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Technical issues are always a hassle, but at least you can usually get them fixed by calling the technical support team, right?

What would you do if you were working at a butcher shop when the credit card machine started giving weird errors even after you went through the normal troubleshooting steps?

That is what happened to the person in this story, so he called the credit card machine’s technical support line, and even they had no idea what was causing the issue.

Some issues are just really hard to figure out, and that seems to be the case here. Read through the full story to see what you think of what happened.

“Huh, that’s a new one…” Genuine terror with our POS support

I work in retail as both front and back of house duties for a butcher shop, with the occasional dash of “fix computer please” because no one here can do basic troubleshooting (fixes I have done include “just flicking a touch keyboard” and “fitting a loose wire with some scotch tape”).

So, here we are in the butcher shop, having a grand ol time, selling stuff and taking card payments.

Wait, why’s it not taking card payments anymore?

Specifically, our Point of Sale (POS, or EFTPOS) card reader is throwing up a weird error.

This is a normal setup for pretty much any store.

How it’s supposed to go is I scan stuff with the scanner attached to a simple all in one computer unit (with windows 10, currently), and then input whether the user is paying via card or cash.

In card cases, it’ll tell the POS machine the price, and then it does it’s money magic to take people’s hard earned money in exchange for our meat and candy (we sell so much sweets I have no idea why).

What does this error message mean?

I’m used to it being weird, sometimes it disconnects randomly (loose wire usually) or it throws a fit and tries to double charge someone.

The occasional hang, we do a restart, good ol turn it off and on again, but this was a new one.

ERROR, T6

Time to go through some troubleshooting.

Not recognizing the error code, I go onto the attached computer and bring up the diagnostics tool.

Quick glance gives me the relevant info; system online, port open, device recognized, no connection.

That’s the odd bit, normally since both computer and whatever server these devices use recognize each other, they *should* be able to talk to one another and do the payment thing.

Now he has a little more information.

Restart don’t do anything, turn off and on does nothing, the little scan tool gleefully tells me something weirder

> LOGON, PLEASE WAIT-

> DECLINED, SYSTEM ERROR, T6

At least the issue is not on their side.

“Declined” is not a common one for errors, but it DOES tell me that the issue is probably on the *bank’s* side, and not ours!

So easy solution; give up and contact the POS tech support line to see what this error is, and confirm that the bank is receiving money or not.

Let’s get this fixed.

Thus, a nice phone call and six or seven minutes on hold later, and a very nice tech support dude I’ll call Befuddled answers.

Befuddled: “Good afternoon, this is [POS tech support], how can I help you?”

Me: “Yeah the POS machine isn’t taking payments, keeps saying Error Code T6, and I can’t seem to figure it out on my end.”

This isn’t something you want to hear from tech support.

And the tech pauses for a solid ten seconds, before saying words that filled me with dread.

Befuddled: “… [naughty word], that’s a new one, never heard of that error code before, gimme a minute.”

Dear readers, I understand many of you are IT specialists. Y’all are way smarter than me. So I don’t know if you’ll share my feeling here, but hearing the words “that’s a new one!” filled me with fear beyond fear. I do not want to be the reason an *entirely unknown problem occurs*.

And I can tell this is unknown, because after ten minutes of us troubleshooting (mostly him walking me through solutions), he takes a moment to leaf through what sounds like a handwritten notebook?

Now they are getting somewhere.

Befuddled: “Sorry. Just never heard of this issue, going through the notes our last supervisor had made years ago, and it’s not on here either- WAIT THERE IT IS!”

We learn that T6 is a communication error. Which just makes the tech more confused;

Befuddled: “okay but that doesn’t make sense… I can see your requests from my side, the bank *does* have the money, it can clearly take transactions! It shouldn’t be doing this, nothing is blocking the connection…”

Well, let’s try something new.

After a half hour, he decided we should try standalone mode; this puts the POS unit into a setting that forces us to input all transactions on the keypad rather than the computer, and then we’d have to manually confirm each transaction at the end of the shift.

But it *should* work at least! Hurrah for solutions! We put it in standalone mode, set up a test transaction, and

LOGON FAILED, SYSTEM ERROR, T6

Sometimes you just need a new device.

Befuddled: *muffled in the background* “what the @#$& do you MEAN?!”

Ultimately, he thanked me for the new experience, jotted down some notes, comped us a new POS unit and states the explanation as follows;

Befuddled: “It’s either corrupted internal software (despite our reinstalls), or wizards. Sorry your computer is haunted.”

The new unit worked perfectly with no issues. I’m told the nonfunctioning one was kept for “research”/possibly exorcism.

In a way, having a problem that even confuses tech support can be satisfying. At least you know that it wasn’t something caused by your own ignorance.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about this story.

Wow, you know things are broken when they say this.

This commenter had a funny story.

Always hope for good documentation.

Calls like this can ruin the day.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an ex-Army vet who quit his security guard job after he doesn’t get a promised raise.

This commenter says he is a great user.

If tech support can’t figure it out, you need a new machine. Fortunately, that is exactly what they got in this case.

Sometimes it is a lot faster and easier to just get something brand new than it is to get to the root cause of the problem.