Random memory

[pne]

At the beginning of January, I went shopping for discount Christmas chocolate and biscuits. Loaded a bunch into my shopping trolley and went to pay for them.

"Card declined". Oops? The checkout lady tries my card again - still declined. She looks at it and noticed that it expired at the end of 2007.

Oops. I don't remember getting any new card, and I never paid attention to the expiration date because my EC (Maestro) card is valid for so long (three years, I think).

Anyway, I asked her whether she could keep my stuff for me and I'd try to get some cash and come back. She said she guessed so and told me where I could push my trolley and she'd keep half an eye on it for me. (She also seemed a bit unconvinced how I planned on getting cash with my expired card.)

Anyway, I went home, borrowed Stella's card and PIN, drove back to the shop, and bought my things.

After a bit of looking, I did find the new EC card my bank had sent me: while Stella had immediately replaced hers in her wallet, I had stuck the letter on my desk in a "todo" spot. Ah well. I exchanged the expired cards in my wallet for the new ones (one for our joint account, one for my pocket money account), and a couple of day later also transferred the balance from my old Geldkarte to the new EC card (used to be two separate cards, now the Geldkarte chip is on my EC card).

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

My EC card also expired at the end of 2007. I went by train on 3 January. On 26 December, I had printed an online ticket and I had indicated that I would identify myself using my EC card and I had filled in everything with the old data (also the expiration date 2007). I had found it a bit odd that the Deutsche Bahn website would let me do this for a travel date that was after the expiration date, but I thought they knew what they were doing. On the train, it turned out that my EC card was always declined. When the controllers noticed that it had expired, they said that that was probably the reason. Luckily, I also had the new card with me, which was immediately accepted, so nothing bad really happened. But I still found it disappointing how little you can trust the Deutsche Bahn website.

[afuna]

*blinks* I keep thinking it is 2010, when it most definitely is not, and I was wondering why/how you didn't notice you were carrying a card that was three years out of date.