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In The News ~ Not Us


SuzanneM

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Yiiiikes. 😬 They had the UDP and left a gratuity, and when entering the gratuity, the person entered the ID number instead of the dollar amount, and it charged the card.

Looks like a software usability issue at the heart of it all. As someone who works in software, I definitely know how important usability is for an application. It can make all the difference. Very smart people can make very big mistakes. 

https://www.cruisehive.com/cruise-line-accidentally-charges-couple-almost-100k-for-dinner/81263

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Ouch that's stressful. Would figure the software would have a business rule configured to catch that when it's being entered.

Does Royal always hit the card with an authorization for each purchase? Figured it would be just once at the end when you settle your account, then again close to 100,000 is it's own beast. Part of this is on the credit card companies, once reversed that authorization should drop immediately.

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"The couple does emphasize, however, this was not the fault of their server, who was hard-working, kind, and attentive during the meal. This is a tech problem and a communication failure, not the fault of the ship’s crew."

What? It's absolutely the fault of the server who wasn't paying attention to what they were doing. Was it an innocent mistake? Sure, but certainly not a tech problem.

 

27 minutes ago, tjcruisers said:

Does Royal always hit the card with an authorization for each purchase?

I commonly get 4-5 authorization charges per cruise.

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1 hour ago, tjcruisers said:

 

Does Royal always hit the card with an authorization for each purchase? Figured it would be just once at the end when you settle your account, then again close

I've had both types of holds. On our cruise a couple weeks ago we both had holds of 99.75 (no, I don't know why they just didn't take a solid 100) but in the past, I've gotten "charges" for each seapass swipe on my CC then they go away just after the cruise ends.

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2 hours ago, SuzanneM said:

Looks like a software usability issue at the heart of it all. As someone who works in software, I definitely know how important usability is for an application. It can make all the difference. Very smart people can make very big mistakes. 

But you can't bullet proof every oops scenario. It's just not practical.

Looks like RC uses Barcodes, Inc for the POS system

https://www.barcodesinc.com/news/royal-point-sale-system/

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This thread kinds of reminds me when I bought my 2nd house. The day after it closed I went shopping and couldn't use my debit card (something along the lines unable to process). Coming home I swung by the back machine and tried it, got an insufficient funds error. Got home and checked on web banking, somehow instead of putting the price of my new home against the mortgage I just took out they put it against my chequing account. That was one big overdraft

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5 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

"The couple does emphasize, however, this was not the fault of their server, who was hard-working, kind, and attentive during the meal. This is a tech problem and a communication failure, not the fault of the ship’s crew."

What? It's absolutely the fault of the server who wasn't paying attention to what they were doing. Was it an innocent mistake? Sure, but certainly not a tech problem.

It's both. I've found over the years (I managed a software department for five years) that roughly 90% of the issues and mistakes one sees in the workplace are ultimately a fault of bad processes or systems. Sure, it's the human making the mistake, but the system or process often has a number of flaws that invite mistakes and make them unavoidable long-term. They *will* happen because the process or system is not optimized for real usage. This can sometimes be aided by better training, for that one person and others to be on the lookout for this mistake, but at the end of the day, what will fix it long-term is updated software where this mistake isn't nearly as likely. 

12 minutes ago, tjcruisers said:

This thread kinds of reminds me when I bought my 2nd house. The day after it closed I went shopping and couldn't use my debit card (something along the lines unable to process). Coming home I swung by the back machine and tried it, got an insufficient funds error. Got home and checked on web banking, somehow instead of putting the price of my new home against the mortgage I just took out they put it against my chequing account. That was one big overdraft

Yikes!!

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