Maybe svft's card didn't work because the pin is not encoded on the chip, in which case it would only work at online locations. If he tried to use the card at offline locations the machine would try to read the pin on the chip, not find it, and reject the card.
I got an AFCU card a few weeks ago and would like to find out whether it has the pin encoded on the chip. I will probably call Andrews on Monday and ask; meantime, anyone have info about the matter of whether Andrews encodes its card with the pin?