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posted by mrpg on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the sorry-surnames-must-have-between-8-and-10-letters dept.

"A Thai Airways passenger said he was charged a $94 fee at the airport for a name change because the online booking system would not let him type his full name.

The passenger, whose name was not shared, said when he went to purchase his ticket on the Thai Airways website, his full last name would not fit in the name field. The name field only allows 25 characters for surname. The passenger tried shortening his name on the website and was finally able to buy tickets for himself and his family, the Bangkok Post reported."

Traveler charged extra booking fee for having a long last name

I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:38AM (1 child)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:38AM (#678756) Homepage Journal

    Storage was absurdly expensive back then so some coder in his infinite wisdom figured he could save the school district some ducats if the DECSystem 20 stored only middle initials

    Hilarity ensued

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:46AM (#679040)

    I went to college with someone with the same name as me, middle name and all, except my name has a 'Jr.' and his didn't -- although we were not related. When in doubt, everyone assumed I was him. I got so much of his mail it stopped being funny for either one of us.

    What was worse is that not all the college's computer systems at the time even had a place for a suffix. So sometimes the 'Jr' would be put into the first name field after the first name, sometimes after the last name in the last name field. That's been pretty much a problem my whole life.

    It can be more than just annoying. Just a few years ago, after I had cancer surgery, my workplace switched insurance companies. I had to go to the emergency room for a sudden complication, and they said the new insurance didn't exist. Fortunately I thought to tell them to try to type in 'lastname Jr' for the last name field, and sure enough, there it was. In the transition, the old insurance had a suffix, and the new insurance didn't. If they'd had to proceed without insurance authorization, that might have cost me several thousand dollars.