But I do use my card(s) a great deal. So much so that the contacts on the chip are changing from gold to brown.
My mum is a cachier. It is a constant headache where she works. Some tills the staff avoid using until last because the reader sucks so bad.
But, to you, C&P is an infallible technology that doesn't comfort to our normal rules of physics, so I'm sure nothing will convince you.
I've never had a problem with a card reader not properly reading swipes or the magnetic strip wearing down. Only times I've had a swipe fail has been when I mis-swiped the card, and that's entirely on my own klutziness, not any kind of mechanical failure.
The future shouldn't be worse than the present, but it looks like that's the road we're going down...
Although it seems less common over the last several years (perhaps because now physical cards are often replaced several times before they nominally expire?), this used to be a serious problem. The most common fix for a read failure was to put the card inside a plastic grocery bag, pull the bag tight, and then reswipe it. I have no idea how this fixed anything, but I witnessed it working many times.