Credit Card may not work

I had the same problem at the Pisa station. It worked everywhere else. Thanks for sharing.

PJ,

I'd be interested to know which train stations in Italy you had problems with? I was in Milano and northern Italy in June and the automated ticket machines were still accepting magnetic strip credit cards then.

The inexorable march towards "chip & PIN" technology is continuing, both here and in Europe so perhaps they've changed the machines since I was there? I now have a "chip & PIN" VISA card, but I've found the operation is a bit "erratic" at times. The first automated ticket machine I tried at CDG wouldn't work, but the second one worked fine.

Cheers!

Specifically, I remember that we tried several times in Milan at several different machines. Also in Milan, the homeless people hover around the machines 'helping' you for tips, so it was really uncomfortable watching for pickpockets and trying to get the machines to work.

The line to see a ticket agent was pretty long, but there were several agents working, so it moved pretty quickly. I guess they were ready for us.

Also the gas station where it wouldn't work was in Milan.

And when we were on the autostrada, at the toll stations we were in a cash only line that was very long. The credit card line was next to us and was empty. I'm assuming that it was because our credit cards don't work in the toll booths either, but we didn't try it to verify. We did see a few cars try and then back up and get in our line.

PJ,

One question - did you try the ticket machines next to the ticket office downstairs at Milano Centrale? I found those would accept Euro cash as well as credit cards, so that provided another option for payment.

We tried a couple of the machines next to the ticket office and neither would work with a credit card. Then we went back out in the hallway and tried a couple of machines near the moving sidewalk/ramp things. Neither of those would work either. But we never tried putting in cash. We just gave up and went to stand in the line for ticket agents.

PJ,

I used cash in the ticket machines next to the ticket office, and no problems at all. At the time I was chatting with some people from Russia that were using a magnetic strip card to buy tickets, and they didn't seem to have any problems with that method.

It's probably safe to say that the days of the magnetic strip cards in Europe are "numbered".

Cheers!

Steve,

I've been starting to see the "chip & PIN" credit cards much more frequently up here, and I suspect there will be a "flood" of them starting in 2010. Most of the merchants have the new POS terminals installed, but not all of them are operational yet.

My credit union advises that they'll be starting to issue "chip & PIN" debit cards in 2010 also, although no definite roll-out dates have been announced yet.

It will be interesting to see whether this method offers any improvements in reducing fraud.

Cheers!