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Comment by skykooler | Hacker News Reader

There's rules about discrimination for specific reasons: you can't discriminate based on age, race, gender, etc. "Which credit card" you use isn't one of those categories, so it's legal to discriminate based on it. (And is often done, though not to this extent; many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.)

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>so it's legal to discriminate based on it. (And is often done, though not to this extent; many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.)

Sure, but one thing is:

"Sorry, I cannot accept Discover, do you happen to have another means of payment?"

and another one is:

"Sorry, I cannot accept Discover, and since you presented one of those cards to me once, then you are prevented for the rest of your life to enter these premises again".

The relief for that would be for the customer to talk to everyone and tell them how bad the vendor is, and go to another vendor who offers the same service.

In this case, Google is effectively a monopoly/2Big2Fail in advertising. So that remedy is not available or is impractical.

So the issue is not necessarily the behaviors (while reprehensible) but the size of the company.

Yeah the real issue is the choice. If there were 5 or 10 reasonable alternatives, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me at all. But if the options are "obey Google or fail", suddenly it's a big problem.

From Google's point of view it's more like:

"Sorry, I cannot accept this bill, and since you presented counterfeit money to me once, then you are prevented for the rest of your life to enter these premises again".

I'm not saying this is right, but I think it's the more apt analogy.

Except it's in no sense of the word "counterfeit", right? So the analogy falls apart pretty hard for me. It's more like that old Taco Bell $2 bill story.

Or like paying with a $20 and being banned, because even though your $20 is completely real, it’s a popular bill for counterfeiters to use.

It may not be counterfeit but if Google has a wealth of data indicating that this usage pattern results in fraud then it might as well be the digital form of counterfeit.

Not really. They might refuse to accept it for policy reasons but that doesn't mean that attempting to pay with it is a bad-faith act akin to paying with a counterfeit bill.

You'd never know. They'd never tell you. They'd just be giving you the silent treatment whenever you came in the building with no explanation.

At least there's a reason AND a felony. If a customer steals at my restaurant, that's a good reason to deny him service forever. But I'll probably contact police about it as well.

Well, but then, even in our not-so-perfect world, there are still some nuances based on the actual (criminal) act.

The customer would be arrested by the police, then he/she would be subject to a trial and IF actually found guilty would be sentenced to - say - six months of jail.

If he/she had actually killed someone, then he/she would probably get thirty years or a life sentence.

But here we are still talking about someone who (BTW presumably in good faith) presented the "wrong" piece of paper (a fake bill that he maybe got as change from another restaurant) at the counter of your restaurant to pay the bill, and that was (again presumably) ready to give you another "good" banknote to pay for the service.

I don't think (actually hope) the restaurant owner would call the police for this.

Unfortunately both your scenarios are perfectly legal. Credit cards are not a protected class.

Imagine if that very thing happened at a grocery store. You're in a small town, no alternative, and you've got no driving licence. Would you like to starve because of no reason?

Btw, I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm saying it SHOULD be illegal.

It should be illegal as soon as the District Attorney decides to prosecute every instance of criminal fraud.

I'm so glad it isn't my job to fight fraud. I worked at a place that would blacklist entire countries from signing up for their service, as a disproportionate number if fraudulent sign ups came from those countries. Every now and then I'd be contacted by an apparently regular customer who just wanted to try the service, and there was nothing I could do to help them, even when I really wanted to. I hated every part of feeling dealing with that stupid fraud system.

Your situation isn't even as bad as what google did. It is one thing to proactively prevent sign-ups from potentially "fraudulent" users and another to permaban existing users on their first "offense" with no explanation and/or opportunity to appeal that decision. The latter should always be an option for permabans, no matter what.

How many dollars should Google be required to spend handling these appeals? Do you think fraudsters won't appeal as well? Some don't, but actually many of the most indignant/irate "customers" are the ones who have been caught in a scam, particularly if they are caught before they've actually closed the lid on it. They probably won't blog about it, but they'll definitely try to force the company to spend as much as possible dealing with them.

Such is life when dealing with the public. Some people will need individual attention. They may well cost you more than you make from them. You make it up with the averages. If you don’t like it, don’t sell to the public.

Your local grocery store has far better customer service than this despite razor-thin margins. Payment problems? They’ll work with you. Product is bad? Refund. Sale not ringing through properly? They’ll fix it. Surely Google can afford to have some actual people to help you when you have problems.

Nothing to add, just commenting here so that I can find this distilled wisdom again when I need it.

I thought your comment to remember a comment was interesting. I hadn't tried the "favorite" link before, so I just tried it on your comment. It looks like that would also serve your purpose. Basically click favorite, and then you can see previously flagged favorites via your user profile. However, your method would be more visible if you're browsing via the threads link above.

Thanks for this, I never noticed the link and just lazily assumed it wasn't available on mobile. For anyone else in the same position: It's there at the permalink (date on comment -> favourite).

eBay? ;)

But most places won't shun you if you merely try to use the wrong card. Imaging bringing out your Amex and being escorted off the premises and permanently banned.

> many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.

But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination.

Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demonstrate the "feature" you're discriminating about can't be tied to age, race, gender, etc?

> > many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.

> But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination.

> Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demonstrate the "feature" you're discriminating about can't be tied to age, race, gender, etc?

FYI discriminating against people on the basis of age is not illegal when applied to youth, at least in the United States. This is obviously the case as we use age as a gate for many privileges.

Right. I got a terrible example.

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