London Banter - View Single Post

Stephen Furley · May 14th 09, 08:22 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 14/5/09 06:01, in article ,
"Graham Harrison" wrote:

Well, you've led a sheltered life! My butcher has one which shows you the
amount (can't remember where), you then push the green, enter button, the
amount disappears and then you enter the pin and push enter again. He's
very good and always runs you through that process.

Before they closed down on Christmas Eve last year Turtles had one like
this, and I've seen them in a few other places. The Turtles staff sometimes
pressed the green 'enter' button before handing you the pad, so that the
amount was not visible, and I asked them to do it again under these
circumstances. It's badly written software; it should always be possible to
see the amount as you key in the PIN.

Conversely, I made a
purchase in a different shop, away from home, last week as it happens; I was
presented with a screen which only showed the PIN entry. I declined and
asked the assistant to stop at the screen showing the amount. She
cancelled the transaction (I have the little cancelled print out) and we
started again and this time I followed what you might call my "butchers
instructions".

Something else that I'm not totally happy about is the way it works at the
hotel I stayed at recently. When you check-in they obtain 'pre
authorisation' for an amount equal to the cost of the room plus £30, and for
this you have to enter a PIN. When you check out they charge the actual
amount to your card, and for this you again have to enter the PIN. As far as
I could see there was nothing on the screen to indicate whether this was a
'Pre-authorisation', or an actual charge. I did check my account, and it
does seem to work the way they say it does, only one amount was taken, but
it should always be very clear to the customer exactly what they are
authorising when they key in the PIN, and it isn't.

I also discovered what seems to be a serious security hole in certain early
Chip and Pin systems if what I was told by the company that installed ours
at work is true, but this is not something to discuss in a public forum. I
believe that this was indeed true due to something which happened to several
other people in a local shop, but I'm surprised that the system would have
been designed in that way.