The Y2K glitches start being reported
And it begins, the early reports from England on a particular POS machine. Although this glitch was related to Y2K, POS machines are flaky on the best of days.
There have been some problems with a small percentage (5%) of point of sale terminals (the card readers in shops that are used to process credit and debit card transactions). The affected terminals show an error message which simply needs to be cleared to allow the transaction to be processed. Although there is a simple workaround, details were not immediately available to all affected retailers, so consumers were inconvenienced yesterday. Now that the details have been widely disseminated, consumers are much less likely to be affected.
The problem is restricted to some of the machines produced by Racal Electronics plc. Although the fault relates to the Y2K bug, it will disappear on 1.1.2000.
This is only a minor glitch. It is typical of the sort of problem that it was >expected would need to be dealt with over this period. This problem does not >affect any other point of sale terminals, ATMs, the cards themselves or other >methods of payment, and does not lead us to expect any significant problems in >the financial sector.
I've seen this personally, I've also see a POS machine crash hard around a year ago when my renewed VISA card with a 00 expiry date was swiped.
And it begins, the early reports from England on a particular POS machine. Although this glitch was related to Y2K, POS machines are flaky on the best of days.
There have been some problems with a small percentage (5%) of point of sale terminals (the card readers in shops that are used to process credit and debit card transactions). The affected terminals show an error message which simply needs to be cleared to allow the transaction to be processed. Although there is a simple workaround, details were not immediately available to all affected retailers, so consumers were inconvenienced yesterday. Now that the details have been widely disseminated, consumers are much less likely to be affected.
The problem is restricted to some of the machines produced by Racal Electronics plc. Although the fault relates to the Y2K bug, it will disappear on 1.1.2000.
This is only a minor glitch. It is typical of the sort of problem that it was >expected would need to be dealt with over this period. This problem does not >affect any other point of sale terminals, ATMs, the cards themselves or other >methods of payment, and does not lead us to expect any significant problems in >the financial sector.
-- Neil J. McRae - Alive and Kicking. neil@DOMINO.ORG
At 06:45 AM 12/29/1999 -0800, Sean Donelan wrote:
And it begins, the early reports from England on a particular POS machine. Although this glitch was related to Y2K, POS machines are flaky on the best of days.
There's more on this story at: Racal Date-Change Software Bug Bites UK Shoppers http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991229/tc/britain_swipe_1.html - paul
participants (3)
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Neil J. McRae -
Paul Ferguson -
Sean Donelan