I’ve become very bad with password and PIN number recently. Those password management applications that I use are to blame for my memory failures, I think.
Anyway, I have forgot the PIN for my ATM card recently. I visit my bank branch and asked them to provide me with the new PIN. The lady there informed me that there is no way to reset the PIN and that they will have to issue a new ATM card for me. I was a bit surprised, but confirmed that they should proceed as my need for ATMs is rather often.
Less then a week later I have received my new ATM card and the new PIN. I have checked my account statement and saw that I was charged 5 CYP for the card renewal. OK, who cares. But what surprised me the most was that the new card was identical to the old one. Card number, expiry date and everything else were exactly the same. Now I wonder who designed this idiotic procedure? It is fifty gadzillion times easier to just change the four numbers of the PIN code, or even simply remind me what they were, than to reissue the plastic card, which is a totally other business with all paperwork travelling back and forward between branch (Limassol) and headquarters of the bank (Nicosia).
I am deeply puzzled…
The answer is inside, not outside. :) Your new card has different information written inside its magnetic stripe, including different PIN encryption seed.
Still they could’ve just tell me the PIN. :)
this is very interesting to me as a friend of mine also forgot her PIN. I claimed that it would be easy to reset her PIN but obviously I was quite mistaken!
In the States, the customer service representatives have a little machine where you type in the number you want it set to (at least, that’s what happens when you first get the ATM card – I, of course, haven’t forgotten my PIN number yet )
Cool! I never got the chance too select my PIN… ;-)
1st. Usually banks (Bank of Cyprus and Laiki) do a request of a new pin with out changing the card. I know happened to my cousin.
2nd. You got charged because you’ve asked for a reissue not a renewal. Which basically means (I’ve lost my card give me a new one and while you are at it change my pin as well).
3rd. When you put your card in the ATM there is an option to change your pin if you want to do so.
Constantinos,
I didn’t ask for the reissue. I told them that I forgot my PIN and that I want it either be remined to me or changed to a new one. The personal banker there told me that the only way to get the PIN is to issue a new card. No choices. I also think that if they would have an interface to change a PIN from ATM, than it would have been very easy to do from the clerk’s terminal.
Anyway, I guess Hellenic Bank has this thing working differently. I don’t mind. It’s not that I go through this procedure all that often (this is my first time at all), and they are a good bank otherwise. :)