Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal

You know what irks me? Besides the fact that the fine for not paying is atrociously high, besides the fact that such a transgression can even show up on a Visa query, besides the fact that this couldn’t be resolved without a court, besides the fact that the reporter missed their court date...<p>What irks me is that some company spent millions of taxpayer dollars designing this contactless payment system and couldn’t be bothered to provide a real-time readout to the ticket inspector where the passenger could just provide their name to confirm they paid.<p>But even more than <i>that</i>, I irks me that TFA came away from this experience hating Apple Pay. This singular component in the entire chain which was completely blameless.

I think this is a systems design problem in the category of failing to include a functional system&#x2F;business method for reversing an invalid record, i.e., an incorrect record of non-payment.<p>SF Muni also has a phone payment app, but even most people who don’t use it do not have a physical receipt. If for any reason the Muni inspector can’t scan your BART&#x2F;Clippper card there needs to be a reasonable way to use other proof of payment to correct an erroneous record of non-payment. This is the same situation as if one&#x27;s phone died after using Apple pay to get on the bus.<p>The failure to create system methods&#x2F;business methods that allow for reasonable correction of erroneous records is unethical, but unfortunately common. Think of: cleaning up after “identity theft”, or trying to get removed from the the no-fly list. I privately think of this as a 27b&#x2F;6 error.

Eh. In Easter Europe passengers beat up inspectors.<p>Also, it&#x27;s illegal not to have an ID with you at all times. So people usually carry wallets. I carry cash all the time. Better to get robbed (small chance) than get stuck somewhere without money (i.e. CC doesn&#x27;t work because the bank is having &quot;software issues&quot; or the POS terminal is broken or whatever...)

The original FT story <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;e8a177d4-dfae-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;e8a177d4-dfae-11e9-9743-db5a37048...</a><p>Frankly, this remark by a <i>zdnet</i> journo was rather bizarre:<p>&gt;She&#x27;s a writer for The Financial Times. Please don&#x27;t let any personal thoughts about that get in the way of her story.

&gt; Next, she heard that her court case had happened and she&#x27;d been found guilty.<p>If she missed her court date then I don&#x27;t know what she expected... You will lose by default if you don&#x27;t go.

This scenario is like the early days of a dystopian future of course. But I am constantly irritated by people who carry only their cell phone and use it for everything, and if it goes out (runs out of power or dies) they are helpless. Geeze

Ignoring the whole court case thing (it&#x27;s ridiculous, but not really relevant to the tech itself), this story includes a most of the issues with using a smartphone for payments that are why I don&#x27;t consider doing that to be a wise thing.

&gt; she was charged with, well, not providing proof of payment.<p>How is this not guilty until proven innocent? You have to prove you paid, otherwise you&#x27;re assumed guilty.

I’ts not tech to blame but lack of care&#x2F; planning. If she’d had paid cash and get a paper ticket and lost such ticket the same thing would happened.

I guess the moral of this story is, if you&#x27;re about to get on the bus, make sure you have enough battery left on your phone to last until you reach your destination. I use my phone to pay for a bus ticket every day, but I only have to show it when I get on. If I only had 1% left on the battery, I&#x27;d probably buy a paper ticket before heading to the gate though, just to be safe.