Why Does Cancel Mean Credit?

This happens to everyone every day. It's stupid and should be fixed, but no one ever will because it's so trivial and unimportant. I'm talking about using your bank debit card as a credit card - and how stupid the machines are that you need to use to do this.

I was in CVS Pharmacy. I'm not picking on them, but their card reader system is typical of what you find in a lot of places. You scan your card - or in the case of CVS you slide it into the machine upside down. You're presented with a screen and at the bottom it gives you one button for "Credit" and another one for "Debit." I don't know what the Spanish equivalents are, but they were there too. I used the little pen attached to the reader to hit "Credit".

After a moment, a screen pops up with a numeric keypad asking me to enter my PIN. This probably would also have happened if I had hit "Debit" so I'm not sure why I was given that choice in the first place. Nowhere on the screen does it say "Credit" but there is a "Cancel" button. Yes, that's what you need to press to pick credit. Not very intuitive, eh? You're not canceling your transaction or the process or even the screen. You're canceling...well, I don't really know what you're cancelong. Even though I knew better, I asked the cashier if I should hit cancel for credit. She rolled her eyes like she had been asked this question 1000 times and we should all automatically know that cancel means credit and said, "yes."

So I hit cancel and up came a screen asking me to confirm that I wanted to use my card as a credit card. Hmmm...didn't I say that on the very first screen? So I hit yes and up came the signature screen. I signed and then had to hit one more button, this time agreeing to pay the amount of my purchase.

Yes, this is a very minor inconvenience compared to most things in life, but I just don't understand why no one has finally done something to fix this stupidity. At the beginning of the transaction, ask if the customer wants to pay credit or debit. And then bring up either the PIN-entry screen OR the signature screen. Computers are smart enough to do this. I guess the people who program card readers aren't. At least not the ones CVS hires.

What makes this even more fun is when you happen upon a card reader that has actually been set up and programmed correctly. In this case, cancel really means cancel - and on more than one occasion, because I'm so used to having to compensate for the stupid systems out there - I have actually had to start over. Cancel actually DID mean cancel - everything! Go figure.