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Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

>For a single transaction, is it even possible to make a transaction with a credit card when: - The chip/card reader fails? - The network connection is down? - There's a power outage?

In the power outage situation, the merchant won't be able to handle any transactions and they may not be able to legally open their doors even if they could. I don't think I've ever encountered the other two scenarios ever. I would imagine that CC payment systems have resiliency for a network failure and most businesses have at least two card/chip reader terminals for transactions.

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> I don't think I've ever encountered the other two scenarios ever.

Chip readers fail to read all the time; One failure, reinsert, try again.

Connection from the reader to CC service outages also occur.

I run into this a few times a year.

I’ve also had to change my credit card number a few times due to number theft (self-service gas station).

So many points of failure and headaches.

I still use my credit card a lot to build and maintain my credit history; convenience in physical stores isn’t one of them.

I've been reading through this thread and trying to figure out what the disconnect between you and everyone else, I think it's probably your poor experience with chip readers. I had the same deal, it was frustrating, and not as convenient as cash. It made me resistant to the tap system because I felt I really did not need more faulty bullshit. Now for whatever reason I have a card that has a chip and the tap, and crucially, most of the places have systems where the tap consistently works (except one that is faulty and uses the chip read and reminds me how little I liked that). It's like always having exact change but faster.

Anyway, not trying to change your mind (pay with checks and bottle caps for all I care), but you seemed suspicious in some of your responses and I thought it might be helpful to share that perspective. I would also be suspicious if it sounded like people were recommending something that I personally knew to be a consistent frustration.

Others have already acknowledged independently that each of my edge cases have happened to them in some respect.

So I’m not sure why you think it’s suspicion or a disconnect of myself versus everyone else (it’s not).

I’ve just consolidated the edgecases for a topic that frequently comes up again and again: That is, cash is a pain; electronic/credit-only is great.

I bought from a computer store during a localized power outage about 15 years ago (not the great blackout of 2003). I paid cash, the clerk hand-wrote a receipt on a pre-printed form, and presumably they kept a second copy of the receipt to input electronically when the power eventually came back.

> In the power outage situation, the merchant won't be able to handle any transactions

They can handle cash transactions just fine, that's the beauty of cash. It is entirely self-contained.

Having lived in areas where power goes out often, that's the norm. Cash only while there is no power.

Even here, California, every so often various local convenience stores become cash-only for the day whenever their network connection is down.

So I’ve worked retail during a power outage, granted it was roughly 15 years ago, at a Blockbuster. We used a pen and paper list of transactions (literally a cash register) along with necessary info (membership number, movie purchased or rented) and entered them by hand when power came back.

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