you get don't make any sense. I guess people like dealing with metal pieces like they did 2000 years ago
0A lot of wallets are also badly designed because they lack a means to secure coins. Look for a wallet that has a zipper compartment on the side and you’ll be less annoyed with coins.
0