Questionable Content 10: La Li Lu Le Lo

[Cikomyr]

Presumably, they don't trust their landlord to charge the the right amount.

GW

I dont think a landlord would have the ability to unilaterally charge your bank account.

[Flickerdart]

Of course the real question is, why doesnt he already have one?

Obviously he has a halberd, like any other child. He's just not got a decorative one yet.

[Thialfi]

Claire's Mom has probably always been pretty adaptable and supportive of her children, but I like how she's being portrayed now. She's got some sort of mid life crisis "screw it, I deserve to have some fun" kind of thing going on. As a man who got his first tattoo at the age of 46, I can really get behind this kind of attitude.

[Traab]

I just love how much claire looks like her mom. Im also waiting for the big reveal, claries mom is actually her dad, and her dad is her mom. Its why they were so cool about the trans thing. They went through the process themselves.

[Morquard]

Presumably, they don't trust their landlord to charge the the right amount.

GW

That's now how that works though.

I mean it can set it up like that, so the landlord gives the order to deduct the money from another account, but then it needs a written consent form, that he has to present to the bank and only allows very specific transaction, and you as the tenant can recall the money for 6 weeks after the transaction if anything fishy goes on. So it's actually very save, the landlord can't just empty your bank account (and if he does, without permission, you can sue him for theft I guess).

So actually most landlords will prefer it going the other way. The tenant will give his bank the order to send X money on the 1st of the month to the landlords account. The end.
That way the tenant knows the landlord can't do anything on his own, and for the landlord there's the safety that the money won't be pulled back after a while. It's also less work for them.

But I saw that before, that Americans seem to have a fear of giving anyone their bank account because then they could steal all the money.
Either the american bank system is so crappy that that actually works, or most people just don't understand how it works. In fact, you can more easily empty someone's account by having their credit card number, and those they apparently throw around willy-nilly.

Btw, we (in Germany) also get our pay send to our account that way automatically. No paycheck or anything we have to manually carry to the bank. Just usually the last day of the months or the first day it arrives on the account.

[SaintRidley]

We do direct deposit here too. I bank through a credit union that's not in my current state, though, so if my pay is supposed to land on a weekend, it doesn't clear until Monday. But money can still be deducted over the weekend before it clears, even on Monday.

[halfeye]

Man my rent is paid by direct debit. I've never even met my landlord. America needs to catch up with Europe already.

Standing orders are old tech. probably from the 1800s or maybe even earlier, they are paid regularly the same amount every time, you can change the payee or amount but the payor has to do it. Direct Debits the amount can be varied by the payee without the payor knowing until they get a statement.

Checks are simple, and if it's a weekend rent payment where payday falls on the weekend as well, I can more easily make sure rent is paid on time but is not withdrawn from my account before my paycheck is processed. That can happen.

What happened to me was the landlord didn't cash the cheques for several months, and I wasn't watching that closely, so the first I knew was I was overdrawn. That was an unpleasant surprise. I prefer standing orders, you know where you are with those.

That's not how that works though.

Fixed that for you, I don't agree though.

I mean it can set it up like that, so the landlord gives the order to deduct the money from another account, but then it needs a written consent form, that he has to present to the bank and only allows very specific transaction, and you as the tenant can recall the money for 6 weeks after the transaction if anything fishy goes on. So it's actually very save, the landlord can't just empty your bank account (and if he does, without permission, you can sue him for theft I guess).

I've had a Direct Debit made against my account for several hundred pounds that I knew nothing about. It was apparently a mistake, but I'm still not convinced that it wasn't deliberate.

So actually most landlords will prefer it going the other way. The tenant will give his bank the order to send X money on the 1st of the month to the landlords account. The end.
That way the tenant knows the landlord can't do anything on his own, and for the landlord there's the safety that the money won't be pulled back after a while. It's also less work for them.

That's standing orders, which are good, Direct Debits are not the same at all.

But I saw that before, that Americans seem to have a fear of giving anyone their bank account because then they could steal all the money.
Either the american bank system is so crappy that that actually works, or most people just don't understand how it works. In fact, you can more easily empty someone's account by having their credit card number, and those they apparently throw around willy-nilly.

That's all banks. If crooks get your bank details, all your money can be withdrawn. You'll probably get it back, the bank will be very nice about it once they believe you're not trying to scam them, but it will be a very inconvenient few days, especially if you have no other resources until you get your money back.

Btw, we (in Germany) also get our pay send to our account that way automatically. No paycheck or anything we have to manually carry to the bank. Just usually the last day of the months or the first day it arrives on the account.

That's BACS, it's international, maybe Russia and China as well as the EU and USA, but the whole world is pretty much connected now. It's not all good, though on the whole it's mostly better than not.

[Wraith]

I know this is a weird complaint but I find it odd how cool Claire's mom is with... Well, everything. Not that I'd rather have her complain which would also be pretty stupid but somehow this makes the comic pointless. Maybe Jeph just wanted to draw her playing bass.

I like to think of her as, in the context of the Questionable Content universe, just "a normal person".

Her best friend isn't a sociopathic talking computer or a PTSD-coping Battle Android. Nor does her father live on a sentient space station, and she doesn't live with walking, talking anime girl who is also a robot. She's just one of us, with her own hobbies, doing her own thing, and handling the QC crew's drama and deranged outbursts in a refreshingly sensible way. She provides a nice contrast to everyone else in that she isn't publicly failing at coping with a host of social and emotional problems

In a way, it's the same reason that I like Steve, only approached from the other direction. Steve is a more traditional webcomic character, fighting bears and punching Nazis and the likes - the wacky hijinks that Dr.McNinja has to deal with, in a "look how much worse your problems could be, Dora" kind of way. It makes the rest of the QC's dilemmas, by comparison, look more mundane and relatable despite being about super-intelligent AIs and a coffee shop that is more or less indifferent to poisoning and/or maiming it's customers!

[Windscion]

refresh my memory -- poisoning? I don't recall CoD being indifferent about poisoning.

[Rodin]

Standing orders are old tech. probably from the 1800s or maybe even earlier, they are paid regularly the same amount every time, you can change the payee or amount but the payor has to do it. Direct Debits the amount can be varied by the payee without the payor knowing until they get a statement.

I've never heard of standing orders, and had to Google it. Apparently those are Not A Thing in the USA. Before my apartment complex got online billing, the way I had to do it was set up a recurring bill with my bank. They would then write out the check and mail it once a month, and my landlord (or more correctly, the company that runs the complex) would cash it.

After the check got lost in the mail several times, I gave up with that and just wrote the check myself and walked it over. Fortunately I only had to do that for a few months before proper online transfers were allowed. I was doing it that way as recently as...2012? 2013? Maybe even 2014.

So yes, in the US I find it very believable that people are still writing checks and physically walking them down to their landlord - especially if their landlord is a person rather than a property company. Until very recently, there just wasn't the infrastructure that other countries take for granted, because the US is bass ackwards in a lot of ways.

Heck, we still haven't got chip and pin credit cards, and probably never will. At least we've got chip and signature cards now, but that's still way behind the rest of the world.

[Wraith]

refresh my memory -- poisoning? I don't recall CoD being indifferent about poisoning.

Admittedly that was hyperbole. Certainly under Faye's management, the Coffee O'Doom staff gave off the impression of such misanthropy more so than now. Although, having read the Specials board a few times, some of those titles might imply that poisoning isn't entirely off the table....

Heck, we still haven't got chip and pin credit cards, and probably never will. At least we've got chip and signature cards now, but that's still way behind the rest of the world.

Welcome, at long last, to the 1970's, I guess?

[Thialfi]

Welcome, at long last, to the 1970's, I guess?

As an avowed East Coast city boy, I was astounded at how little recent technology has permeated the midwest when I went for my wife's family reunion in Iowa. I guess a lack of population gives companies less incentive to invest there. It's a true education to fly to Seattle and pass over states like the Dakotas and Montana. You can look out the window and see nothing but trees, not even roads. Montana is bigger than Great Britain, but has a population just slightly over 1,000,000.

[Wraith]

The population of the USA is over 320million people. Even if we pick a number out of the air and say that half of them - who live on either coast - are being taken care of technologically, that's still leaving tens of millions of people that such companies as banks and utilities are not efficiently harvesting money from.

I know it'd take a big investment and all to set up, but it still seems weird to me; The USA is a notoriously capitalist nation, but your banks remain happy to print chequebooks and have everything move via snail mail, than to actively make it easier for hundreds of millions of people to give them more money. To me in Britain, where the technology has successfully permeated across huge swathes of the continent, it looks like there's a goldrush waiting to start but nobody is interested in it.

[BRC]

The population of the USA is over 320million people. Even if we pick a number out of the air and say that half of them - who live on either coast - are being taken care of technologically, that's still leaving tens of millions of people that such companies as banks and utilities are not efficiently harvesting money from.

I know it'd take a big investment and all to set up, but it still seems weird to me; The USA is a notoriously capitalist nation, but your banks remain happy to print chequebooks and have everything move via snail mail, than to actively make it easier for hundreds of millions of people to give them more money. To me in Britain, where the technology has successfully permeated across huge swathes of the continent, it looks like there's a goldrush waiting to start but nobody is interested in it.

The sheer size of the USA makes it difficult for new standards to be adopted.

Most people don't have Chip and Pin credit cards, so most stores don't have readers for them, so most Banks don't issue them, so most people don't have them, ect ect. As much as people go on about the various regional subcultures of the USA, there is the assumption that certain things will work the same way anywhere you go. Unless it's a considerable innovation, nobody wants to be the first to invest in a new standard. Not when they can just as easily wait to see if the standard is being adopted already, then invest in it to match the new expectation.

[halfeye]

ect ect.

http://www.beedictionary.com/common-errors/ect__vs_etc_

Sorry, but this annoys me, and it's getting more common by the week it seems.

[Traab]

The sheer size of the USA makes it difficult for new standards to be adopted.

Most people don't have Chip and Pin credit cards, so most stores don't have readers for them, so most Banks don't issue them, so most people don't have them, ect ect. As much as people go on about the various regional subcultures of the USA, there is the assumption that certain things will work the same way anywhere you go. Unless it's a considerable innovation, nobody wants to be the first to invest in a new standard. Not when they can just as easily wait to see if the standard is being adopted already, then invest in it to match the new expectation.

Its also interesting how long it can take to go mainstream even when you are trying to do it. Take debit cards as an example. I was lucky enough to start working at a time when half the stores you went to didnt even have a reader, or at best a reader that could only do credit, so I had to get into the habit of always having both cash AND my card on me. It took a year or two before it seemed like most places large and small had a credit/debit card scanner just in my town. And now its happening with the chip reader. My local stop and shop has a chip reader, my costco doesnt, but it swears it will happen "soon" Luckily its not a big deal as the chip cards can also be swiped. It just causes a bit of hesitation as we check to make sure which option we are supposed to use.

I still say checks have their place though, because having a hardcopy of your receipts is a good idea as backup in case something goes wrong with the electronic records. "Oh my computer hard drive exploded! Thank god I have the paper copies of my bank statements and such in a file cabinet." Direct deposits and automatic payments are great for ease of use and no longer having to worry about remembering to send out a payment on time. But checks arent totally obsolete.

[halfeye]

checks arent totally obsolete.

I use cheques for getting money out of the bank (I don't trust them ATM thingys), but there are a lot of people here who hate other people using them, and a lot of shops won't take them.

[Traab]

I use cheques for getting money out of the bank (I don't trust them ATM thingys), but there are a lot of people here who hate other people using them, and a lot of shops won't take them.

I wouldnt use them to go to the grocery store, but if im putting down several grand as a down payment for a car/house/whatever, a check is fine. Basically, any time im spending far more money than I would ever carry the cash for, I would use a check. Everything less, there's visa. (debit) Helps that most banks are a bit of a pain about authorizing a thousand bucks or more for a single card purchase for some odd reason. Basically, major purchases, of which I include things like rent, a check should be perfectly acceptable. Though agreed, a lot of places are getting very unwilling to accept checks at all since they take time to clear or bounce, and are a pita to deal with when they do.

[geoduck]

Or sometimes a store will only take checks drawn on a local bank.

[eee]

Actually, I'd be trying to figure out how the button could destroy the universe...

Still, it is good that Faye saved Pintsize's mortal existence with a bit of external impulse control.

Arthur's doing well.

[memnarch]

Actually, I'd be trying to figure out how the button could destroy the universe...

Still, it is good that Faye saved Pintsize's mortal existence with a bit of external impulse control.

Arthur's doing well.

Well, most buttons don't do much on their own, so that'd certainly be quite the puzzler.

[Eldan]

Not enough people use the word Eschaton. It's such a lovely word.

[Traab]

Not enough people use the word Eschaton. It's such a lovely word.

Noone uses tatterdemalion either. Its such a FANCY sounding word for what it describes.

[Cikomyr]

Its these kind of moments that make me love QC. Its not about the storylines, its about the characters.

[Traab]

I like the kid, but the mom seems seriously apprehensive or something. Relax lady, bubbles is clearing not being bothered by this discussion and is providing amusing kid answers. Lines like the school one were the way I had tons of fun messing with my niece when she was really young.

[Cikomyr]

I like the kid, but the mom seems seriously apprehensive or something. Relax lady, bubbles is clearing not being bothered by this discussion and is providing amusing kid answers. Lines like the school one were the way I had tons of fun messing with my niece when she was really young.

Maybe its a case of not pointing out people on the street.

"Look mom how tall that guy is"
"Look mom how fat that lady is"

[Thialfi]

As a Dad, I can tell you I worried that my kids with unknowingly say something inappropriate. I love that Bubbles answered in the same joking manner that I use with young kids. It's fun and it disarms the 1,000,000 "but why?" questions that would normally follow.

[Flickerdart]

I like the kid, but the mom seems seriously apprehensive or something.

At first she's worried that her kid is bothering busy people, which is a concern I see every time in meatspace. And then she's freaked out at the idea that a private citizen can pick up an entire building, and maybe next the kid is going to ask her to carry the school closer to said kid's house.

[Knaight]

At first she's worried that her kid is bothering busy people, which is a concern I see every time in meatspace. And then she's freaked out at the idea that a private citizen can pick up an entire building, and maybe next the kid is going to ask her to carry the school closer to said kid's house.

Either that or she knows that Bubbles can't pick up an entire building (it's pretty obvious the comment isn't being taken seriously) and doesn't particularly like her feeding a line of nonsense to her kid.

[eee]

WHOA!

Big step.

Go, Bubbles, GO.