I did a quick search and found some good general information on how credit cards work, but my question is dealing with a little more specific situation.
So I was at Wal-Mart, and I swipe my credit card at the reader in front of me. It beeps and says try again, so I do and still nothing. The cashier takes it from me and tries it at her register, but still no go. Then (this is the weird part), she takes a bag (the small clear plastic ones they use for greeting cards) and puts my card in it and has me swipe it. And it works.
The next day at Loews, I’m having the same problem, so I say to the cashier, “Do you know what they had me do at Wal-Mart?” And the same trick works there too.
So my question is why? I understand that the plastic bag won’t affect the magnetic strip, but what is it doing?
I don’t know why, but I will witness to the usefulness of wrapping a card in thin plastic. During my brief stint in retail, we used to do this when cards didn’t read. Worked like a charm.
At my job, I swiped a woman’s card and it wouldn’t go through. She told me to swipe it in the opposite direction (up instead of down) and it worked! She told me it happens all the time. Never tried the plastic bag thing though. I wonder how she thought of that!
Just a WAG, but this seems like another method of getting slightly bent credit cards to flatten out while you swipe them. I used to use a folded piece of paper or a matchbook cover against the front of the card while you swipe it.
Actually, I see no reason to use something like this anymore. I haven’t seen a credit card reader in the last 15 years that you couldn’t enter the number manually. Usually if you swipe the card 3 times and it doesn’t get read, you are prompted to enter it manually.
happyheathen I’m in Kansas, so it’s starting to get cold and dry.
Hup the Fool Yes, the other times it’s happened, they’ve been able to key it in. The problem at Wal-Mart is evidently when they do this, they need a manager to come over and enter a password in the register. I think this particular cashier didn’t want the hassel.
So I’m seeing, static, bent cards, and worn cards. Anybody else have an idea or confirmation? I suppose static might a possibility, but I just got this card last month, it’s not bent and I think it’s in pretty good condition (although it’s hard to tell how good the stripe is just by looking at it.)
Bent cards are usually the result of guys that never clean out their wallet. You know, the guy who has a wallet four inches thick with receipts sticking out all over the place. Over a period of time the card assumes the curve of the wallet. I’ve seen hundreds of them.
I don’t buy the bent card theory, partly because there’s no reason that a plastic bag would straighten it out and partly because it’s the trick that worked on my very old, but not bent, check card. I also know that swiping up instead of down works with some readers. The cashiers at my local stores have implied that wear and tear on the reader, not the card, is to blame, but I suspect they’re about as expert as those of us who’ve chimed in so far seem to be.
As for keying the numbers in, a cashier at a small store told me that if he had to do that rather than just swipe the card, the credit card company charged the store a fee, which (of course) the store would pass on to me.
Keying in the Credit Card nowadays costs the merchant about .5% more. So most merchants do not like to key in numbers. (But will do it if necessary)
Never heard of the plastic trick. What most often has happened is the “reader head” (like on a cassette player) has gotten dirty and/or worn. The plastic provides a little more thickness to the card and supposedly will help it read better.
Re: dirty head. My provider told me that if you have trouble reading cards on a regular basis, the head does need cleaning.
Use a Dollar Bill with Rubbing alcohol on it. Fold the dollar once and run it thru like a credit card. (of course it won’t read) The texture of the dollar bill and the alcohol will scrub the head so that the reader works correctly as well.
Many older models of Credit cards use a magnetic strip that is very similar to the tape in a cassette. After so many swipes, the magnetic media will degrade and the card will eventually stop working. All you have to do is ask the CC issuer for a new card and they will send it to you. And a good way to determine if it is time for a new card is to keep an eye on the signature line. Since the Signature line is right next to the magnetic strip, it will wear as well. if your signature is no longer legible, and the card is having trouble being read, it is time for a new card.
Sorry for being so windy.
I need to do the plastic bag/wrap/whatever trick almost every time I use my card. No matter how I swiped, up, down, fast, slow, usually it wouldn’t work. I got so fed up with asking for bags that I finally just put a piece of tape over the band and everything went smoothly. Then I was in a 7-11 where it had always worked fine, and it wouldn’t work until the cashier took the tape off. I have no idea why my card will work in some places like 7-11 but I’d say 95% of the time it doesn’t work. I also have no idea why the trick works. I learned it working as a cashier at The Body Shop. It was a godsend during the Christmas rush when we didn’t have the time to swipe it fifty times until it went through.
Some comments from a fraud analyst at a credit card issuer.
When the card doesn’t read correctly (magnetic strip damage), it canflag the security system. This can cause all charges to be declined until you call the bank.
The reason for this : Counterfeit cards (physical cards with stolen magnetic strip information. The card says John Doe but the magnetic info is Jane Smith’s) are a huge fraud trend. One indicator of a counterfeit card is bad magnetic strip readings at the merchant terminal.
If you notice merchants having difficulty with your card, call the number on the back to request a replacement.
I’ve been on the merchant end of the business for 25 years and I have never seen or heard of this happening. The only reason I have ever been charged extra for a transaction is if , for example, the phone lines were down and you have to manually imprint the credit card on the old paper invoices with carbon paper in them. The extra cost is for having to manually process *imprint transactions * separate from electronic transactions.
The plastic bag or folded paper does flatten out the card because you are basically inserting a card that is thicker into a slot that is too small for it. Think of it as using a wedge. It pushes the card flat against the reader.
As for bad readers, I’ve never seen one. I run several hundred credit cards every day and get an unreadable card maybe every two or three days. It seems likely it would be the card rather than the reader.
Re cleaning heads, your cc company should supply you with head cleaning cards along with your receipt paper. If you purchase them, I think the cost for a 100 card box is around $5.
