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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

Talk is cheap -- did you sign up for an NYT subscription?

I tried, but they have a form that claimed it works but does not actually work for my American Express card. I cleared it all and typed it in looking at my card and it claimed my CVV was invalid.

It worked with another card.

I'm home and ill today so I can't do any actual work which is why I had time for this charade. Any other day I would have simply hit the back button and ignored them.

Talk _is_ cheap. A broken billing form? Now that is costly.

This sounds like user error. If you want to be sure, you can call the number on the back of your card and they can tell you for certain if you were messing up the payment.

I had the exact same problem yesterday, I was reading my CVV upside down.

Ha, I thought someone would accuse me of this so (as I was buying something elsewhere at the same time) I screenshotted it and used the screenshot to type in the details. Can't share it, of course, but rest assured that not only did it work, but also that my CVV is not easily confused to be upside down. I also have the card right here in front of me.

Yes, but this still does not mean the web form is to blame, nor will a screenshot tell you the root cause of the problem, 99.9% of the time the numbers are fed directly to the payment processor, so it's not like there's anything to mess up.

This is why I suggested calling the card company, because they have the ability to see what went wrong and they will be able to tell you.

This is a fair point, and thanks for the advice, but the form warns you before submitting[0], so I doubt it is actually contacting the payment processor. Anyway, I can't be bothered since the card works everywhere else.

0: and I don't recall, but it may not let you submit.

I hope I don't come across as too patronizing, but Amex cards do trip end users up sometimes- the CVV number being 4 digits, and on the front of the card, unlike Visa & MasterCard... I've personally made the mistake of reading the wrong numbers off my Amex cards a few times.

Ha ha, not to worry, I did use the four digits on the front. This is my primary card. They have a "what is this?" too to look at and help with the CVV that corresponds exactly to my card.

Great pieces like this are offset by a large margin by their pandering/propaganda for things like the Surveillance State and the invasion of Iraq. It's not enough to get me to patronize them.

Just found out they are having a summer sale , 50% off that ends today , so that's definitely the right time to sign up.

I would if I knew it would remove the advertisements from the site.

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