I've been staying in a hotel for the past week. After two days here, I discovered
the key card to the room was erased. A couple of days later, I discovered both of the
key cards had stopped working, and had them reprogrammed by the front desk.
This was when I figured out I had been carrying my AirPods in their case
in the same pocket as the cards.
I don't seem to have any trouble with the room key when I don't have the
AirPods case with me.
I remember from my NEETS modules days that anything that generates an electrical
field also generates a magnetic field. The AirPods case is a small capsule that
acts as a charger for the AirPods, hence it generates electric and magnetic fields.
With the case and the key card in the same pocket, I can't help but wonder
if the magnetic field created by the AirPods case is at least partially erasing the
data recorded on the key card's magnetic strip.
Apparently, this is a thing.
I'll simply leave this here: If you're an AirPods user, consider carefully where you
carry the case in relation to things like key cards, bank cards and credit cards
which use magnetic strips.
UPDATE:
We're now in our third week at this hotel. I met a guy this morning at breakfast who was wearing AirPods and had
his case out on the table. I told him about my experience, and then showed him
the big dumb credit card case I bought as a defense against the constant card
erasure. Surprised, he admitted that he kept his room card and
the AirPods case in the same pocket (as had I). He thanked me for the advice and left after
a few minutes.
About ten minutes later he came back to our table and told me that his room
card wasn't working!