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Chip and Pin delays

Dank1984
Posts: 5 Forumite
Hi all,
First post so please be gentle! I've noticed recently that when I'm out and about using my card that from the point of punching in my pin and pressing enter there's quite a significant delay before it prints the receipt. The shop owner said its due to the amount of people shopping for Christmas, is this right and is anyone else experiencing the same? Just worried my card is on the blink.
Merry Christmas by the way.
First post so please be gentle! I've noticed recently that when I'm out and about using my card that from the point of punching in my pin and pressing enter there's quite a significant delay before it prints the receipt. The shop owner said its due to the amount of people shopping for Christmas, is this right and is anyone else experiencing the same? Just worried my card is on the blink.
Merry Christmas by the way.

0
Comments
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Use firefox!
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Maybe the batteries need replacing?
:cool:
Merry Christmas to you too!
:xmassign:
Just think, not long til you break up now, and you can spend even more time here :j0 -
Not really the reply I was looking for but thanks for the contribution. :T0
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Keep using your card as normal, to be honest it doesn't sound like the problem is with it.0
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Thanks for the response. I would be interested I hear if anyone else has experienced the same and whether the "busy at Christmas" thing has any truth, I suppose it all connects a very busy network.0
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It's not unbelievable there are delays with the system if more people are using it, but I really wouldn't let it worry you.
And, OhReally, I think the assumption the OP was/is a troll seems uncalled for.0 -
Well, bsms1147, I know the outragous allegation and resultant slur on my good character in you assuming I was in any way making any assumption about the OP being a troll is definitely uncalled for.0
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I used to work for a company that ran the data centre for a very large retail organisation. Incoming credit/debit transactions got written to a data queue and then the processing of them was done (on several threads) in a FIFO basis. The link to the financial organisation (I think it was Streamline) was of limited bandwidth and so a busy times the data queue grew large enough that a significant delay would be introduced between the transaction being queued and it being approved. So the Christmas suggestion is probably right on the mark.0
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I've noticed a delay when paying using my PIN, but contactless transactions seem just as quick as usual.
Maybe the answer is to keep your Xmas presents transactions below £20 and use contactless.0 -
Yeah; it's the Christmas affect lol
As others say, contactless doesn't require online authorisation so will always be quick
Some authorisation of low risk transactions may also be skipped/done later in peak periods like Christmas
But certain customers/retailers/values etc. will almost always take longer.
And the speed of the connection can be down to the retailer's own infrastructure/connection i.e. some retailers will be slow all year!0
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