Saturday, April 12, 2008
A frustrating day
I'm trying really hard to be open minded and accept that even though it's not the way I do things, maybe someone else thinks it's better. But, this... I can't... I just.... Can someone please help me come up with possible benefits to not accepting credit cards that don't swipe? As in no one has ANY way of manually entering the card number ANYWHERE in Penang! What? Why? And it puts me in a bit of a pickle when my only credit card seems to have gotten demagnetized and I have limited cash at any given time. Please help me figure this out, because who knows how long I'll have to wait for a new card to arrive from the States, and I don't want to be grouchy the whole time!
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5 comments:
I think it costs more if you have to manually enter a card, I'm not sure. Or perhaps there have been serious problems with people making fake credit cards with real numbers and the magnetic strip on the back is a way to ensure that the card itself is real.
What a pain though. I've been in a situation where my card got eaten by an atm and it was a nightmare for a week so I sympathize.
I'm pretty sure that they're *supposed to* charge you the same rate if they manually enter your card #'s. That being said, you probably need to check to make sure.
Did your credit card company give you an estimate? You could probably continue to use the old card while waiting for the new one to show. Just tell them that it's not lost, just de-magnetized.
Thanks guys.
Tim -- I think Teddi means that the vendor gets charged extra, not the customer. I have worked retail/cashiering enough to see how often you need to manually enter cc#'s and it's OFTEN. But the problem is... NO ONE anywhere we've been on this island can deal with the card if it doesn't swipe. So I can't continue to use the card. In fact a lot of times they refuse George's good card because the machine gave an error or because it doesn't have some kind of chip they expect the cards to have.
George just ordered new cards today finally. In the meantime, I'm crazy frustrated. This is so on my list of things that don't make any sense about this place. It makes me so angry I want to write letters to every vendor I go to until they start to change it.
So, with my card demagnetized = unusable here, and with George's often getting refused because of various errors (though there is nothing wrong with the card), sometimes we're totally screwed when we're at the store.
Yep, I meant that it costs the vendor more to manually enter the card. I do believe that our business pays more because I manually enter cards rather than having the customer come all the way in and allow me to swipe their card.
Ah, ok!
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