Rule #1

Hey, here's a crazy idea for businesses:

Make it possible for people to give you their money.

A couple of examples...

I tried booking a flight with Atlas Blue between Morroco and the UK. After going through the whole process of selecting a flight, entering passenger details, and entering my credit card info, it told me there was a problem with my card. I called their call centre to find out why, and learned that they can only accept European credit cards. I asked if there's was any alternative way to pay, such as a money transfer, cheque, cash at the airport, or anything else. Nope, credit card only.
Apparently, it never occurred to them that:
a.) Some customers might not have (or want to use) a credit card
and
b.) Some customers of an airline might be from other parts of the world.


More commonly, I've also encountered several businesses in Europe that only accept credit cards with "chip and pin" technology -- something relatively uncommon in North America right now. It's annoying, but at least most of these businesses accept other forms of payment. But, still, is it really that difficult or expensive to setup your point-of-sale systems to accept "swipe" style cards?

Even more annoying was the inconsistency. Some companies accept only one type of card at their self-serve terminals, but both types if you paid a cashier/attendant. It was a complete crapshoot with the train system in the UK. Two identical-looking machines would behave completely differently from station to station. Even the staff were unsure whether or not a particular terminal or location would accept my card.

Of course, the dumbest part is, again, that a lot of the places were traveller focused. Surely I wasn't the first person from North America to visit these tourist attractions, restaurants, transportaion companies, etc.

Is this something that somebody forgot to teach in business school? "If people want to give you money, help them out."