AmEx Swipe Issue - Costco Cards

Costco AMEX do not swipe here either. Mini-Mag reader. We manually enter them and make an imprint of the card. First Data thru Vital.

Marc

RMS v1.3.0203

To those that have taken the Costco issued AmEx cards:

I am not looking for new merchant ideas - just to know if anyone out there is having issues with the cards.

My Processor: Citibank - on Vital platform. Keyboard: Latest model (my board is not here) of Cherry, integrated wedge

Thank you in advance -- Jocelyn

Thanks Jeff. I have not physically gotten my hands on a card yet to test against my Cherry programming. Users have told me the cards fail when swipped, but then when manually entered receive a 3 digit auth code - which is weird for an auth.

Well - go figure why those two love each other so much now. I am sure Costco got the best rates ever from their partnership, and AmEx is making up for it on the back end of users having to pay for the manual entry - which BTW makes a chargeback impossible to beat even with *proper* documentation and processing. Argh.

I think one of my favorite parts of the relationship is this:

- Wellsfargo recently published some marketing to all card members in my area. They are really pushing their debit card points rewards *for all non pin entered trxs*. With their mktg, they also took the opportunity to list all of their preferred vendors - Costco is one of the 30 listed.

- So now the counterpart of this: When I make purchases at Costco, I do not have the option to *bypass pin and use as credit* - so no Wellsfargo debit points.

- I would just think that if I were making someone an approved vendor - I would do so with the understanding that they play for us and with us.

-- Jocelyn

"Jeff @ Check Po> Jocelyn,

to the end of the swiped info and RMS cannot understand it. It will work as a hand/manually entered card number though at an additional cost on the transaction..

swiped + sign (it swipes in Notepad as

Costco membership number).Haven't spent the time yet to figure it out yet.