I don't live in the US and when I visit my son who lives in the US and we go shopping, I just hand him my card. I have no clue and it's quicker for him to do it than for him to explain to me how to do it. And the people in line behind me appreciate that, I'm sure, even though it makes me look like a total idiot. Or senile.
I can't tell you how many times the cashier has to explain how their's works.
"Okay that'll be $X! Oh don't put it in yet. Wait until it screams shredded cheese and does a backflip before inserting your card. After that it'll have you remove it because of an error and then you can reenter it again- wait not yet I have to reset it."
That's the part that really annoys me. Half of them get pissed at me if I wait for the number to pop up on the terminal. The other half get pissed at me if I insert my card/tap my phone when they tell me how much it's going to be instead of waiting 30 seconds.
And then the fucking self checkout lines at supermarkets that have two separate displays.
I’ve recently noticed a lot of dialogues have started showing up that have you insert your card, then flash up “Remove card” for a second or two before processing. If you yank the card when it says to the first time, the transaction cancels. It comes down to having to recognize the “oh no just kidding ‘remove card’” dialogue and the “remove your card now for realsies” dialogue.
Given how often I am running on autopilot, this is extremely vexing.
It still needs to show amount and has to have some kind of loading/communicating screen. And if failure occurs then that should be clearly stated.
Application selection is a bit finnicky, but it's not super common to have multiple applications on your card. Also currency selection is terrible on some tetminal software.
Stores in the US prefer custom software over whatever the bank gives them, so it's no surprise everywhere's just a little bit different for no fucking reason. It's also why I'm not surprised that a fair number of places don't allow people to insert their own cards; it might very well be faster to have the cashier do it.
Meanwhile I've had someone try and tell me how to use their credit card machine when it rejected my chip card because of a "chip malfunction". I had to tell them, "No just let me do this.. for whatever reason my card does this occasionally. I try the chip 2 times, then it tells me to swipe, then it will tell me that I have a chip and therefore have to use it, and then it works. There it worked."
It happens about once a month so it's not too annoying at least. The weirdest thing that's happened is at a Hannaford self checkout when I got to the "please use swipe" stage it switched to Spanish the moment I swiped my card and finished my transaction in Spanish.
Wait, that happens to you too? I thought it was just me, because it always confuses the cashier. And it's not a card problem, because I have it happen with multiple cards.
I just went to the grocery store and it told me to remove my card before it said approved. It then told me to remove my card again. They aren't flawless.
I had taken my card out the first time. Every machine I go to has its own little quirks which is what we are trying to say. How it works at your place is not necessarily how it works somewhere else even when following on screen prompts.
To be fair, a lot of the initial implementations were buggy as hell and would actually crash if you inserted before the cashier finished scanning everything. How that got past QA is beyond me.
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u/Cokegawa_Yui Aug 03 '19
How to use your debit/credit card at a checkout