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by profmonocle 1594 days ago
This reminds of of when I was in Oslo back in 2014. We ordered food at a small restaurant after confirming they accepted credit cards. When it came time to pay, the woman behind the counter refused to scan our credit cards because they had no chips. (It would have worked, every other card terminal we'd used in the country still supported magstripe, and I saw that her machine had a scanner. She didn't say the reader was broken or anything, just refused to try.)

We didn't have cash, so we just left. The woman was furious. We hadn't received our food yet, but it was already being cooked. She screamed at us to go to an ATM a few blocks away, get cash, and come back. We just found another restaurant. If the card hadn't worked I would've felt bad and probably done that, but she wouldn't even try it. Don't advertise that you take credit cards and get mad when customers try to use them.
1 comments
lmm 1594 days ago
> It would have worked, every other card terminal we'd used in the country still supported magstripe, and I saw that her machine had a scanner. She didn't say the reader was broken or anything, just refused to try.

Just because the terminal has a magstripe reader on doesn't mean her merchant account provider accepts it. Plenty don't, or some transfer the liability to the store in that case.

> If the card hadn't worked I would've felt bad and probably done that, but she wouldn't even try it. Don't advertise that you take credit cards and get mad when customers try to use them.

In 2014 a card that doesn't have a chip might as well be broken. I don't think you can put this one on her.

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jjav 1593 days ago
> In 2014 a card that doesn't have a chip might as well be broken.

2014. I don't remember with 100% confidence, but I'm pretty sure none of my (many) credit cards had a chip back in 2014.

Stores here didn't even start installing chip reader card stations until ~2018 or so.

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lmm 1593 days ago
OK sure, but in 2014 in Norway a card without a chip might as well be broken. If I turned up to a restaurant where you are, asked if I could pay by card, ordered, and then busted out my UnionPay card and demanded they accept that, would you say that was reasonable?
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profmonocle 1594 days ago
> In 2014 a card that doesn't have a chip might as well be broken.

Chips were basically non-existent on US cards in 2014.

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munk-a 1593 days ago
That's true - but they were widespread pretty much everywhere else in the world including Norway. Up here in Canada we tend to say "Do you take interac?" instead of credit - but if credit is just the way people talk about chip-n-pin in Norway the understanding might be that walking into a store with a non-chip-n-pin card and asking for credit is dishonest.

I'm not Norwegian but it'd be pretty similar up here in Canada at this point - if your POS terminal gets damaged and your mag stripe reader breaks there isn't really a big reason to immediately shutter your store and replace it.

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