It started a few years ago. The excuse was COVID - as if scanning a piece of paper is somehow more likely to spread disease than scanning a phone screen.
But the real reason is that they want to be in control of all ticket transfers. They despise the fact that you could buy tickets for yourself and your friends and then distribute them yourself. To them, that’s scalping. This way, you need to use their app to transfer the tickets, forcing all your friends to create accounts and be subject to tracking.
The fact that this is illegal in many states doesn’t matter. They just don’t care. Once they have your money, including 100% “convenience” charges, you can just go pound sand.
Unfortunately, the only way this is ever going to change is if the performers take a stand and refuse to use companies like Ticketmaster. A few have done this, but most either don’t care or are too small to be able to change anything.
Your airport must be doing MPC wrong. At SFO using the MPC app means you sail through a short line with the CBP officer basically just checking passports against a facial scan. A couple weeks back when my wife came back from business in Finland, the officer actually just waived her through, didn’t even want to see a passport.
IMHO the MPC app is a total no-brainer. No interviews, no annual fees, no bureaucratic nonsense. You fill out a few questions in the app and the app snaps your pic while you wait to deboard the aircraft and then you just coast through. CBP officers pull up your data through a match via the facial scan they make while you come through, then they sometimes want to also see passports.
You never hand your phone to anybody or print anything, no kiosks either. All you have to do is get into the right line. I my experience they don’t even ask questions, they just nod you along. That’s been it for me. I’ve never used the MPC app and arrived at the belt after my luggage. It’s that fast. At least when I’ve used it at SFO, ORD, and EWR.
Just about every time I opened the app, it said something needed to be updated (the word was something like re-certified). Not surprising though, our DMV doesn’t have the best reputation.
“Oh sorry officer my phone is updating.” Or more likely you’re in line and …
I never tried to use the app for any real situations. I’m a geek so thought to try it out. I deleted it recently.
I also tried it in hope of ditching my wallet eventually. Doubt will happen in my lifetime. Still need physical credit card sometimes or even cash.
I know I show my DL frequently. Medical appointments may be the most common. Used to be check cashing, but that may have been decades ago. Oh, yes and car rentals.
As someone said they aren’t all going to get readers that can deal with all fifty states any time soon. And the cost for the police might not be high relatively, but look at how much stuff they already carry. Maybe it can be built into their body cams.