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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Credit Cards


KIRKY

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:o

Hi

need your help.

I am off to Somme next week (YEAH) but am confused about credit cards over there.

Lloyds tell me I need a pin number and Abbey tell me I need only a signature! Who is right. This could affect my beer intake if I get it wrong!

Tony

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My own experience of France as at late last year is that they generally accept credit cards with a signature.

Why do you need a credit card for beer. Must be a hell of a round. :P

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Burlington's right - buying things with a credit card is no problem - just sign the slip. What you DO need a PIN number for is using your credit card to get money out of hole-in-the-wall dispensers.

Tom

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Some places, such as hypermarkets, ask for your passport as well as your signature when you pay by credit card or debit card. This is annoying but not significant.

LloydsTSB debit cards require signature. The chip doesn't work over there, so the PIN is next to useless for paying, but obviously you need it to withdraw cash from a hole in the wall. My partner's Barclays chip doesn't work in France either.

It's useful to memorise the way to say that your card has a magnetic strip (piste magnetique) so that the retailer doesn't try to use the chip (puce); but they will feel the urge to try the chip anyway and it will inevitably fail. (If you don't know, I'll supply the words!)

Then they will swipe the card as we do, but do it the wrong side, so they will stare at it in a puzzled manner, then try it upside down Then they will wipe it ferociously on their clothes and try it sideways. This is quite normal and nothing to fret about. Eventually it will work.

I have never had any problem paying with only a signature, whether it's debit card, Visa, Delta or Mastercard.

Gwyn

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at cite erope i had to key my pin number in at the checkout.

it is the same pin as you use for getting money out of the hole in the wall and nothing to be alarmed about.

One thing you might want to do, is contact your card issuer and let them know that you are going to be using your card on the continent.

If you are not a regualr vistor, your card issuer might suspect that someone has stolen your card and taken it abroad to use (or using on the internet) so if you letthem know to expect use in forign fields you will cover yourself in the event that they notice unusual card transactions and stop your card.

Have fun :)

Fleur

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at cite erope i had to key my pin number in at the checkout.

Wouldn't you think that by now all the banks, both British and mainland European, would have got their act together, talk to each other, link up with each other, marry each other, whisper sweet cyber nothings in each other's virtual ears, or whatever is required so that (a) all British debit or credit cards woud work in the same way when abroad (ie, work), (b ) there was some sort of universal pattern to their use and (c ) that our supposedly universal chips would actually work in the way the banks' literature tells us they are intended to (abroad now and not in a hundred years' time)?

I don't understand the need for showing a passport either (although I've only been asked to do this in north western France - never been to Cite Europe, no experience of that). It's not as though I'm spending the national debt on beer or that I look under 18 (sadly).

Gwyn (high horse revving up in the drive with GB plate on its tail)

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I'm told things are changing in Europe and soon we will all need to use a PIN number. Don't know how true this is but I'm on holiday in Austria at the moment and most of the big shops have been asking for PIN numbers.

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Throughout 2004 a new chip & PIN will be introduced across the UK.

The chip & PIN card will look the same as an existing credit card but have a smart chip installed in it. Some of you may already have had one issued but do not use the PIN at present.

The introduction of chip & PIN in France reduced credit card fraud by 80%.

The keypads to enter the PIN will be introduced throughout 2004. Most banks etc will send you all a new PIN reminder when the new card is issued. If like me you only use the card for purchases etc you won't have a clue what the PIN is so I'm happy they will do this for me.

I do understand though that whilst some stores in the UK and abroad use PIN keypads many also utilise current signing methods during the changeover. Cite Europe for example handles both methods.

For more information I have tracked this site down at http://www.chipandpin.co.uk/

Ryan

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Well I think everything is said now; my master paid for my bones with American Express -must have worked fine, I was never hungry in friendly Belgium. Uh, one last question to the serious pals from my side: can I pay my stuff with my own chip, which is embedded in my left ear? -but i do not have a PIN available, they refused to engrave that in my right ear! <_<

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Throughout 2004 a new chip & PIN will be introduced across the UK.

The chip & PIN card will look the same as an existing credit card but have a smart chip installed in it. Some of you may already have had one issued but do not use the PIN at present.

We Northamptonians have been using this system for over a year. Quick and simple, no signatures involved, just the ability to memorise the four digit PIN you use at cashpoints.

If you would like some practice before venturing abroad, come here and take me on a shopping spree. I'll show you the the shops, and introduce you to the routine at the counter; and you can return home lightly-laden but brimming with retail confidence.

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come here and take me on a shopping spree.

I wouldn't subject you to it. I'm the one who is holding up everyone at the self service check-outs in Marks and Spencer because I've forgotten me glasses and can't see which hole to put me Chargecard in and can't see whether the coins I've got in me hands are ten ps or pounds. Then it turns out I pressed that I wanted cashback, so an assistant has to come and look at me and see whether I look deserving...

Honestly, you need more than an Oxbridge degree to go shopping these days.

Bring back cheques. :P

Gwyn

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(Kate Wills @ Thu, 11 Mar 2004 00:05:34 +0000)

We Northamptonians have been using this system for over a year

I guess trouble always starts somewhere :lol:

Ryan (not really a luddite)

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Well, well. Isn't it typically British to demand that everyone get in line with them.

Everywhere EXCEPT Britain has had PIN numbers for credit cards for the last decade.

I have been using continental credit cards, etc since I moved here 30 years ago, and I have never had any trouble with acceptance.

Your British card will work without problem, although the cashier will raise his/her eyes to heaven and swear. They have a lot more accounting work to do with them, due to the need to keep bits of paper separately from the others and reconcile them.

Your bank card should work in every hole in the wall as long as you have a PIN number and as long as you don't have one of these strange cards that only exist in Britain and only work in some obscure building society's machines (and they normally don't take civilised cards from Europe).

The only problem comes when a cashier does not immediately recognise the card as British and hence from the Stone Age and sticks it into slot reserved for chipped cards. I have never ever been asked for any other ID when tendering my British card.

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Isn't it typically British to demand that everyone get in line with them.

the cashier will raise his/her eyes to heaven and swear.

I think if you re-read carefully my last post on the subject of chips, I said that I wished that the banks would communicate with each other; ie, that British banks would communicate with their European counterparts to ensure that our British chips will work abroad. As a couple, we have tried and wished for our chipped cards to work abroad, as we have both had chipped debit and credit cards for several years and during that time, our banks, all high street banks, have been sending us literature saying that our chips would work abroad. They do not, and that annoys me. The security benefits are obvious.

We visit mainland Europe both as tourists and on business. The situation is a nuisance whatever one’s purpose. British banks should ensure that our cards work unambiguously abroad. It is unnecessarily complicated as it stands.

I regard as rude the displays of bad temper and patronising arrogance which one occasionally experiences. It would also be offensive if a British merchant treated a non-British visitor in this way. It is not customer focussed. I speak French well, in a way that does not label me as British; I am not going to act the fumbling monoglot tourist to alert a prospective sales person to the possibility that my card is not European. I expect transactions to be carried out with mutual courtesy, respect and friendliness, wherever they take place. I have never experienced negative customer relations in Germany, Switzerland or Belgium. Nor has my partner in Netherlands or Italy.They appear to recognise that currently there are international differences beyond the control of the individual customer.

Gwyn

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It's not just Britain , it's the US too ! When Cynthia (from Ohio) tried to use her plastic at a supermarket in France last year it crashed the entire till system. Given that Mastercard , Visa etc are mega-multinationals , we should demand that they get their collective act together. It's not an Anglo-Saxons against the Rest problem really.

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Typical bunch of bankers :lol:

Anyway, part of this concept you will have probably noticed is also being addressed by the adverts on TV for switch/maestro? anyone also remember cirrus?

http://www.switch.co.uk

From the website - "Soon, all new Switch cards will contain a microchip and you'll enter your PIN instead of signing. This will make paying with Switch even quicker & safer than it is now."

"Maestro is an international name for debit cards from MasterCard. In fact, over the next few years, the Maestro logo and name will gradually replace Switch on most cards, except those issued by Halifax and the Bank of Scotland." :huh:

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This worries me, have been to Europe counting UK 22 times and have not had trouble with the credit card, usually use Am Ex these days, has no PIN associated with it I know of, do not use bank cards, go to bank next to my office, cash check. What a primitive!

Do I have to get a PIN? I do have a bank issued Visa which must have one but I don't know it. Hope I am going to Italy & Slovenia ( Caporetto & Asiago) this fall if I live that long. May have to go to vodka & gravy diet exclusively.

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When Cynthia (from Ohio) tried to use her plastic at a supermarket in France last year it crashed the entire till system...

So she carries her own weapon of mass disruption, does she? B)

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sorry if I misunderstood what you meant.

I live on the Continent and have been using a British credit card (Mastercard) for thirty years and never had the slighest problem.

I hear all these stories about British cards being refused in France, but have never ever come across any difficulty at all.

The usual comment is for me to hand over my card and for the cashier, wharever to say something on the lines of: 'British, no chip. When are they going to move to the electronic age'. I say, 'no idea, I just use it, I don't live there'.

They laugh and that's the end of it.

Heaven knows why the banks can't get their act together. They can when it comes to bank cards that I have personally used from Egypt/ Jordan through to the west of Ireland.

In fact, it may not be the fault of the banks at all (for once). Are the credit card companies still a part of the banks or independent. If the latter, they are to blame.

I see no reason why if my bank card works everywhere, my credit card is different to everywhere else.

The bizarre point is that I have a French MasterCard card and that has a chip with a PIN, whereas my British card has a chip, but no PIN.

I have never tried using my French card in britain. Must have a go one day.

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Paul, don't worry at all. I travel to Italy and Germany about 8-10 times a year. My American Express and VISA works perfectly, even in the most remote Italian villages. NO problem!!!! You don't need your PIN at all, exept when pulling cash from an ATM -you need your 4digit PIN.

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Heaven knows why the banks can't get their act together. They can when it comes to bank cards that I have personally used from Egypt/ Jordan through to the west of Ireland.

Exactly. We are thinking along the same lines, H!

I've spent money more easily in Israel than Auchan!

Pax.

Gwyn :)

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I use my local bank card as a direct debit card (we do it all the time; something else the British don't really seem to have cottoned on to).

No truble at all paying in Auchna, and as I work over the hypermarket! I use it quite frequently.

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Well, well. Isn't it typically British to demand that everyone get in line with them.

Yes it would be nice if the rest of Europe acted a bit like the British. It strikes me that one of the immediate benefits would be more decent toilets!

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I didn't even know that there were public toilets in Britain any more (I presume that that is what you are talking about?) Haven't they all been vandalised or closed down as an economy measure?

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