this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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the wisdom of a Danish & German apartment buildings replacing coin-fed laundry machines with the cloud (yikes!) (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz to c/europe@feddit.de
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/13133455

It used to be that you could insert a coin into a washing machine and it would simply work. Now some Danish and German apartment owners have decided it’s a good idea to remove the cash payment option. So you have to visit a website and top-up your laundry account before using the laundry room.

Is this wise?

Points of failure with traditional coin-fed systems:

  1. your coin gets stuck
  2. you don’t have the right denomination of coins

Points of failure with this KYC cashless gung-ho digital transformation system:

  1. your internet service goes down
  2. the internet service of the laundry room goes down
  3. the website is incompatible with your browser
  4. the website forces 3rd party JavaScript that’s either broken or you don’t trust it
  5. you cannot (or will not) solve CAPTCHA
  6. the website rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
  7. the payment processor rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
  8. the bank rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
  9. the payment processor is Paypal and you do not want to share sensitive financial data with 600 corporations
  10. the accepted payment forms do not match your payment cards
  11. the accepted payment form matches, but your card is still rejected anyway for one of many undisclosed reasons:
    • your card is on the same network but foreign cards are refused
    • the payment processor does not like your IP address
    • the copy of your ID doc on file with the bank expired, and the bank’s way of telling you is to freeze your card
    • it’s one of these new online-only bank cards with no CVV code printed on the card so to get your CVV code you must install their app from Google’s Playstore (this expands into 20+ more points of failure)
  12. your bank account is literally below the top-up minimum because you only have cash and your cashless bank does not accept cash deposits; so you cannot do laundry until you get a paycheck or arrange for an electronic transfer from a foreign bank at the cost of an extortionate exchange rate
  13. you cannot open a bank account because Danish banks refuse to serve people who do not yet have their CPR number (a process that takes at least 1 month).
  14. you are unbanked because of one of 24 reasons that Bruce Schneier does not know about
  15. the internet works when you start the wash load, but fails sometime during the program so you cannot use the dryers; in which case you suddenly have to run out and buy hanging mechanisms as your wet clothes sit.
  16. (edit) the app of your bank and/or the laundry service demands a newer phone OS than you have, and your phone maker quit offering updates.

In my case, I was hit with point of failure number 11. Payment processors never tell you why your payment is refused. They either give a uselessly vague error, or the web UI just refuses to move forward with no error, or the error is an intentional lie. Because e.g. if your payment is refused you are presumed to be a criminal unworthy of being informed.

Danish apartment management’s response to complaints: We are not obligated to serve you. Read the terms of your lease. There is a coin-operated laundromat 1km away.

Question: are we all being forced into this shitty cashless situation in order to ease the hunt for criminals?

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[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I hear you, but also fuck coins.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Sometimes I hate that I can't downvote. This is just a very silly and mindless opinion. What the heck is your problem with having an option? With a possibility?

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh no! An opinion I don’t agree with! Oh no! Our arrow buttons are useless! Quick! Insult him!

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That wasn't just an insult, but honest opinion. The fact that you didn't respond to the questions shows that it was actually a mindless opinion. "I don't want to deal with this, I don't even want to see this, take it away, I don't care if others wanted to use it!"

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Fuck coins. They actively make the world worse.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Restrictions and surveillance of digital payment systems even more. But at least that's convenient, right?

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

I think it’s too hard for many to grasp the full consequence of surveillance via forced banking. They link cash to privacy which they then mentally reduce to “confidentiality”. It’s a lossy reduction but in the naïve brain privacy=confidentiality. They don’t realise privacy is about /control/, not just purely infosec concept of confidentiality, which then leads to the mental short-sightedness of thinking they’re dealing with “paranoia” (which is hinted in vzq’s next reply).

From there, I don’t have the answer as far as how to convey the full depth of the whole concept of privacy within the span of a post or comment that’s short enough to not be automatically ignored.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago

Oh no! I am being berated by an internet stranger that sounds like a nineteen nineties “do you know where your children are” special. What will I do?

[–] FarFarAway@startrek.website 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

OK, but you can attach a piece of tape to a coin and use just 1 coin to power the entire load. Unless it has one of those load all the coins into a tray at the same time and push them in mechanisms. Which, in that case, fuck coins.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are you suggesting I engage in fraud and theft of service?

[–] FarFarAway@startrek.website 2 points 5 months ago

Well, shit.

Now that you put it that way.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Is it that you prefer not to insert coins, or that you prefer not to end up with coins? In principle a machine could take bills, but then you’d be getting coins back if you need change.

I’ve seen a laundromat with a centralized cash machine. You can insert as much in bills and coins as you want, then you tap the numbers of the machines you want to send the credit to. This single transaction made it easy if you needed to start ~3+ washing machines. If you plan diligently, you can ensure you don’t end up with coins, but then you need to bring coins.

I prefer coins because the rejection rate seems to be far lower than banknotes. But euro coins are probably more sensibly denominated than other countries. The US is a bit of an embarrassment in this regard because the $1 liberty coins never caught on, so people need a ton of quaters or small banknotes would can get quite ratty.

[–] RidderSport@feddit.de 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, though in the building I lived in, you'd have to use 50 cent coins and you'd need 2,50€ to start them. The local banks all refused to exchange anything for 50 cent coins unless you'd take 200€ worth

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Those engineers took simple design to the fullest extent. But then the landlord dropped the ball or cheaped out by not offering a change machine which could easily be fed when emptying the other machines.

I must say I like the side-effect. It pressures people to use cash in shops. This is a good thing because the #warOnCash is going the way Bill Gates wants it to, which gives more power to the banks and corporations at the expense of disempowering the people. The funny thing about your interaction with the bank is that it serves as yet another instance of banks not using their position ethically. Banks love the war on cash, so making it hard to withdraw or deposit serves as more proof that giving banks exclusive control is a bad idea.

Have you tried this hack? → Buy groceries and intentionally overpay with your card and ask for the difference as cash back in the form of as many as 50¢ coins as the cashier is willing to give?

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I generally loathe cash. But coins in particular.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Bill Gates and the https://betterthancash.org alliance loves you.

I used to be that way. Used a card to pay for everything; even just a candybar. Then I noticed the banks abusing their power, rampant data breaches because banks and credit bureaus don’t give a shit about data protection, large banks financing private prisons and fossil fuels, small banks investing with large banks, banks abusing KYC to collect far more than legally required, banks taking extortionate fees from merchants, banks nannying consumers by blocking wikileaks, banks forcing people to contract with Google to get their app then forcing people to upgrade their phone hardware (creating more e-waste), etc.

At one point I came to realise I’ve recklessly made myself part of those problems by using banks more than necessary. Banks need a shorter leash and consumers should be holding that leash.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago

I mean, sure. But I’m not going to lug around cash like it’s the 1970s. Doesn’t even fit in my wallet. That I never take with me.

[–] ECB@feddit.de 3 points 5 months ago

Where I live (London) things are virtually cashless. Nearly everything is just paid for be contactless. I basically never have coins and it would be a huge hassle to get them.

I love it, honestly.

[–] sir_pronoun@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My building management uses prepaid cards you have to mail order for the first use. Then you can top them up via credit card and phone verification. My card broke, so I sent it in (on my own cost), but it got lost in the mail, so all money that was still on it was lost. Had to pay for the fee of getting a new card.

..in other news, I am now radicalized

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It really seems to showcase that schools have lost some competency with engineering. It’s a fundamental failure of basic principles when an engineer introduces a fuck ton of factors that can go wrong in place of something simple that just works. It’s an embarrassment to the engineering discipline.

German engineering used to be held in high regard¹.

It’s like the irrational drive to make everything as electronic as possible is somehow causing engineers to miss the KISS² principle.

Consider why cars do not add a supplemental steam engine.Superficially, you see how much heat energy a fuel combustion engine wastes and might reasonably think: why not use that heat to make steam that powers a steam engine that adds power to the drivetrain? Engineers decades ago figured out that the complexity that adds to the overall system has too much of a diminishing return. Today’s engineers are a regression in their inability to avoid excessive complexity.

¹ To be fair, I don’t know if the machines were designed in Germany.. just that they are used in Germany and Denmark. Nonetheless Germans would have an expectation of high engineering standards to be deployed.
² KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

[–] MiddleKnight@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Only taking cash does not "just work" in denmark, because many people don't walk around with cash anymore.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It’s not spontaneous shopping. People don’t walk around with dirty clothes either. A laundromat inside an apartment building for the residents living therein is not in the market for people walking around. Customers do not need to carry around cash and need not buy a special wallet because they are walking directly from their apartment to the basement on a planned basis. They can put the cash in a sandwich bag and set it on top of their clothes.

Cash is inherently inclusive.Cash accepts all people without exception. So cash just works from all standpoints: socioeconomic, legal, and from an engineering point of view. If someone does not like to touch money, that’s not cash failing to work; that’s a manifestation of Tyranny of Convenience (as described by Tim Wu) by someone choosing not to touch money. Such consumers are their own problem. Laughable to call that preference an engineering failure.

Banking is inherently exclusive.Many demographics of people are involuntarily excluded. Banks have refused to open accounts for me. Banks are in the private sector and have a right to refuse service to people. European banks cannot refuse someone a “basic” account, but those basic accounts are not required to be free of charge and they cannot accept cash deposits so if you’re starting with cash such accounts are broken from the start. For people who banks accept there are countless disempowering circumstances consumers are forced to accept in return. Unlike those who don’t like to touch cash, people voluntarily objecting to banking have countless good compelling reasons for not pawning themselves.

Banks violate human rights when they treat people differently based on their national origin. The privacy abuses actually also undermines human rights, as well as environmental harm inherent in forced periodic phone upgrades and in the banking industry’s fossil fuel investments. So when a consumer demands #forcedBanking because they don’t personally like the burden of carrying cash, it’s rather selfish that they prioritize some trivially esoteric convenience/novelty above human rights and also above people’s need to be free from nannies. So there is a very strong case for people to not bank by choice even if the bank accepts them. By comparison, it’s fair to dismiss anyone who supports forced banking simply on the basis of not liking the inconvenience of cash.

A forced banking design violates several rules of the IEEE Code of Ethics

“1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;”

“II. To treat all persons fairly and with respect, to not engage in harassment or discrimination, and to avoid injuring others.”
…
“7. to treat all persons fairly and with respect, and to not engage in discrimination based on characteristics such as race, religion, gender, disability, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression;”

The banking sector discriminates against people on the basis of national origin. So when an engineer designs as cashless system, they violate ¶7 of the IEEE code of ethics.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Oh man I went through this before, my apartment building switched to a "simple app" for their washers that adds several steps and naturally didn't work half the time instead of coins.

It's like taking the buttons out of cars in exchange for poorly designed unwieldy tablets that cause distracted driving and you crash and your car explodes and then the car behind you crashes into you because they were foolishly trying to turn up the volume on their dogshit tablet and suddenly there's a thirty car pileup and all you wanted to do was turn on your ac but the entire front half of your car is destroyed now and there's a blizzard outside so a lot of the survivors aren't going to make it anyway.

It's like that.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 months ago

My thoughts exactly!

[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Question: are we all being forced into this shitty cashless situation in order to ease the hunt for criminals?

No, we are being forced into it because we live in a technobro world where it is imperative we shove whatever buzzword is trendy at the moment into every part of our lives (aka solutions in search of a problem). Criminals are going to keep doing crime, mass surveillance or not.

Just you wait for AI powered laundromats.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Just you wait for AI powered laundromats.

Can’t wait for that.. “you paid with an American credit card but the last time you used the laundromat you did not use the tumble dryer which is not American-like. And these are not American clothes; we detect as many scarves as a European would have, and those low crotch pants look Nepalese or African. Please contact our fraud office if you think we have made an error.”

(edit) …15 min later…

“We see that you removed the scarves and low-crotch pants from your load and that you attempted to order tumble dry service in advance. This conformist behavior is inconsistent with your KYC profile. We have therefore suspended your account for your security until you conduct a 30 minute interview with our automated KYC specialists.”

(edit) …2 min later…

“You have just been instantly validated based on personality traits due to the article you just deposited into the washing machine. Unfortunately we do not yet have a cleaning program in the database for human excrement. Please subscribe to our newsletter so you can monitor new developments and new cleaning programs.”

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In practice this works really well... coins on the other hand have been w major pain for decades!

Dont fear technology itself. It has helped us a lot to get to where we are. Fear it when jerks abuse it to gain power and money but not when it is used to improve quality of life

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It’s not a fear problem. It’s an engineering competency problem. They designed something more poorly engineered than the technology it replaced, so it never should have been rolled out. It’s a shitshow of failures and it excludes people, by design. Everyone should be able to clean their clothes, not just a select group who have the right combination of hardware, software, banking service, and unhealthy disregard for privacy and infosec.

Having dirty clothes because your bank card with matching logo was mysteriously refused for unspecified reasons and having to walk 1km to find a machine that works is a far cry from improving quality of life. Compare that to the quality of life someone feels is hindered when they have to carry coins from their apartment to the laundry room.

Lucky people in the included group should also be wise to realise there are excluded people and refuse to use it on that ethical basis.

Fear it when jerks abuse it to gain power

Misappropriation of power is inherently central to this design. Cash gives you freedom. Electronic payments give banks power over you. And they abuse it, like when they blocked donations to Wikileaks. They abuse it when they block you from using Tor. They abuse it when they lock your account because a document on file expired. Or when they require you to form an info-sharing relationship with Google and agree to Google’s terms just to download an app exclusively distributed by Google. It’s important to always have a bank-free option.

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I understand that you hate the idea and that is fair. In practice though, this is really not a big issue and rarelly causes issues.

I happen to live in Denmark and have experienced this in person. I have had way less issues with it that when using coins. It is very inclusive and many of the apartment complexes that use them have backup solutions for people who want to top up in cash as well as solutions for when the internet is down. In real life, It is really not such a big deal as you make it.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It is very inclusive

Not in the slightest. Here’s what’s inclusive: cash. Cash does not discriminate against anyone. Banks are a shit show. It was hard to get a Danish account open and funded, and then once it was funded the money was trapped - could not be transferred out internationally.

backup solutions for people who want to top up in cash

They told me to pound sand. And they could not tell me why my bank card was refused despite the account being in good standing.

solutions for when the internet is down.

How so? There is no full-time on-site custodian who can override anything. There is no way to insert cash. The system is outsourced and the apartment managers only work during business hours. Once they had me locked into a lease agreement, they had no motivation to accommodate. Imagine if they did have to dispatch someone to run the machine for me, and then add it to my bill if the system allows it. The human effort every time I need to wash clothes would have made them quickly realise the foolishness of this system.

There is no culture of inclusion with Danish businesses. There are cashless retailers on university campuses. If you want a sandwich at 2pm and you only have cash, you’re stuffed. If you don’t have Facebook, you are excluded from some university announcements. If you do not have a mobile phone service to do the required 2FA for some university resources, they tell you to pound sand. Then if you cheat and use a free pinger number, they take action against you. You cannot even make a photocopy in some places without a CPR number. Denmark is a society that pushes digital exclusion to the greatest extent I have ever experienced.

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

The truth is, that you are the first person that I hear has had issues with it and to be fair it sounds like you are creating the issues

If this is the hill you pick to die on, go ahead. You may even be right! But is it really worth it?