Live data from Hacker News

81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

twitter.com

311–320 of 500 posts

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I used iOS I noticed a lot of things it considers "normal" are completely undiscoverable unless you know. Swipe down from the top. No, the other top. Click share, now click "find in page". Wait, that doesn't share at all?

"Share" is one of the worst inventions of all. What it does in phones is random across apps and platforms, and usually has nothing to do with what the word "share" means in any other context.

If you think of it as "send" rather than "share" it makes a lot more conceptual sense. Don't get caught up on the word.

It's almost always to send the content somewhere, whether it's a platform, an app, the clipboard, etc.

Not always always, but almost always.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s often just stubbornness. My dad is 85 and he can take the time to learn anything he wants to learn. But refuses to change when he doesn’t. My mom is 83, a retired school teacher and she has been using computers since 1986 and has an entire networked computer setup in her office with multiple computers and printers. She went from the original Apple //e version of AppleWorks to Office now.

> My dad is 85 and he can take the time to learn anything he wants to learn. But refuses to change when he doesn’t. I think that's natural and reasonable. I'm certainly less tolerant of drains on my time as I get older. I can imagine that, at 85, I would be making a lot of calculations about ROI on my time. Edit: For those seeing an argument in my statement above re: forcing people to use technology or forcing busine…

Great. Then you can decide whether it's worth the ROI to buy a phone for your season tickets or not.

But if you don't want to, then you shouldn't be expecting other people to accomodate you.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#313
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have absolutely no sympathy for people who choose not to get with the times. We all took our time to learn how to use a smartphone. He could have too but chose not to. Probably refused to learn to use tap to pay, ATMs, etc as well. You chose to opt out of society. You are no longer part of it. (I’m not happy that you need an app to buy tickets, but that’s a different thing — he didn’t choose not to own a smartphone…

>We all took our time to learn how to use a smartphone Were you 65 years old when smartphones came around? My grandparents had 8 years of formal education, they never figured out how to use computers when they were alive, not because they didn't want to but because it was too complicated. In a society where human dignity and respect matter you don't ignore people who can't keep up, you don't treat the elderly like ob…

You are stating that someone with no formal education or who is 65 years old can’t learn to use a smartphone. That is demonstrably false.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#314

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone. Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone. Maybe he has dexterity issues that make using a smartphone difficult. Maybe he doesn't want to install their invasive app. Maybe he finds that paper tickets are easier to manage. Maybe he recognizes that the vend…

A business doesn't have to serve all customers. You can't walk into 99.99% of USA stores and pay in rupees or yen or yuan. This is no different. They can choose what they accept and what they don't. Just like not every store takes credit cards or doesn't take certain credit cards (discover, amex) or doesn't take bitcoin.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#315

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

There is nothing reasonable about the app's privacy policy.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Turns out you must have a smart phone Any phone that can receive SMS, not a smartphone. You could purchase a burner flip phone for this purpose.

I don't think the assumption that SMS is enough is valid anymore. My wife's elderly aunt has a flip phone that can receive SMS but not MMS. We just went thru an "identity verification" procedure with a major bank last week that sends MMS, not SMS, and could not reach her flip phone. The whole ordeal was a huge pain in the ass and if my wife and I weren't there to help her it would have been completely impenetrable to…

>My wife's elderly aunt has a flip phone that can receive SMS but not MMS.

Doubt it, model number?

>We just went thru an "identity verification" procedure with a major bank last week that sends MMS, not SMS, and could not reach her flip phone.

Double doubt it, verification services do not use MMS. It would be against NIST standards and not a single verification software sends MMSs. I work in this space. MMS is being deprecated across the globe, multiple telcos have already entirely disabled MMS at the network level.

You're likely confusing getting a verification number in the banking app, not SMS/MMS.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#317

From my quick research online, it seems they've gone digital-only for season tickets because they don't want people just reselling them to turn a profit. They want actual season-long fans, so now if you transfer too many games they can track it and ban you. This is essentially anti-scalping. There's a legit justification. You can still buy paper tickets at the stadium for a single game. But not for season passes anym…

> because virtually everyone's moved to something better.

How is this better?

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For the up-front convenience you get with phone tickets Even as a person who does have a smartphone, I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster. It's only a positive trade-off for venues or whoever. If they texted or emailed me a QR code, that would be a positive tradeoff (and a texted QR code would probably work for this guy's flip phone too)

> I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster. Case in point: I traveled from St. Louis to Houston for a concert a few years ago. Before I left home to catch my flight, I installed the Ticketmaster app on a phone and verified that I could bring up the tickets. When I tried it again in my hotel an hour before the conference, it no longer worked because the fraud…

Why would you sign into Ticketmaster with an email address you don't have access to and use it to buy tickets?

Don't do that. Create a new account with the email address you have access to.

Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.

Sorry, but that one's on you.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#319
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sure how exactly this should be worded in law No policy or law shall be enacted that directly or indirectly requires a use of a computing device where any other alternative at all is possible. Where offering other alternatives presents a cost, that cost (and only that cost, with no markup) may be passed on to the consumer.

That could still get prohibitively expensive. Take the example from this article, where there's only one person still using the paper ticket option... I could see someone arguing you need a specially trained staff member or supervisor to verify your ID for anti-scalping, which they don't need to do for other e-tickets. Say only one person uses this option all season, they could be asked to pay for an entire employee'…

If the law had existed all along, it would not be a non-standard workflow.

And there is precedent on the pricing. For example, FAA is not allowed to charge any more for any service than it costs to deliver said service, which is why if i lose my pilot's license, a replacement is $3.

Re: 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone

#320
post #291
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't think of any other case pre-smartphone, where I'd be denied the ability to buy a product simply because I didn't want to have to buy another totally unrelated product as a condition. Then you must not have been around pre-smartphone? Those of us who were will remember having to buy either banknotes or checks. Later, some would accept a certain type of card that you could buy. If you weren't willing to buy a…

None of this is comparable lock-in. You could buy checks from hundreds of different vendors and none had any lock-in on you. You could use a different vendor each time if you wanted. By certain type of card I assume credit cards, which can also be had from thousands of different banks. Also, credit cards are free to get and checks cost a few pennies. Not remotely comparable to being forced to buy a phone to get to a…

Plenty of people can't get credit cards.

Plenty of people can't even get bank accounts.

It's absolutely comparable lock-in.

Post reply on HN