Do coin dealers do this to you?

[RWB]

Excerpt from a BBC article:

 

The truth is that technology has long been deceiving us. Sometimes this is ethically questionable, but in other cases the user benefits from a sense of control and reassurance that the system is working as it should. Computer scientist Eytan Adar at the University of Michigan has described a series of fascinating “benevolent deceptions” in a paper co-written with two Microsoft researchers. Take the 1960s 1ESS telephone system for instance. After dialling, a caller’s connection would sometimes fail to go through properly. Instead of a dead tone or error noise, the system would instead simply route the call to a completely different person. “The caller, thinking that she had simply misdialled, would hang up and try again: disruption decreased and the illusion of an infallible phone system preserved,” notes the paper.

 

When were you routed to the wrong coin?

[michael]

as there are grains of sand in the sahara

[BillJones]

I can't remember when a dealer routed me to the wrong coin in more than 40 years. I've done to myself, however, on a number of occasions.

 

As for you telephone example, I think the ESS machines were coming on-line in the late 1970s, and I can understand the misrouting thing as a way for the telephone people to "cover their butts." When I worked for the phone company, having a call "left hanging" was HUGE NO-NO. My guess is the programmers had it go somewhere to avoid the "left hanging" thing. That way it looked like the call had been handed properly.

 

[Walkerfan]

I can't remember when a dealer routed me to the wrong coin. I've done to myself, however, on a number of occasions.

 

+1

 

This usually happens when you fail to pull the trigger on a coin that you really want and then you try too hard in vain to find another suitable one. Unfortunately, sometimes that first coin simply can't be replaced but we all must just do the best that we can with our abilities (both knowledge and financial) and also with what is available on the market.

[WoodenJefferson]

In 1973, my brother took me into what they called a 'switching bunker' with racks and racks of electrical buzzing, clicking, flashing lights and the smell of ozone. There were no coins involved.

[RWB]

WJ -- I hope you were not hurt badly by the switches....My grandmother had some of those -- and they hurt even through long pants.

[dadams]

Would it count as above when I bought from a dealer his supposed righteous NT 3pc Silver Bicentennial set only to have it come back from the TPG AT?