A Look On The Lighter Side: Far from chipper about credit card chips

The Island Now

Every single time I use my credit card, I have to ask the cashier: ‘Do I chip, here?  Or do I not?’ That is the question.  Because every store I go into wants something different.”
This was the plaintive cry of a friend of mine — let’s call her Gail — about her experiences with the new, not-so-improved “chip” credit cards.
She’s got a point.
The “chip,” you might recall, is the high-tech solution to credit card “skimming” and fraud.  
All we had to do, our banks told us, was throw out our old cards (well, cut them up or shred them, first) and use the new ones they were going to send us.
Of course, that was soon followed by a hailstorm of complaints from gyms, orthodontists, and magazines across the land as recurring payments or subscriptions to them all went haywire.   
But they’ve managed to fix that.  
Now, my Amazon Prime has a zombie life of its own, renewing itself for another year on a number I haven’t been allowed to use, myself, since three cards ago. It’s my home version of the Walking Debt.
We were forced to get these cards because they were so safe … and yet most merchants don’t even use them.  
Or rather, no two use them the same way.
One store wants you to swipe the card.  From top to bottom.  
With the mag stripe facing out, please.  The next store, you are supposed to swipe in the same direction, but with the mag stripe facing the other way.
In the third store, you have to swipe from right to left, across the top of the reader (I can’t even tell you which way the stripe should be facing) — and the fourth — you guessed it — from left to right, but not across the top.  
Instead there’s a groove somewhere in the middle.
So at the fifth store, the last thing I’m expecting is to put the card in so the chip-reader can actually read it!
Then, after the machine has scolded you to leave the card in the reader, it scolds you to take your card out.
Basically, no matter what you do, it will be wrong, and the clerk will give you that I’m-being-patient look that really means, “What an idiot.”  
Because all they’ve done all day is watch people come in and bungle the one version of the transaction that their machine  requires.  
They haven’t had to schlep through five previous stores — or even more, if you’re doing back-to-school shopping — and be asked to do five different things… each one prompting that “what an idiot” look.
Next, the machine asks a series of questions:  Credit or Debit?  Cash back?  “The amount for your groceries is $437.  Is that OK?”  No, of course it’s not okay, it’s not remotely okay, I probably even have to come back later in the day for a few things I forgot.  But what choice do I have?  So I swallow my objections and check “OK” …and somehow I have just invalidated the entire transaction, and we have to start again.
Finally, we arrive at my favorite step. The big banks and credit cards stopped short of requiring us to learn yet another PIN — good call, that — so instead they ask for a meaningless electronic signature.
I say meaningless because has anybody ever challenged one of them?  You take the plastic pen, you make some illegible scrawl — or, alternatively, write “Alexander Hamilton” or “Genghis Khan”— and then it asks you, “Accept?”
Do I accept?  Does it matter?  Who’s going to sign and then say “No”?
Is this going to come up in court?
“Mr., um, Khan, do you accept your signature on this bill for $437 dollars worth of groceries?”
“Your honor, would you?  Here, look at the receipt — a few cold cuts, some frozen pizzas, some eggs, some milk…. Clearly unacceptable!”
“But haven’t you been dead for centuries?  Why are you even here?”
“I ask myself that, every day.  But this is nothing  You should see John Hancock, trying to squeeze his gigantic signature into that little bitty box….”
It’s enough to make me homesick for cash.  
Almost.

By Judy Epstein

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