Declined...

Yesterday was the first time that I had to use my PIN at my local Debenhams with my American Express card. Until as recently as last month I had to sign there. (My AmEx is a Nectar-brand card which I only use with my Nectar card!)

The Avantix and Dione Ticket issuing machines are off line machines i.e they have no online connection to the authorising banks. This may change if ever the TOC's come round to installing Wi-Fi onboard trains as both the mentioned systems do have the facility to connect to the net to authorise a transaction. It is worthwhile mentioning that the connction between the avantix pda and the dione chip system is a bluetooth connection and in my experience (I am a former guard at Northern) any other active bluetooth connection on board the train sometimes interfered with the transaction and resulted in a withheld transaction. (this does not apply of course to some TOC's who use avantix and Magic which has a physical connection to the pda)

Why does the system not seem to be able to differentiate between 'unable to authorise' and authorisation being refused? In both cases the merchant is just told that the payment has been 'declined'. What makes this bad is that some companies have a policy of charging a 'penalty' to your account if you pay your invoice/statement by credit or debit card and it is declined (the same as if a cheque or direct debit bounces). While this may (and even this is a matter of some controversy) be reasonable when the transaction is 'actively' declined because of lack of funds/credit, I think it is unreasonable and unacceptable when it is due to a failure in the merchant's (or their card processor's) procedures to authorise the payment. Yet when this happens, all the merchant can (or is willing to) the cardholder is that the payment was declined and to contact the card issuer. Yet in every (though few) case I have had of a payment made by mail/web/telephone being declined, the card issuer has stated that they received no attempt at authorising/taking the payment.

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 04:15:39 -0800 someone who may be W14_Fishbourne wrote this:-

Incorrect. At best all it does is confirm that someone who knows the number has typed it into the keypad. Very different.

Swipe and PIN would be impossible, as the number isn't there to verify. If anyone ever tries that, it *is* fraud; the only devices that can verify the PIN that way are cash machines, and they do the verification online with the bank in a way that is not available to any retailer.

Swipe and nothing is the way pretty much every automated credit card "vending" machine (e.g. all ticket machines, car park machines, supermarket self check-outs[1] etc) used to work prior to C&P, and there may well be some left, at the retailer's risk of course.

Neil

Presumably so, in the same way as JD Wetherspoon have not installed any C&P machines in any of their pubs, so they continue accepting signatures at their risk. Presumably they decided that the risk was low enough that it wasn't worth doing it until they replace all their EPOS systems at whatever point in the future.

Neil

These are the type that One Railway use - also very unrelilable

In use at JD Wetherspoon "The Spinning Mule" Bolton. The small grey hand held units with paper roll at the top near the card slot.

KW

OK, "most". I often eat in their establishments, often paying by card, and it has always been swipe and signature.

Neil

All the "pay at pump" machines I use are like this.

In message , at 14:51:28 on Sun, 11 Nov 2007, snipped-for-privacy@isbd.co.uk remarked:

The ones I use most often have had C&P added since at least a year ago. About the same time the C&P was added to my local FastTicket machines.

In message , at 13:19:14 on Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Colin Wilson remarked:

That's what I thought, but I had a big fight recently with one card issuer who said it was *completely* impossible to have a Chip and Sig card with them, even though I threatened to cancel the card, and then

Bye Eck! No Luddites at the Spinning Mule!

KW

Yes bought a pole shirt at Berlin Hbf and no pin or id was needed at all.

Guy

For pole dancing?

Paul

Too late for that, I was on my way back. (you have been reading again havent you?)

Guy

Ironically the pubs with the newer touch-screen tills which have built facilities for cards have not been upgraded for Chip & Pin, while pubs with the older tills have separate PDQ machines which have been upgraded to Chip & Pin mobile devices.

Last I heard they were still working on a interface for the newer tills to a C&P device.

Duncan

Mike Civil wrote in news:fh6fit$1h4$ snipped-for-privacy@lucy.duncodin.org:

Not that your bank will actually tell you any of this! Given that it can directly result in a declined transaction even though you had sufficient funds to pay, I'm not sure it's really on to keep quiet about it. I can see the reasoning behind not saying exactly what the numbers are, but a general explanation along the lines of the one you've just given really ought to be given to all cardholders, even if it's buried in the small print nobody reads.

Excuse me intervening with a slightly off topic question. I am a Canadian living in the UK and use a Visa card issued by a Canadian Bank, no chip and pin.

So far I have never had a problem except on one occasion when filling up at a gas (sorry petrol) station at 0400h when the attendant didn't know how to use the 'swipe' machine, but that's another story! Do I understand from the thread that there are some automated machines that will refuse a card that is not 'chip and pin'. If that is the case then the 'universal' use of a VISA card is quite severely compromised, at least in the UK. What does one do under these circumstances? That situation would cause pandemonium at an International airport!