Chip & Pin England

Old Aug 9th, 2015, 03:34 AM
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Chip & Pin England

We arrived in England yesterday and drove to Brentwood in Essex where we are staying with a friend. (It has become quite the lively town since TOWIE!). Anyway, alert, at least here, the chip and pin requirement is widespread in this town. We could not use our Chase Sapphire OR our Capital One credit cards for meals are restaurants or at pubs. All our cards have chip, but of course it's chip and signature, not chip and pin.

At M&S, Boots, and Sainsbury's, they have credit machines that handle BOTH, so we could use them there, just had to ID to the cashier we did not have ones using pins, so there's a different slot in the credit card machine that they use for our old fashioned cards. NOTE: if it doesn't work in one slot, tell the cashier to stick the card in the other slot on their machine.

Just wanted to alert people to this new (to us) issue. Point is, carry lots of cash or dine near an ATM. It was a problem for us yesterday at all places we visited EXCEPT the car rental place at Heathrow.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 11:34 AM
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Probably the area you are staying in doesn't have many American visitors, and waiters there don't know how to process chip and signature card transactions. I've used my US chip card (chip and signature) here in England many times in restaurants and shops over the last few months, and it's never been rejected. All you do is insert the card in the same slot that's used for chip and pin cards. You don't have to enter a pin — as soon as the transaction is complete the receipt comes out and you sign it. Simple!

You won't be able to use the card in automatic ticket machines, though.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:06 PM
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A little further clarification: Don't hand the card to the waiter or clerk — insert it into the chip card slot yourself, and leave it there until the machine tells you the transaction is complete and to remove the card. When the receipt comes out of the portable machine or cash register the clerk should ask for your signature and compare it with the signature on the back of your card.

You should never have to swipe a chip card here in Europe, because all European sales points have chip readers as far as I know. That will be the case in the US soon as well.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:21 PM
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Ditto Paris.

While the reader is awaiting confirmation, it blinks "patientez" ("be patient") over and over until the transaction is complete and the receipt comes out for you to sign.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:25 PM
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I don't get it (not that I am accusing the OP of not telling the truth). There is no difference, none whatsoever, between a chip and signature card and a chip and pin card. They all have the same chip in the same location and nothing on the card says it is a signature card. You hand the card to the cashier or there is a terminal staring you in the face or at a restaurant they bring a portable terminal to your table, the card is inserted whether it is chip and pin or chip and signature. It is at this point that, if the card has signature as a higher order cvm than pin (or no pin cvm at all) that a message flashes signature required and a receipt is printed. The transaction has already been done at this point, your bank has authorized it. Now in the past, there were some merchants fearing, wrongly so I might add, that their liability was increased on a non pin transaction, who voided the transaction. Is that what happened? Or did you tell them before you started it was a chip and signature card? Did they ask before starting? You should have said chip and pin. If it were me, and they tried to pull this garbage on me, I would politely tell them they are in complete violation of visa or mc regulations, they must honor all cards and complete all transactions with valid credit cards. If that didn't work, I would tell them to please bring the manager. After all, this is England and there are no language problems. If they still refused to complete the transaction, I would tell them I have no cash; I don't carry around cash and only use credit cards.

As far as Sainsbury, Boots and the like, they are trying to introduce self service check outs. I get that. Unlike in the United States, they have this fixation that requiring a signature on small purchases provides added security, something that has been done a way with on small purchases in the USA. In any event, if you use a chip and signature preferred card in such a self service machine, the transaction stops and you have to wait for a clerk to come over, enter a code, produce a receipt to sign (ever hear of signing the terminal pad guys), almost never check the signature and you're done. There are not different terminals for chip and pin and chip and signature. They are one and the same. As far as ticket kiosks, as of 01 July, they are required to complete transaction without pins (it's called no cvm, card verification method required of all visa and mc and amex cards). But even before this went into effect, I have never had any difficulty in Great Britain with ticketing kiosks either on the underground or at main line ticketing machines contrary to what has been written.

So I still wonder not so much that the OP is not telling the truth but just how the situation arose. I will repeat again, there is no difference in appearance or anything between a chip and pin card or a chip and signature card. That only becomes apparent after the transaction has been approved by your bank and the message signature required flashes on the terminal. Do not tell clerks the card is chip and signature or ask. Just insert the card and wait.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:41 PM
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Hi surfergirl. >>We could not use our Chase Sapphire OR our Capital One credit cards for meals are restaurants or at pubs.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:45 PM
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Do not tell clerks the card is chip and signature or ask. Just insert the card and wait.

Exactly! That's what I always do — no need to say anything.

Xyz123, thank you for telling us that chip and signature works in ticket kiosks as well.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:51 PM
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janisj...burst a blood vessel? Nah. Just helps me pass the time of day on a lazy, crazy hazy Sunday afternoon with no NFL football. But I did stay last night at a Holiday Inn Express...I mean I did watch several Barclay Premier League games this morning so the NFL season can't be far behind.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 12:53 PM
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Janisj, I used my chip and signature card in a Waitrose supermarket just this morning, and at a pub/restaurant last Sunday. I used it at a petrol station and a B&Q store last week as well. That's a fair sample of different types of UK retailers.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 01:06 PM
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I've had no problems either . . . that is why I asked if just maybe surfergirl told them up front it was a signature card and that 'caused' a misunderstanding/problem??
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 01:23 PM
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I'm glad this was posted!

My credit union switched to chip & signature cards this year-- haven't used it overseas yet and good to know any pitfalls.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 01:36 PM
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We used our chip and signature visa to load our oyster cards at an unmanned machine in an underground station in London last April -- don't know that it works everywhere, but it definitely worked there.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 02:50 PM
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I don't remember if I used my chip or strip card to top up my Oyster in May -- but whichever . . . it worked.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 03:08 PM
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On that visit we first tried cards without a chip and it did not work but our chip card did. Since then I've received a couple of other cards with chips so they are becoming more common.
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Old Aug 9th, 2015, 03:35 PM
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No, I didn't say anything -- just handed them the card and it was declined. They'd try it again in a different slot in the machine, and it would work, but in some cases, not at all. My English friends told me it was a change over that has taken place recently.

It worked without issue at Brit Rail.
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Old Aug 10th, 2015, 08:35 AM
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Whenever I've used such a card in Paris and Prague fairly recently, I never told them anything (of course, if you are observant, you can see the chip marking on the card), they stuck it in the machine and the machine would say "signature required." So they would print out the ticket and I'd sign it. No problem. In fact, once they forgot to ask me to sign it and I had to remind them.

There was only one slot so not sure how a machine cold hve two, but maybe they are different in England. It is true some of those readers have a slide on the side where you can run strip cards, but I've never seen more than one slot.
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Old Aug 10th, 2015, 09:34 AM
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There is only one slot for chip cards in UK machines.
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Old Aug 10th, 2015, 09:03 PM
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That is really a problem for many travelers. I do not know what we would have done in Europe--we were not in the UK--in June if they had been requiring chip and pin. The BofA CC that we used had a chip, but no pin.

And BTW, altho we exclusively used BofA partner banks for debit card withdrawals at ATMs, when we got our bank statement after our trip, we were charged the 3% foreign transaction fee on every cash withdrawal, whereas the CC has no fee. We should have charged everything!!
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Old Aug 11th, 2015, 01:24 PM
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>>And BTW, altho we exclusively used BofA partner banks for debit card withdrawals at ATMs, when we got our bank statement after our trip, we were charged the 3% foreign transaction fee on every cash withdrawal, whereas the CC has no fee. We should have charged everything!!
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Old Aug 11th, 2015, 05:52 PM
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all Australian credit cards are chip and pin yet my card did not work like that in Europe -I had to sign every time whereas my husband's (different Bank) card worked as a chip and pin.
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