Originally Posted by bullfrog

I have the same card. What SDFCU doesn't tell you is the card ships with a pre-set random PIN. You'll get a PIN mailer in a few days with that detail, but by then it's too late.

What happened to you (and to me too, when I first got my card) is you did 3 PIN transactions with the wrong PIN value (since you had no way of knowing the random PIN.) That brought the PIN-try counter to 0, so next time you tried using the card, the Offline PIN CVM was not available, and the card negotiated the next option on its list. That successful transaction caused the issuer script to run, resetting the PIN-try counter to 3 and setting the offline PIN stored on the card to the value you selected.

SDFCU really ought to clarify the instructions about how these cards work, OR ship them with PIN-TRY set at zero (like Barclay's does.)