Using credit cards in Europe
As many of you know in France and maybe in all of Europe, I don’t know, the credit cards they use have a microchip on the front encoded with a password that you must enter in order to use. A lot like an ATM and not a bad idea. They call it a carte a puce. It must prevent stolen credit cards from being used so easily.
Most credit card processing machines still have the place to swipe the old fashioned credit cards, called carte a piste. Many younger merchants rarely process cartes a pistes. When you present them one, they try to insert it the way you insert the new ones. When they can’t do it that way, they look perplexed and I have gotten used to explaining how to do it and to make them do it more than once if it doesn’t work the first time. It always works, but sometimes it takes a few times.
We went to the movies on Wednesday night. A movie theater we have been to before, where we have used our carte a piste, without problem. We get to the front of the line and present our carte. The young man shakes his head, no these don’t work here. We are used to this so we say that yes they do and we have used it here before. He insisted that they don’t take these cards. Jean-Jacques gets angrier and raises his voice a little and shows him where to slide the card. The long line starts looking and the cashier next to him starts looking.
The cashier says that he has had problems with these kinds of cards and he doesn’t accept them. Jean-Jacques kept insisting that he try it. He refused to even try it. Well we were not going anywhere because we had used our card before and he was being rude. By now the cashier next to him was looking sympathetically at us. Jean-Jacques and the cashier argued for a minute or two more and then Jean-Jacques demanded to speak to the boss. He called the boss on the phone and spoke to him for a while. When he got off the phone he said okay I’ll try to run it, as if he was doing us a favor.
Guess what, it worked the first time. No problem. We got in to the theater. I can’t figure out why the cashier created 10 minutes of intense stress for himself. I could see if he tried it once or twice and it didn’t work and he didn’t want to keep trying it over and over. That wasn’t the case, it worked immediately. He had refused to even try it because once it didn’t work when he had tried it. I say stress for him because I knew we were going to get in because we had used the card before. I knew Jean-Jacques would not drop the issue until we got in. I say stress for him because others were in line and looking angrily at him not us. He was all of 20 years old, I thought, he has a promising career ahead of him at the VISA department in the Embassy in Washington DC. (see here to understand)
This happens to me a lot, especially since my work credit card is an American one. Usually I just have to explain how it works and they’re fine.
One time though, I tried to use it at a gas station that I had been going to for several years, and the lady wouldn’t take it. Now, I knew she’d been working there for at least as long as I’d lived in France and I also knew that she’d taken my card before, but for whatever reason, she decided she didn’t want to accept it that day, and refused to even try. She even tried to tell me that they’ve NEVER taken foreign cards there. I kept insisting, but finally just ended up paying with my French card. I filled up there again the following week and they took my card just fine, so I made sure to keep the receipt so that next time I saw her, I could prove that I’d paid with that card there.
I saw her in the little booth not too long after, so I pulled in & filled up, all ready for a fight. I handed her my card and she took it sans problème! I was really annoyed so I mentioned something about her not having taken that card last time, but of course she denied it and said they’ve always accepted foreign cards there and that she’d never seen me before in my life. WTF?
The only explanation that we could come up with is that she has a twin and they both work there!!
Welcome to “Understanding The French Attitude 101″. I’ve been told be several French people that when a French person says “No”, “It’s impossible”, or “We have never done that”, it is only the beginning of the negotiations. If you stand your ground and insist they at least try, you will usually succeed.
And as my language skills improve I will fight even more. We have a mileage card that we have earned many free trips on and I am going to continue to use that for every purchase.
Sam, I think when this happens to me in the future I am going to pull out my camera phone and take a picture of myself with the person so there will be no question in the future that they took the card. I always have my phone with me so I can always have “proof”.
I can understand if they try it 3-4 times and it won’t work then we’ll pull out cash or use our French ATM card but to not even try it, that I cannot understand.
The general understanding here in Toulouse of how to make it work is to swipe it very slowly, as in a 4 second swipe, which of course never works, so I ask them to try it faster, and it usually works, and even if I get the same person again, they try to do it slowly, and they look genuinely surprised when I explain to them, again, to swipe faster, and so the cycle continues. Maybe I should print up a small direction sheet in French and give it out to merchants with clueless employees. I’m sure they appreciate the helpful hints.
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