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I entered a Shell station after noticing I had forgotten to refill the previous day. I had been at this station withing a month before. I inserted my debit card and was then asked if it was a debit card. After pushing Yes I received a message saying that debit cards were not accepted and the a very rude message saying transaction canceled. End of transaction. I live on cash, no credit wanted. They didn't even have a sign saying that debit cards were no longer accepted, wasting my time. I went across the street and haed no problems at that station. I will not return to ANY Shell again.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
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Since nov 2015 we have been unable to use shell card. They have all kinds of excuses. I have complained to shell twice. We still can't use the card.
Although it might be a market ploy to get you to move to their Shell $aver Card. This is an ACH Debit Card. It costs the retailers considerably less to process as they bypass the debit networks. The money moves as an ACH transactions...the same as electronic bill pay transaction to your power company. This ACH debit card goes through the encrypted pad and all shell stations are required to accept it even if they don't want to take it.
It is because they do not want to pay for the encryption module for the pump. Debit Network requires that the PIN to be encrypted with a special encryption module in the pad. These modules are very expensives. A lot of the smaller fuel stations do not want to pay for the modules. I'm told that the modules cost around $1600 per keypad. To save money the merchant accepts only credit card at the pump and if you have to pay with debit they will have you come inside and pay at the terminal.
Fortunately most debit cards are also part of the Visa or MasterCard network so you can use it at the pump and pay as a credit card transaction. It costs the gas station less for PIN based debit in processing fees then it does for a credit transactions, but the smaller retailers can't afford the modules and it would take a lot of debit transactions to break even.
I've had the same thing happen at my local Shell station. I answer "no" for whether it is a debit card and it asks for my zip code and accepts the transaction as a credit instead of a debit card. I made the mistake of answering "yes" the other night. It cancelled the transaction, so I used the same debit card and answered "no" and it worked fine.