I’ve noticed that at certain shops, when you use your credit card, you don’t need to sign a receipt. (I’m not talking about using debit cards and a PIN number.) At McDonald’s and Subway, for example, they just swipe your card and give it back to you with your receipt. The bottom of my Subway receipt from today’s lunch says “No Signature Required For transactions Under 25.00 Dollars.” Walgreens has an odd policy, at least in my experience: You don’t have to sign if you’re making a purchase of less than $50 at the pharmacy counter. You do have to sign for all purchases at the front registers. Also, not all fast-food outlets have the no-signature option; using your credit card at the drive-thru at Steak n’ Shake will need a signature.
So how does this work? Do the companies have to pay more for a no-signature scanning ability, or is it a security vs. convenience issue? Or something else?
I’m afraid I have nothing factual, but I would guess that signatures are used as an added security measure against chargebacks, and that companies like McD’s and Subway would just assume eat the occasional $5-$20 chargeback for stolen cards than deal with the pain of keeping pens in stock, taking time out of the fast food process for printing and signing receipts, and (gasp) comparing the signature on the card to what is written on the receipt.
This is (still guessing) probably the same thought process behind the pay at the pump deal at most gas stations.
Many fast-food shops are going this route for the reasons described by **TommyTutone ** above. As for gas pumps, most of them around here are asking fro your ZIP code. It takes just a couple more milliseconds for the debit/credit card system to validate the ZIP against its records when it makes an authorization decision.
Chain pharmacies already know who you are - their database has your name, address, doctors, allergies, etc. If there’s a chargeback, they’ll likely make you pay for it before they release your refill next month.
In a friendly spirit of enlightenment . . . the phrase that is wanted here is “just as soon.” This is a common mishearing.
Back on topic . . . I was surprised to read the OP, but then gotpasswords reminded me that I happily use my gas card at the pump, sans signature, with nary a thought.
Remember, too, that if you get in the habit of disputing purchases you don’t want to pay for, the interaction will go like this:
Call bank, dispute transaction.
Bank says “Card was present. Why didn’t you report it stolen?”
Customer: “Oh. Geez. My bad. Yeah. It was stolen.” <-- Lie
Bank: “Ok. Well, since you didn’t report it stolen in timely fashion, your liability is $50. We’ll waive all charges above $50. What about the rest of your purchases this month?”
Customer: …
Point 5 is where it gets tricky.
If you didn’t use the card after that, then fine. You just scammed $35 worth of gas. Good for you. Do it a few more times, your bank will probably decide you’re a jerk or a security risk and close your account, or at least its charging privileges.
If you did use your card after that purchase you disputed, then the banker is going to wonder why you aren’t disputing that transaction as well.
Was your card stolen and then returned?
If so, why didn’t you contact them when it was stolen and then returned?
Your odds of keeping the account open for very long playing games like this are fairly slim.
Also, if the merchant pulls security camera footage of you when you made the purchase and ships it to your bank, that could become a problem. It probably won’t happen the first time you pull this scam, but it will eventually happen.
We’ve done this several times in GQ, but just to recap:[ul][]Credit card companies have something called a “floor limit,” which is an amount below which they don’t require a signature. The limit is generally merchant- and industry-specific, but it’s generally in the neighbourhood of $50. There is a grocery store in Tokyo, for instance, that has a 20,000 yen (~$180) floor limit.[]“Card-not-present” transactions (such as mail order or Internet purchases) have more stringent risk management requirements. However, when there is a physical manifestation of a transaction (such as a book or CD that gets mailed to you), it’s much, much harder to get away with charging it back.[/ul]
My cigarette merchant (at the corner of Mulholland & Spielberg…yes, there’s a street named Spielberg here) never asks for a PIN or a signature, even though I routinely spend $70 to $100 per transaction…however, that might be because I’m such a regular customer.
[QUOTE=Cerowyn]
We’ve done this several times in GQ, but just to recap:[ul][li]Credit card companies have something called a “floor limit,” which is an amount below which they don’t require a signature. The limit is generally merchant- and industry-specific, but it’s generally in the neighbourhood of $50. There is a grocery store in Tokyo, for instance, that has a 20,000 yen (~$180) floor limit.“Card-not-present” transactions (such as mail order or Internet purchases) have more stringent risk management requirements. However, when there is a physical manifestation of a transaction (such as a book or CD that gets mailed to you), it’s much, much harder to get away with charging it back.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
This has not been communicated to me either as a clerk then manager for Blockbuster, nor as a small business owner taking credit cards. Maybe it’s different in the US.
Under normal, not disputed conditions, the credit card company never sees those little slips you sign. Only if you dispute a charge do I make a photocopy of it and send it to them.This means I have to go digging around and find the charge slip from six months ago. It’s much stronger proof if the customer’s signature is on the charge slip. But, like the furst reply said, it’s probably not cost-effective for McDonald’s to pay someone to go digging into their paper reciepts to dispute a chargeback. Even if it only takes an hour, they’ve paid them $6.75. They’d rather eat the $5.78 charge.
The pharmacy, OTOH, has proof of transaction in a much easier to access place: their computer. Walgreens has you sign on the touch screen to signify that you’re gotten your prescription, and the computer has the payment method info in it already. So they present your electronic “I got my meds” signautre as proof that you authorized the charge. Other pharmacies make you sign on a label or a clipboard for your meds - either way, it’s all the proof they need, without having to sort through eleventy thousand paper slips for each chargeback.
I do wonder about gas stations, though. Do they rely on security cameras to snap a photo of each license plate and time stamp it?
You must have nice Walgreens - neither the ones in St. Louis nor the ones here in Ft. Myers have made me sign anything. They’ll ask for my home address before giving me the prescription, but that’s it. The local small-town pharmacy does make you sign for your prescription, though.
I now work for a Walgreen’s as a pharmacy technician-in-training, and at the pharmacy register, you do not have to sign for credit card transactions under $50, nor are you required to sign anything indicating that you got your meds. We scan the bar code on the envelope, the 'puter marks it “Sold” somewhere within its inventory, and off you go with your pills.
The reason I was given for giving the under-$50 purchases a pass is “speed”, i.e. customer service.
This is just to confirm that you’re the right “SanibelMan” (because there are so many of them…)
Accepting small amounts without a signature is allowed in the US. As another poster has said, the limit differs by retail transaction type. The number of situations where a signature is not required has been increasing recently. For example, I believe it was only this year that the credit card companies allowed fast food transactions of under $25 to be taken without signature.
Of course, a merchant can choose to take any amount without a signature; the issue is who takes the risk when there is a dispute. When the credit card company is setting a limit, they are saying that they will take the risk up to that transaction amount.
Qualifications to comment: my company writes credit/debit card POS software. Earlier this year we added a modification, at fast food customers’ requests, to allow the retailer to set a limit below which no signature slip is printed.
