The problem is you cannot get anybody at USAA who has a clue as to what is going on. Yesterday somebody claiming to be from the credit card department and the ceo's office called me and it quickly became apparent to me show didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. She had no idea about cvm's. So I asked her to transfer me to somebody who knew but she claimed she knew. Then why have you changed the cvm on at least my, and I am sure all, cards issued after a certain date and she hemmed and hawed and then began reciting some of the lies again. (The reason you were asked for a signature and not a pin is because of the way the merchant's pos is set up). Is your pin online or offline? Well that's information we can't release according to her. Incidentally I did bring my Pen Fed card with me also and tried it in the French SNCF kiosk and it didn't work for whatever that's worth. She promised to get back to me later yesterday and naturally didn't. It will be time later today for another e-mail.
Now if you ask me, here's what happened. USAA is an innovative bank and felt the USA would be going chip and pin and wanted to be in on the ground floor so they issued the chip and pin card and no matter what they try to say it was a true chip and pin card as we can see by the list that was posted. But in the on-going discussions, both mastercard and visa have been very adamant that chip and signature is almost as secure as chip and pin in card is present transactions (they may well be right but that is not the point) and have strongly pushed on the banks in the USA that they should go chip and signature. Once it became evident that the USA would probably be going chip and signature, USAA bean counters figured why spend the exptra for a chip and pin card and scaled their card back to chip and signature with chip and pin capabilaities.
Of course in some of the articles I have read, there still remain two problems. As somebody else just said, the security issue is not important to me nor should it be to any Americans because of the liability laws. It is will our cards work when they have to? Mastercard and visa both claim and admit there will be some situations where the chip and signature cards will not work but claim to be happy with 99.7% coverage. Of course if you're caught in that 0.3% situation, you're not going to be very happy.
I just wish I could get somebody at USAA to level with me of just what is going on and realize they are not talking to somebody who doesn't understand the whole thing.