Similarly, every time I am in America (although last time was a already a long while ago) with my Belgian chip-and-pin credit card, the terminal would show a cryptic error message with a slightly confused cashier saying, "sorry, your card doesn't work" (or sometimes: "is refused"). Queue me pointing to another terminal: "don't swipe the card, insert it in the sleeve and let me enter my pin."

Same problem at shopping malls in China, by the way (where the language makes the explaining even more fun).