Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a rant about using PINs to pay for your items with credit cards (though while I’m at it, all the leaflets and stuff that were going round at the time that Morrisons changed said that using PINs were more secure – surely it is much easier to remember a four-digit number than it is to copy somebody’s signature… on the upside it means that I am able to use my mum’s card to do the shopping which, given that she’s pretty much housebound now, is a good thing!)
I was in a shop the other day and they were using a card terminal that wasn’t part of the till itself so they had to type in the amount I had bought.
And that lead me to think…
Has anybody ever bought something that is the value of their PIN?
For instance, if my PIN was 4253, and I bought something that was £42.53 then that would be a yes (remembering of course that when values are entered into tills and card units, it is always done by pence so that they would enter in 4253 and so would I).
(And, no, that isn’t my PIN, I’m not that stupid. I did consider double-bluffing you too as that is the sort of thing I would do, but even I have a line that I daren’t cross on the Internet, and publising my PIN is about 250 yards away from that line! As an aside, I used to, when I was with friends and getting money out of a cash machine, say four random digits as I entered my PIN just to confuse them. Of course, me being me ended up confusing myself on a number of occasions resulting in me not putting the number in correctly. But I digress.)
Of course, there are some problems with this theory. Depending if you’re rich or poor, or your PIN is a number in the low thousands or the high thousands. One of my PINs is quite a high number, and I think I’m quite unlikely to come across this situation myself with that card, while the other was what started me thinking as the amount I bought was rather close to my PIN. If you’re rich, with a high number, say 9835 then £98.35 is nothing to you and you’re quite likely to spend that, yet with a low number PIN (say, 1378) then £13.78 is such a low amount that you would probably just hand over a twenty pound note. On the other side, if you’re poor with a low number then £13.78 is, not a lot of money, but something you’d use a card for. £98.35 would probably be a weekly shop or something so something that would happen infrequently if at all.
I can honestly say that this has never happened to me. I just think these things up, honestly. I don’t know why or where but they do show up in my mind.
I shall let you know if it ever does happen to me, and I’d be quite interested to hear if it has happened to you – though I’d advise against publishing the actual amounts and therefore also your PIN!