I take back all the nice things I said. I just bought train tickets and it does suck.

I decided to look at it with fresh eyes and I don't know how any jetlagged passenger manages to buy tickets.

The machine that used to work for my credit card is gone.

Some machines don't take credit cards at all, and they are marked, but no traveler would know what the markings mean.

Many machines claim to take Visa, MC, etc. but none of them would even read my cards. These are cards with PINS and that normally work for me. I'd get as far as saying I'm using credit, the machine instructs me to continue with the key pad and insert my card in the slot. I tried every card in my wallet at several machines and never even got to the "enter pin" stage. They all just said "cancelled" on the screen. Maybe they only take chip cards, but then SAY SO, maybe I was putting in the cards the wrong way, but there was no instruction or illustration on the machine.

I had plenty of Euro bills, but not a single machine took currency, only coins. WHY???? This is just plain absurd. VENDING MACHINES take currency when you want a bag of chips for heaven's sake, the technology can't be that expensive or complex to implement.

If you happen to have enough coins, which I didn't, some machines have coin slots and some don't, but they all look the same meaning you need to carefully inspect for the presence of a coin slot before beginning your transaction.

So, over to the window to stand in a long queue of clueless people - 90% of them are buying tickets to Amsterdam Centraal, how about dedicating a window to just that?? And, maybe put a big display board above it saying "Tickets to Amsterdam Centraal only at this window, Single EUxxx, Day Return EUxxx, plus EU0.50 service charge, Cash and Credit Cards accepted, along with the upcoming train times and track numbers.

Then, I need to find the train. The only reliable way to do so is to look at the big yellow schedules and try to decipher it, but nothing tells you that either. The signs over the ramps to the tracks don't always show all the stops so you can't rely on that. Many times I've walked past all the tracks, scratched my head and then went to the yellow board to find "I need track X". Thinking I'd midread the display, I check and indeed Amsterdam Centraal is NOT on the display at the ramp, even though the train is stopping there. At Centraal there are boards specifically for trains to Schiphol, wouldn't it make sense to have the same displays for trains TO Centraal at Schiphol?

Not to sound like a fan of DB, but in Frankfurt every train that's stopping at Frankfurt Hbf always includes that on the displays even if other intermediate stops may not always show.

Finally, put a little airplane symbol on all the trains going to Schiphol, Frankfurt has figured out how to do this for any train going to FFM Flughafen, makes it all pretty idiot proof.

It just seems like no one has given this any thought, and I sympathize. This shouldn't be rocket science.

Now you've done it! I'm sure someone is going to come along and point out the error of your ways.

This part you can't complain about because they do have the airplane symbol for trains that go to Schiphol. From anywhere in the country. And at Amsterdam Centraal, there is a dedicated Airport monitor when you walk in that shows all the trains going to Schiphol.

As for the rest, I agree it might be tough for a jet-lagged tourist, but for regular business travelers you ought to be able to sort it out by your 2nd or 3rd trip. As I noted above there is a dedicated NS agent sitting at a desk right in the middle of the hall directing people to their trains. Ditto for many other big train stations in the Netherlands. The agent probably gets asked a thousand times per day "which track for the train to Amsterdam?"

And in my case I made it a priority years ago to get a local PIN card so I have no worries with buying train tickets and lots of other things in the Netherlands.

Somewhat unrelated, but it look me a good 5 minutes last week to figure out that some ticket machines in Munich would only take credit cards for certain kinds of tickets. For example, you could pay for an MVV ticket using a credit card on MVV machines, and for a DB ticket on DB machines, but DB machines would only accept cash for MVV tickets. The only indication of this was a very faint icon on the screen.

So, maybe you're onto something when you said that only certain machines actually accept credit, despite being externally marked otherwise.

When your bank issues you an old-fashioned, unsafe card, why do you complain that other parties don't accept it? Why not just complain to your bank and tell them you want a card from 2010, not 1980?

And most of your other points are just as unvalid.

You keep harping on this point -- this isn't an issue with the issuing bank. If you're running a business, you should make it as easy as possible for your customers to part with their money. In this case, if your machines are in a busy international airport, you should recognize that only 45% of credit cards worldwide are chip-equipped (and only 36% if you exclude western Europe). On top of that, the EMV chips are not foolproof, either.

Yes I do. And I (obviously) disagree with your second point
From the page you quote: "Years ago, EMV switched to PIN & Chip in order to overcome mag-stripe transactions which have no security at all."

I think it is actually worse than "no security at all". The Pin number of my cards are memorised. They are only four digits and I don't have it written down anywhere. It is not, AFAIK, encoded in any of my cards. So, if my card is lost or stolen, it will be pretty useless to anyone short of a technical expert and, even then, not sure what they can do.

A non-Pin card uses a signature for verification. If a thief or by passer finds the card, the signature is conveniently displayed on the back of the card so that anyone can use it! How dumb is that?

Your comment that "If you're running a business, you should make it as easy as possible for your customers to part with their money."

Is that a well-kept secret? No. I think any businessman can figure that out. And yet, magnetic strip non-Pin cards are difficult to find in Europe. While I don't have any inside information, I can only assume it would be either too expensive to equip machines to read the old cards or the risk of fraud is too high. Besides, although it may not be as convenient, there is always the possibility of using cash.

Now let me ask you: why don't you complain to your bank or credit card company to issue you a safer card?

MichaelBrighton, what you are saying about PINs makes sense, and I don't think anybody would dispute that having to use a PIN is safer than not having to use one.

However, the complaint others have made is about chips, not about PINs. To quote from post 76 above:

There is chip-and-PIN, and there is stripe-and-PIN. As we have learnt, while much of Europe uses chip-and-PIN, much of the rest of the world uses stripe-and-PIN. If you are catering to an international audience then you need to be able to accept both methods.

The ticket machines are, of course, not under the control of Schiphol Airport... so perhaps they should be discussed in a separate thread called "Nederlandse Spoorwegen Sucks..."? I remember seeing a thread on Tripadvisor recently on just that subject...

Most likely it is not much under control of Nederlandse Spoorwegen either. In Europe the pressure to abandon magnetic stripes comes from banks and CC companies (yes, basically the same companies that for some reason don't even want to put chips into US cards) While they are still quite ok using magstripes with attended POS terminals, they have been pushing for chip only for unattended terminals like ticket vending machines. And they have the power since all payment terminals have to be certified and approved for a use.

I'm not aware that "much of the rest of the world uses stripe and PIN". Do you have a source for that?There is generally a movement away from magnetic cards, at least here, as I no longer have a single one in my wallet. My bank card as well as my transport card both work on chips. Although it is not stated on the card, my national ID card, I suspect, also works on a chip. Many stores here which accept debit card payment, have blocked the magnetic strip reader so that people don't use it by mistake.

Since chip and strip readers use completely different technologies, it would not surprise me at all if the elimination of the magnetic readers is mainly a cost consideration.

Only what other people, from other parts of the world, have said in this discussion thread. I'm taking their word for it, seeing they are from countries (including some fairly large ones) where credit cards don't have chips.

For a few reasons.

First, because there is no difference in safety to me -- if I report my card lost/stolen within a reasonable timeframe, I carry no liability with either a magswipe or a chip card. Therefore, from a safety perspective, I have no incentive to choose a chip card over a regular card.

Second, the big credit card companies (Visa/MC/AMEX) have all permitted the big card issuers in the US to issue primarily Chip+Signature cards as they roll out their EMV implementations, instead of Chip+PIN. As this adds no additional security from a user perspective, there is no point in me complaining to my card issuers to replace my magswipe card with a chip card, as the chip card will not require a PIN.

This hasn't stopped me from requesting chip cards where possible anyway, as an EMV-equipped terminal should still take Chip+Sig cards even in places where Chip+PIN is prevalent. However, only the very largest US issuers currently have the technology to issue such cards, and it will still be years before these cards become mandatory, so my case is more the exception to the rule.

You certainly know your banks better than I do. But, does that mean if you contact the bank within three or four days and say it was lost on Thursday that they will without question credit you for any costs after Thursday?

This is more what I am talking about: isn't there a movement in the US toward the Chip and Pin? A slow movement perhaps? If so, my point is that if customers complained more to the banks, they might move faster. I also don't quite understand why they are going to an intermediate technology rather than straight to the final technology as was done here.I just don't understand it. I don't understand the delay and I don't understand why a middle step is being made. Clearly, using a signature is a security problem. If the banks must repay customers whose card was lost or stolen and then used by someone (because there is in effect nothing to stop them from using it), that must be costing them money. From what I know about banks (not an expert, but my wife works for one), losing money is not something they are happy to do.

Generally, if you notify them within 48 hours, yes. By law, if you notify your bank within this timeframe, your maximum liability is $50, although banks rarely charge anything at all. Many issuers offer policies that are even more generous than this.

The movement is toward Chip+Sig, not Chip+PIN. There are a handful of issues, like the State Department Federal Credit Union and the American Airlines Credit Union that offer Chip+PIN since their employees spend a lot of time abroad, but this is generally not the case.

It does cost them money, although a lot of liability is shifted to the merchant -- it depends on what steps (if any) they took to verify the card belonged to the cardholder. Banks have sophisticated risk detection software that will often flag a lot of these transactions before the first one is successfully posted, but sometimes they do get through. Big stores factor these chargebacks into the cost of doing business.

Signatures have always been the convention in the US, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. It's possible that once the transition to EMV is complete, issuers will then push for a transition to PIN-based cards, but for now the only PINs that are used on credit cards issued here are for cash advances from an ATM.

Thanks for the explanations. It seems people in the US who are travelling to Europe in the next few years will continue having problems with their cards. It's really a shame the US banks and credit card companies don't think more about their clients and less about themselves.