American Express Membership Rewards - Amex digit spacing and dumb cashiers

For the third time this happened to me, so I figured it might be fun to see who else has had this happen to them....

I went to a pizzeria that advertised that they take the Amex card. When I went to pay, they looked at my Amex card and said that they don't take Amex.

I pointed out that the bill was presented in an Amex leather folio! They said that's correct, but that when they swipe the credit card, the card reader asks for the last four digits of the card to be punched in. He further explained that VISA/MC cards end with 4 digits, but that AMEX cards end with five digits.

The first words out of my mouth were... "HUH?"

I'm sure you can imagine this guy after I pointed out to him where the last 4 digits are located on an AMEX card...


[This message has been edited by juanvaldez (edited 08-31-2002).]

That is funny!

Today at lunch the total was $4.01. I gave the cashier a $5 and she started to give me ninety nine cents. So I then gave her a penney and asked for a dollar. She said that she couldn't since she already had wrung up the $5, not the $5.01.



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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Fly first class now or your children will</font>

I just checked, and all my credit cards end with only 1 number. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

The POS device may have been prompting the user to enter in the CID code which appears on every Amex credit and charge card. It is a 4 digit code that appears on the front of the card and is not embossed (raised digits with special coloring). It is a unique code that verifies the card is present at the time of the transaction as well as another way for Amex to verify who is using the card.

Snowcap

Nope - it wasn't asking for CID. That normally happens at Office Depot and stuff. I was at the POS and it just said enter last 4 digits. I think it's there to ensure that the card you're using is not a magnetic copy of a different card.

They were trying to enter my last 5 digits on the Amex card because they mistakenly assumed that the card reader wanted the last "block" of digits rather than the last 4 digits.

When they swiped my Visa card, the same prompt appeared, and they were able to easily find the last 4 digits... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Very interesting how peoples' minds work when it comes to this sort of thing.

[This message has been edited by juanvaldez (edited 09-03-2002).]

juanvaldez has it!

This is just done as a simple validation process to make sure that it the card number programmed on the strip matches the one embossed on the front.

The CID mentioned previously is actually the SID, the Security Identifer. Basically when the cards are made, they are done in batches. So if your cards are issued at the same time, the 4 digit numbers are likely to be the same as they would part of the same batch. Some websites now ask for this SID. AmEx will ask for it if you need to change any details on your account, like your address.

VISA and MC have a SID too, look on the back on the signature strip. You will see a series of numbers (either your full card number, or the last 4 digits) and another series of the 3 digits, which is the SID.

Thanks,
Richard

Sorry Richard! Here in the US for an Amex card it is called a CID. SID may be for Visa/MC though.

Snowcap