Just met a few people touring Edward Scissorhands around the world, and they are currently here in Tokyo. We met them just before attempting to purchase shinkansen tickets to do some sight seeing before their season opens in a few weeks.
It was amusing for me to see somebody else experience the same problems that I have had trying to use a credit card in a foreign country. First they tried to use the automated reservation terminals located at the JR station, which failed – rejecting their cards. Next, they tried at a counter – after nearly 30 minutes in line they all got their tickets. Having to purchase them one journey segment at a time so as the transaction would get approved.
I know that these measures have been put in place to prevent / stop fraud – but with technology sure we would make the card holders life easier – not more difficult. I myself have ongoing issues trying to use my American Express card over here in Japan. I am yet to have a transaction go through as authorised (I have tried several times). What makes matters worse is that American Express in their cost cutting brilliance have decided to outsource their call centre to India. So language becomes an issue, add to that however a secondary cost cutting measure of very poorly configured VoIP – and the call becomes a waste of time.
I am disappointed that the credit card leaders have not taken the initiative, and sacrificed just a portion of their profits to implement usable security on their cards, such as photographs, biometrics or something else.
The Ticket marathon… priceless by Troy Kelly, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
