Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The fear of [being] criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, 'We were misled.' It makes me want to shout, 'Fuck you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.'" -- George Clooney, 2006-03-13

I have a debit card with the Visa logo on it; one of those commonplace cards that can be used as though it were a credit card even though it's not.

At the last four gas stations, my card has been declined at the pump, with a "see attendant" message. Last night I went to the booth and the cashier said it was declined. There's enough money in the account right now for a tank of gas (I can't afford to spend that much of it on gas, but there's currently that much there; I was trying to buy two gallons), and the card worked fine at a drug store and a grocery store. At first I thought perhaps the magnetic stripe was getting old and unreliable so the card just worked in some readers and not others, but then I played a hunch ...

At a different gas station, I first tried to use my card at the pump, selecting "credit". It was refused. Then I tried again, pushing the "debit" button instead. I entered my PIN, pumped my gas, everything worked (but I don't remember how much I get charged for a "foreign ATM" fee -- I'll find out on the next statement).

So now I'm curious. Have any of y'all discovered in the past week or two that you can use a debit/credit card in debit mode but not credit mode at gas stations? Am I being unreasonably suspicious, or are gas stations trying to dodge the credit card transaction fee that Visa charges them, by forcing me to swallow the ATM fee instead? Or is it probably mere coincidence that the reader happened to be able to read my card the time I pressed the "debit" button?

I know that several grocery stores changed the programming of their POS terminals about a year ago to default to treating such cards as debit cards, forcing the customer to take a couple of extra steps to use them as credit cards, apparently in the hope that many customers would just go with the prompts on the display instead of asking how to do it the other way. (And I also started seeing adverts in with my statements, saying that using it as a credit card instead of as a debit card would earn me some sort of points or enter me in a sweepstakes or something, because banks and credit unions do want the credit card processing fees from the merchants.) Have gas stations gone a step farther and started playing dirty?

Or am I being to quick to suspect foul play where a flaky mag-stripe may be all there is to it? Anybody else seeing what I'm seeing?