I don’t think I like Adelaide. Why is their metro card system so rude?

When I visited I was 15, so I wasn’t eligible for a child ticket (once you’re 15 or older there you need a South Australian student ID). Today I found my metro card so was going to register it, but you can’t register your card if you’re under 18

Then in their terms and conditions they seem to be very set on a “NO REFUNDS” policy. Okay, I lied, you can actually get yourself a refund for whatever money you load onto it, but their policy is you have to die first. If you die, your “authorised representative” can go to them with a copy of your death certificate and a letter of administration. Are they really that desperate to hold onto the few measly dollars tourists put on their cards and don’t use?

And their main train station makes me feel uncomfortable. I can’t really describe why, it just makes me feel unwelcome and sketched out:

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Other things I found weird, rude, or foreign about Adelaide:

• you swipe your card on the train, rather than at the train station
• they still take paper tickets on the trains, but you have to validate it by putting it into the metro card reader thing
• they do take bank cards but only on trams, but then I think the trams are free so you don’t need to anyway?
• only some readers take certain types of tickets - on trams the front reader takes paper tickets and metro cards, but not bank cards. Then the middle reader takes bank cards and metro cards, but not google/apple pay. Then the back reader only takes metro cards
• you have to buy a ticket for your bike
• the penalty for fare evasion there is almost 5 times what it is here ($1,250 vs $280 here). And I think you get fined the same amount of you don’t buy your bike a ticket
• they don’t call fines “fines”, they call them an expiration ticket or something?
• they put birds and shit on all their signs reminding you you’re in South Australia, which ends up feeling like you’re in papers please or another Soviet game based in the 70s/80s
• also I think if you get an expiration notice they put in on your police record and then you forever have a criminal record and a $1.2k fine because your bike doesn’t have a ticket
• they put angry warning signs on literally everything. I don’t understand how their signs feel like they’re yelling at you but ours don’t, but it seems to be the way it is
• their bus stops have terms and conditions