I had a bit of an odd experience this morning.
I pulled into an Exxon station in Philly to tide me over until I could get to cheaper gas in Jersey and got out to fill my tank. After swiping my credit card, the machine prompted me to choose between “credit” and “debit”. I punched the “credit” button and was met with a dialog requesting that I input my billing zip code(!) before proceeding. I apprehensively input the requested information and filled the tank, but now I’m more than a bit nervous. I guess I’ll keep a close eye on my credit card statements for the next few months to see if anything fishy shows up.
Anyone else seen this sort of odd behavior? Is it an ostensible “consumer protection” implemented to keep people from using cloned cards or is it representative of a whole new intrusive anti-consumer regimen that I have been blissfully unaware of to date?
Author’s note: click the image above if you’re not sure what the “im in ur” meme is all about.
im in ur gas pump, stealing ur identitiez
I can’t recall having run across that yet.
I am irritated the local Lowe’s, which added some self-checkout lanes, has an “enter the last 4 digits of your card number” step that I always forget about until after I’ve already swiped my card and put it back in my wallet.
We have one gas station that asks for that info. If the price is good enough they have to verify they are pulling a market maybe.
[…] previously discussed the lolcats Internet meme briefly here before, so I won't go into its origins at the moment […]