Originally Posted by
Points Scrounger
There have been mysterious, anecdotal reports of staffed terminals outside the USA requesting a PIN from American cards, which the clerk "over-rides" to force the sale through. As far as HD goes, I could see their programmers having omitted PIN altogether as an option fearing it'd slow things down, so everyone is automatically funneled into online signature (credit network ONLY for debit cards) as the sole EMV option; a card that didn't have that anywhere in the CVM list would fail.
I had that happen in London with a NFCU Chip and Signature MasterCard at the Pizzeria restaurant inside Harrods in London. The waiter actually took my card from the table and came back with the terminal for me to enter PIN, so I don't know if the waiter did anything that caused the terminal to bypass signature and prompt for a PIN. At a checkout counter in one of the Harrods food halls I was given a receipt to sign, as expected.