Comment by michaelmrose

In actual practice TONS of people ruin their chips or regularly run them while doing stupid things like holding onto the card and bending it slightly or pulling it out early. When it fails to go through because they couldn't follow directions or because its outright broken they keep using their cards for months or until they get a new one expecting the retailer to deal with their half broken credit instrument and complaining energetically if it doesn't work.

Since a relatively small number of complaints ruins the parent companies perception of how well the individual store is doing as far as customer service the store level doesn't want anything to inconvenience their customers especially since literally 99.9999% of swipes are from legit customers not thieves.