jokes only people who’ve been broke and struggling will understand.
Not strictly true.
If you have a card long enough (several years between issue and expiry, say) and you use it often enough, the magnetic strip can start to fade and transactions can fail. More and more often. Edit: It might have been a chip problem rather than a magnetic strip problem. I can’t remember now, but it makes no real difference to the story.
And sometimes there might be weeks with no trouble and then you’ll get that one card reader that’s particularly finicky and there’s a cold sweat moment as you realise you don’t have enough cash. “Try it again. It’s done this before.” Please work. Pleeease.
This usually happened to me in the supermarket, so that scene from InnerSpace was playing on loop in my head.
After the third or fourth time, I called the bank and they sent me a new one ASAP.
The little chip contact on my debit card started getting flaky with certain machines. Finally, it wouldn’t work at all, and I had to use my credit card to pay for groceries. I never use my credit card, I wasn’t even sure it still worked. Then I had to remember to pay my credit card before the end of the month.
The only other time I replaced a debit card is when I lost one. When I chose the “lost or stolen” option from the dropdown, my card was immediately canceled, and I got the message I’d get a new one in the mail in a few days. I had to use my coin stash to put gas in my car, and I ate from the back of the pantry till the card showed up. Cut it close there, I didn’t know that was going to happen, and didn’t plan ahead.
Two comments for you:
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Using your credit card for all that incidental stuff and paying it off in full each month is a good way to build a good credit history/score.
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If you lose you card again, remember that you can withdraw cash without it by going into the bank.
Also gets you credit card rewards. I’d rather not have those transaction fees baked into prices but it they already are you may as well benefit and take back some of the fees they charge.
Yeah, that’s an excellent point.
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You get a different error message when that happens though.
I spend from a different bank account than the one I get my paycheck in, so I need to refill my spending account periodically.
Usually when I try to pay and it’s declined. So I get declined from time to time, and it’s not because I’m broke. It course I’m not explaining all that to a cashier, instead I just panic.
sometimes banks will randomly reject payments for “security reasons” even if there is enough money.
For me it’s more the people in the queue behind me.
No doubt. There could be 4 or 5 random people with glocks behind you rather than just one highly trained cashier and an agent.
👀
The other day the payment wasn’t approved for me (broke AF). The terminal beeped, the checkout counter went to a “Please wait for a representative” screen and the tower next to my checkout station went blinking green.
Luckily a very nice lady from the store yelled from her workstation if I needed help. I said I didn’t, just broke and needed to use another card. She reset my counter with her terminal and I was good to go. But it definitely feels like you did something really wrong.
Not as bad as running through the checkout without paying tho. I saw a man with his daughter of about 5 or 6 I think. She had one of those kid carts and tried to run out as the father was trying to pay for the sandwiches they were buying. All of the alarms went off, flashing lights, beeping gates, audible alert, the whole shebang. The kid got really scared as everyone just laughed as the father said: Hold on honey, we actually need to pay. The staff could easily disable the alert, but had to manually reset the gates. They needed to call it off on their headsets as well and two times staff came running to check if everything was alright. That’s not a mistake the kid will make in the future I bet.
the fact that it locks the terminal on failed payment is just bad UX. I’m sure there is some reason fraud wise to do that but, I’ve never had a self check lock on me due to it. I would likely shop elsewhere if it ever did.
I’ve never not seen that happen? It’s probably to prevent fraud and a lot of the time it’s just old people who fumble the payment and need actual assistance?
As long as the store person there can reset it remotely for me it’s fine, then I don’t have to wait and they don’t need to come over.
I think it’s different when the payment times out, I’ve had that happen when the payment terminal crashed for no reason. Then it automatically resets back, so you can try again. But a failed payment is different from a rejected payment.
That’s weird to me, the self checks in my area will say payment declined or payment rejected and then ask for an alternative. I’m not sure the benefit of locking the terminal for it. Like sure flag the host in case assistance is needed but, I don’t see the need to lock it.
People don’t think it be like that, but it do.
I always check my account before going to pay just to avoid this. I don’t even leave my house to buy something before I’ve made sure I have enough money.
It can happen even then. A few years ago, my wife and I had lunch at a burrito place, then walked across the shopping center and did our grocery shopping. Same card was declined the second time, no issue on our end, plenty of credit limit available, just some fraud trigger went off at the bank (I don’t remember details).
My banking app gets more screen time than my media apps.
Back in the old days the cashier would have a booklet with valid credit card numbers. Sometimes they’d have to call the bank, and occasionally, the bank would tell them to confiscate the card.
u/lawrence - you have the most bland, vanilla sense of humor! You probably think watered down ketchup is too spicy.
thanks for making the community dull and unfunny - ban yourself or change the community name to comicstrips_for_9_year_olds
It hurt you didn’t it?
Did you make this account just to be a dick?
For the record, yes there are people that do this. They get banned so have to make a new account every time they want to be a dick.
Going by the username, probably.
I wonder where your username could have come from.
One of life’s great mysteries.
I would have just moderated this as ‘not polite’, but the comment was so strange that the admin banned the guy.
I like your comics Lawrence, and I hope whatever’s going on in his life gets better
Going by the username, they don’t seem to be interested in engaging in good faith.
probably chasing a ban evader
most useless novelty account. 0/1, blocked and moved on.
You are whats wrong with the internet
I wouldn’t worry so much for the cashier as the people behind me, if looks could kill!
I do some fistpumps when it clears now, i’m spending my money, on stuff I want, LETS GOOOOO
