On 29 Aug 2004, at 08:49, Joan Whitfield wrote:
I normally pay with a debit card for which I don't have a
PIN - food shopping is the only thing I use the card for - and I have no
intention of asking the bank for one.
I think that in time all credit/debit cards will get pin and chip - when the replacement cards are issued. Of course no-one can force you to use the PIN but but without it you won't be able to use the card.
At present I have pin & chip on both visa credit cards (pin number issued by the bank and sent in a separate envelope) but not yet on the debit card. The first time I tried to use the credit card PIN I got it wrong! but they were then still able to accept a signature.
I was once asked to write my address
on the back of a cheque although I had a guarantee card which more than
covered the amount of the cheque, on the grounds that it was "company
policy". The assistant refused to accept the cheque without the address, I
refused to pay for the goods in any other way and she then had to call a
supervisor to delete the items from her till and apologise to the other
people in the queue who had been kept waiting.
I have refused to give my address AND guarantee card on several occasions.
On the first occasion we were actually away on holiday (in Wales IIRC) and our casual dress and non-local accents advertised the fact. I flatly refused to give my address on the grounds of increasing the security risk at our temporarily unoccupied home address. Can't remember now if I walked out of the shop or if they accepted the guarantee card, but when we got home I wrote to the bank to clarify the position and they definitely said that an address is not necessary if the amount is within the guarantee limit. Since then on two or three occasions locally I've been asked for both and stood my ground of either guarantee card or address, and when the supervisor has been called over it's always the card that has been accepted. So much for "company policy" of requiring both!
However, now that more and more places accept plastic I use the cheque book less and less, and no longer routinely carry it with me. Most cheques now are for mail order or for subscriptions for which I don't want to take out Direct Debit. To discontinue a cheque subscription you just don't renew, but to discontinue a DD subscription you have to actively cancel the DD.
Brenda
PS - I'm sorry but I'm not a big enough trader to take plastic for threads books, and PayPal is extremely expensive so it is still GBP cheque, or Euro or Stirling cash.
Brenda http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/paternoster/
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