HAH! I just saw an error in a TV commercial!

[thewayne]

It was for the Visa Check Card, the one from Bank of America (IIRC) where your change is put into a savings account. They showed a card being swiped through a reader, it was one of those cards that have a photo on it. The photo was oriented so that you could see it properly. The problem is that the magnetic stripe is at the top of the card, thus the card was swiped through the reader upside down and would not have been read.

Comments

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

I call that "artistic license".

Actually, they would probably be the ones calling it that just to cover up the fact, hehe.

[magic-rat.livejournal.com]

I think that was intentional. Commercials pander to the lowest common denominator (IQ wise), and showing the bank card being used properly would not have made it as obvious (since it would be upside down) that it was a bank card. Not all use of subliminals in commercials involve blurry images on ice cubes.

[deborak]

Good god, that's the most annoying and paternalistic "benefit" I've ever heard a bank offer. People can't balance their checkbooks as it is, and now they'll have these odd little amounts that don't match their store receipts.

Then again, if they're stupid enough in the first place to accept a bank card that steals extra money from them (and naively wait a year and a month to get the ballyhooed 'matching' deposit), then they deserve to be micromanaged.

[snark]Won't someone think of the homeless folk who will no longer get the benefit of spare change?[/snark]