How not to do Code 39 barcodes...

I've always liked the program Photoimpact, and when fry's had it free after rebate, I couldn't resist. I hate doing rebates, especially when they make you do 3 x 30 dollar rebates. They give you the option of going to their website to "register" the rebate to speed the processing.

So I went to http://novadevelopment.com/rebate and typed in my rebate code of "UTW30", dutifully put in my details and got a form to print complete with barcode.

But the barcode wasn't done properly.




I thought it was kind of small so I tried to blow up the barcode and strangely enough, it wasn't black and white only, but had colored lines. Seriously?



Colored lines are sure to scan properly...

After some detective work, I established that it must be Code 39. However, it doesn't have the proper starting * and ending * characters.

This is what a proper Code 39 barcode looks like.




Methinks that whoever wrote the code to generate the barcode didn't bother to generate the start and stop codes and seems to have "shrunk" and scaled the barcode.

It may look like a good barcode but you always have to test with a real barcode reader...



I've got the two barcodes lined up, with the start stop code * shown below for reference.