Reviews are in and it’s official: CASHLESS Rebate maps suck

Apple Pay Suica, Japan Now, Maps, Mobile and Contactless Payments, NFC-Felica, QR Code Payments, Signage, Suica
  • The CASHLESS Rebate map app and
  • the 1 star reviews

Japan App Store reviews are fun to read because the Japanese write wonderfully scathing reviews. Never ‘this sucks’, but a numbing dry, oh so super dry analysis of everything wrong. Every last detail. It’s the ultimate put down kiss off because, while Japanese are endlessly forgiving of honest mistakes, they have zero tolerance for professional ‘I know better than you’ fools who make mistakes.

So they are, rightfully, ripping the CASHLESS iOS/Google Play Rebate Map app for being useless with a parade of one star reviews. Too bad the App Store doesn’t come with a zero review star. I have used the iOS app these past few days and it suffers the same problem of Apple Maps Japan Point of Interest mess: unreliable data, poorly managed, seldom updated.

Case in point, the Cafe Colorado in Ikegami is listed in the CASHLESS map for credit cards only, but the store owner got AirPay just for the CASHLESS program and proudly displays the full range of cashless options next to the register with the CASHLESS 2% rebate logo. He has assured me that all options are good for the rebate.

  • Cafe Colorado Cashless
  • The Suica receipt does not show any sign of a rebate

But the receipts do not show any sign of a rebate. This might be normal for a post-transaction rebate via JRE POINT, it might not. It might be a AirPay problem. I called the CASHLESS Rebate program customer support line and was instantly connected to a person with no voice machine option nonsense. The support person was nice and quickly said the map data is not current, the best course of action is asking the store. I called again and talked with another nice support person who basically gave me the same answer. Neither answer was the one I was looking for. A mystery to be solved another day.

A Japanese friend complained about the CASHLESS rebate program so far, “How does the Japanese government expect people to use cashless when it’s serving up so much stupid with it.” Very well put, the once mighty Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) tripped and fell on a stupid stick gouging out their collective brain. Let’s hope they find it and start serving up some common sense. Until then, forget the CASHLESS smartphone map and stick with the ground truth.

UPDATE: According to Japanese media news reports the maps mess is not a METI mistake, many settlement companies input wrong data sets into the maps database and now it has to be sorted out. Hopefully sooner than later.

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