Sant

I have owned Chip & Signature cards since Citi and Amex offered them to customers by request. I rarely had a failure with either the Citi Aadvantage Platinum Select or Amex PRG either in the US, Canada or overseas.

My new Amex Platinum card was the first one with a defective chip. After several failed attempts, I had to swipe the card at the major chain stores. It only worked at a small merchant using a Square chip reader.

Has anyone else had a defective chip in their Amex card?

mia

I have an EMV American Express Everyday card that consistently fails at Publix Supermarkets, but works on the first attempt everywhere else. Some Publix cashiers are able to make it work without swiping, but their techniques are dissimilar so I imagine it's just a matter of reinserting the card enough times. I don't have any basis to think the card is defective.

Happy

Yes I have an AMEX SPG Biz AU card that has this Chip Malfunction very often. Sometimes retrying works sometimes takes 2 to 3 retrying so it is getting quite annoying.

Ended up calling AMEX to get a replacement card via online chat - they did send via UPS 2 Day Air BUT the chat rep forgot to enter the Unit number of our condo. UPS returned the package to AMEX after finding out there was no Unit Number on the address. That was on a Thursday.

Called to complain to a US-based manager the next morning (Friday) Card was resent via UPS Next Day Air and arrived on Saturday. Also got 5K courtesy pts because I had to wait at home for the 4 hours delivery window UPS told me but ended up the deliveryman did not even touch the intercon outside the lobby door despite our surname was on the directory due to the delivery address was missing the unit number.

strickerj

I got an AmEx Everyday card in July last year with my wife as an authorized user. Mine worked, but hers came with a defective chip. (Multiple readers at different stores didn't register that anything was inserted. Swiping worked.)

Got a new one overnight via FedEx, but I've never had this problem with any other cards.

wahooflyer

I have 3 Amex cards and the chips on all of them have worked fine from the get-go, but I did have a similar problem with my credit union Visa debit card when they sent the chip version a few months ago. At first, it wouldn't work at most merchants (including Kroger and CVS)... had to insert it three times and then finally swipe. But strangely enough, after a couple of weeks the chip on the card started to work everywhere - and continues to do so now despite the card being more worn.

It is still a mystery to me why this happened, but my best guess is that the chip could be read better once the card got a little bent and/or the chip got scratched from being inside enough card readers.

Eastbay1K

You mean the more you stuck it in, the more experience it got and it worked better?

tmiw

The software in use at a significant number of stores used to be (or maybe still is) unable to handle people inserting their cards before everything's done being scanned. In some cases doing so actually crashed the POS and/or terminal, while in others the terminal would refuse to read the chip. Is it possible that some of the issues are due to that?

(FWIW every AmEx chip card I've gotten has been fine. The contactless part had issues for a while but that was likely a store issue and not a problem with the card itself.)

Lewis42

It is extremely unlikely for the chip in the card to be at fault from first delivery.

It is possible that through use and being unlucky that it has been damaged, therefore you should request a new card.

More often than not, if the card is new, it is the POS at fault and not the card / chip itself.

Sant

I had no problems with the same POS systems with my previous PRG card.

sdsearch

A lot of electronics that is not encased is subject to static damage. What about EMV chips? If it's zapped in the "right" way with the "too much" static (and it's hard for ordinary people to judge how "strong" a static jump is), could that damage it?

In some environments, in some seasons, static is much more likely than other places. A lot of companies which build electronic equipment take static-discharge measures. But most consumers do not. But then consumers have never had to handle an "unencased" chips before EMV cards in different environments that much (changing or adding memory to a laptop or mobile device is a lot rarer occurrence than handling EMV cards).

There are times of year when I get up from the couch and walk across the carpet to my laptop, and moment I touch my laptop "zap!". But I don't tend to handle individual EMV cards in exactly that situation. But what if someone did?

Happy

This reminds me when working at a HP sales office years ago. We keep some critical parts inventories in the sales office and we have semi-annually inventory counts. (A good part of the HP business at that time was Testing Instruments for chemicals - the division was spin off eventually.) During the 2 days of count, everyone had to wear some wrist bands or some sort of little devices to minimize the static damage. Non-essential employees are not allowed to go near the counting area even with the wrist bands.

mia

http://www.srmcorp.com/bank-credit-u...are-you-ready/

tmiw

Interestingly, I just received a new SPG card in the mail today. Target would not read the chip on the card tonight for some reason, but the chip worked at Walgreens without issue immediately afterward. I don't have enough use on the card yet to determine whether the chip itself is having issues or if it was a temporary issue with that Target location. Hopefully it lasts until AmEx lets me request a contactless version. ^