by Charles Miller

For all of the hullabaloo over Artificial Intelligence (AI) the fact remains that computer systems can be incredibly lacking in common sense. This is never truer than when trying to enter data into a form online. Sometimes when filling out a form there is no clue as to whether you should enter a date as month first or day first, or your credit card number with spaces or without spaces. What is really frustrating is to experience that the computer lacks the intelligence to recognize things that would be obvious to a child.

For example, many times when filling in a form online a computer sees, "St Louis" and "St. Louis" and "Saint Louis" as being three different cities. And the computer might see "Texas" and "Tex" and "Tex." (with a period) and "TX" and "Tx" as five different states. (But this is not the place to discuss why some Texans want to split the state of Texas into five states.) There is some hope that in the future AI will be deployed to help deal with this problem. (The website problem, not the political one.)

So why is this so important? When using a credit card online it is common for the website to ask for you to enter not only your credit card details but to confirm your mailing address. This is automatically checked against what the bank has on file and is an extra layer of security to protect you from fraudulent use of your account. In order to get past this you must enter your address exactly as your bank has it on file. Not all banks do this, and some are stricter than others… as I will explain next.

Once when trying to help someone over the phone she asked me to try to see if I could enter her credit card number and address into a website. I was speaking to her by phone while sitting at my own computer. I asked her to read me her name and address exactly letter-for-letter the way it was printed on her credit card bill. She somewhat untruthfully claimed that is what she did, but I was later to learn she "didn't think it was important" to be accurate. I tried entering the address she gave me only to have it rejected. I then tried spelling out NW as Northwest. That did not work so I had to give up before trying too many times.

Soon enough the lady learned even though she "didn't think it was important" to give me her correct address, her bank did think it was very important. They cancelled her credit card due to suspicious activity and sent a replacement credit card to the address she did not think was important… and which happened to be almost 3,000 miles from San Miguel. This created two problems; one was that she now had no credit card she could use, and the second problem was how to get the replacement card delivered to Mexico from that address she did not think was important.

You can bet that the next time I found myself in that situation with someone else I emphatically required the person to give me their address letter-for-letter, and space-for-space, and punctuation-for-punctuation EXACTLY as it appeared on their credit card bill. I have also become extremely resistant any time someone tells me "just try again" because I know that entering the wrong information too many times can appear to be someone trying to hack into an account. And now you too know that trying the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome is sometimes a really bad idea.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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