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posted by
mrpg
on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:32AM
from the sorry-surnames-must-have-between-8-and-10-letters dept.
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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Traveler Charged Extra Booking Fee for Having a Long Last Name
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TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Sunday May 13 2018, @10:36AM
No, this is a human problem, not a computer problem. Everybody* should know that computers are dumb and can't cope with unanticipated circumstances - they can save a vast amount of labour but we still need human judgement in the loop to cope with the exceptions. That means, a human who is both able and authorized to make judgements such as...
Hmm... this person was obviously prevented from entering their full name by our computer system, I can see that the name on the system is a truncated version of the full name they are giving me now, so they're clearly not attempting identity fraud, so of course we'll change it for free...
...not a human who, however intelligent they may be, is required by company policy, on pain of dismissal, to behave like such a complete moron who, by comparison, makes ELIZA look like the singularity arrived in 1964 - and is not allowed to take any action that isn't covered by their script. I note that, eventually, this one got passed up the food chain until it reached someone who was authorised to engage a second brain cell and the charge was refunded.
*Notable exception for Uber and anybody else that thinks self-driving cars will be ready for mass deployment any time soon...