My 4yr. old debit card doesn’t work as well as it once did. No, it still shows money in my account. But, the magnetic strip must be wearing out as I’ll have to swipe it several times to get it to work. One day when I was having no luck the store teller put my card in a plastic shopping bag and then swiped it through the machine. I’ve seen this done several times and appears to be a widely know solution. I ask them how this works but no one has been able to give me an answer. What’s the dope?
This is a completely ignorant guess, but- plastic bags seem to be good carriers of static electricity. Could it be that the plastic bag amplifies the magnetic pattern of the card so that the card reader will notice it? Or is it just a matter of making it thick enough to press up against the reading surface?
We’ve had this Q not too long ago. You might want to use the “search” functions to check previously-posted threads.
Good luck.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=51785
Some darn good WAGs, but no difinitive answer to my knowledge. But since the WAGs are there, I’m going to close this copy.