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0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

ovation1357

I'm a big fan of monospaced console-style fonts where the zero either has a slash or a dot in the middle. The O vs 0 (and other suspects) problem has bitten me plenty of times before.

Perhaps the most annoying/bizarre one was around 10 years ago when I sailed to France. This was pre-4G and also back when data roaming was extortionate. I'd tried to pre-order a French SIM card for 3G mobile data but it wasn't possible to sent it internationally, so with the help of a colleague in Paris I bought it and had it shipped to the UK.

Upon arrival in France I set about trying to activate it. There was a long code that had to be sent to me by SMS for me to enter into the registration system. The code duly arrived. I forget which way around this was but it was either mainly alphabetic with some zeroes thrown in or mainly numeric with letter 'O's but on the tiny screen of my pre-smartphone Nokia with a tiny sans-serif, variable width font I failed to discern the difference. I tried three times and then my account was locked.

It was a Wednesday in the middle of July and I learnt that it's only us Brits that conveniently glue our public holidays to the weekends: When I called Orange FR I also discovered that it was Bastille day and the correct department was closed. I can't speak French (well, very little) so I was mega-lucky to get transferred to a person who could speak English and somehow the guy successfully unlocked the account and pointed out the mistake I'd made.

I still remember just how stupid I thought it was back then to be sending out codes which include characters that can be easily misread.

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