Or here is Mastercard’s general agreement with merchants - link to pdf.
“A merchant must not refuse to complete a MasterCard card transaction solely because a cardholder who has complied with the conditions for presentment of a card at the POI refuses to provide additional identification information, except as specifically permitted or required by the Standards.”
gfloyd, it might be different in your part of the world. What I’m talking about could quite possibly be a cash sale where the store clerk asks for proof of age. That would piss me off no end. Asking for proof of ID in conjunction with providing a credit card might be a different issue (though I can’t remember it ever happening to me).
But the idea of proving I’m over 18 when my greying beard and ever-increasing wrinkles would confirm this to a lobotomised bonobo, I find a bit nannying, time wasting, and stupid.
Still, I’d hate to be the poor sap who carded George Burns.
Do you then apologize to youself for having wasted your own time?
Some people are better than others at judging age. If the store has a blanket policy to card everyone, it saves the problem of fines because some sales clerk isn’t good at judging ages. I have seen some of the undercover cops used on sting operations - there were a couple I would have sworn were at least 30, but they weren’t 21.
I don’t understand why people get angry at stores when they abide by the law - law that everyone knows is in effect. Do you want to pay higher prices because your corner store keeps getting nailed for selling to minors?
Sorry, gfloyd, I misread your post. Signing a credit card seems to me to be a basic, and whenever I receive one in the post I’m implored to sign it IMMEDIATELY, or if I collect it at the bank, I sign it in the presence of the teller. So yes, anybody presenting an unsigned card deserves all they get.
Law might be different where I am, but they only ask for ID from people who might conceivably be under age. If I had a choice between a store that treated me as a number (and potentially a criminal) and made no secret of it, or the friendly place up the road that greets me by name and charges a dollar extra, I’ll go up the road every time.
It’s not just about (or really, at all about) some perceived waste of time for pulling an ID out of a wallet when people get offended by it. It’s the fact that someone who is clearly well over the legal age (like, we’re talking double or more here) to drink a little bit of spirits is being treated like a criminal.
Why does anyone check ID’s? Because it’s a crime to buy alcohol if you’re under 21 in the US. Ergo, the only reason to check is to make sure they aren’t committing a crime by trying to buy, and the store isn’t committing a crime by selling it. It’s the guilty until proven innocent phenomenon.
In PA we have to buy or wine and liquor through the government-run Wine & Spirits Shoppes. The LCB claims this is the best method to prevent underage liquor sales. They don’t card. In the 9 months I’ve been 21 I’ve been asked to show ID once. My 21st birthday I went in there expecting to be carded, I didn’t. I even asked the clerk if he wanted to see my licence, he said no. How dissapointing. Most of my friends have had the same experiance. Now when I go to a bar or beer distributer I usually get carded. Of course the Liquor Control Board can’t very well fine itself and terminating a civil servant without pay is all but impossible.
This is why checking ID is important. Sure, you know you have always looked 5-10 years older, but how is the clerk supposed to know you aren’t a 20 year old who smokes like a chimney and has tanned every summer for the last 8 years? They assume that if you want alcohol you are willing to prove you are legally able to purchase it. I have no problem showing my ID. Besides, would you prefer they say, “Oh, no I don’t need to see your ID. You are practically elderly. Did you want to show me your ID so you can get the senior citizen discount?”
As for people who don’t want to show their ID for credit card purchases, I hope that the person who rings up purchases on your stolen credit card feels the same way. Hell, you don’t even have to show your driver’s license! A student ID, a employer issued ID, your card for the local rec center can all have pictures on them with your name to show that you are who you say you are without providing private information you don’t want other people to see. Or better yet, get the credit card with your picture on the front so that the person at the counter doesn’t have to ask. I know you don’t HAVE to show your ID, but it is for your protection. Anyone with half an hour to practice can forge a signature, it is much more difficult to get a fraudulent photo ID.
Just today, I walked over to the co-op to buy cookie ingredients, then went :smack: because I’d forgotten to bring my ID and one of the ingredients was coffee liquer. I had to walk all the way back to my apartment and then go back to the co-op, because I was absolutely determined to bake those cookies today. The problem is that I don’t have a driver’s license so my only form of ID is my passport, which I don’t always carry around with me. Plus I get carded ALL THE TIME - I suppose I look younger than I am. Not that I’m much over the drinking age anyway.
Um, what was the question?
Oh, yeah. I don’t mind being carded at all, because I know that I look like I could be under 21. I used to think of it as a compliment, back when I was in Seoul and my ID card was always in my wallet. Now it’s a nuisance, because I have to make an effort to remember my passport whenever I go drinking. I suppose I could carry around my Korean driver’s license, but since it’s all written in Korean I dunno if anyone would accept it as ID. Boo.
All Korean? I work near the university and we get alot of internation students buying tobacco. Out policy is to accept any government issued ID as long as; there’s a photo, it’s unexpired, and we can read the birthdate. Most students use their passports, but I’ve seen Israeli, French, and Ukrainian ID cards.
Here’s an easy to read page from Visa explaining the entire “See ID” deal.
The card needs to be signed.
I’m 49, with completely white hair, a completely white beard, and wrinkles around my eyes. I’m well past the point of considering being carded a compliment; I consider it idiocy.
Wait a minute, let me see if I have this straight. A parent over the age of 21 is shopping with his children that are under the age of 21. This means the store won’t sell him a bottle of wine to go with his dinner, cause his kids are not 21? WTF?
Could I have a cite on that?
No, it’s not that you don’t HAVE to show it. It’s that they cannot ask for it according the rules they agreed to when they entered an arrangement with the credit card company. Out of curiosity, if asking for ID is such a strong barrier to cred card theft, why is it that you think the credit card companies persist in a policy that disallows its use?
I remember reading in various threads here that credit card theft sales are charged back to the merchant, and thus cost the credit issuer nothing. I do not know if this is correct or not.
It’s the law in Kansas that if someone is underage with someone of age buying, the sale is denied. Minors also are not allowed in liquor stores, the sale can be denied. I’ve seen it done.
Very interesting. It must cost them something in terms of labor and customer satisfaction, though, especially these days. However, it might not cost as much as sales lost over a lack of ID.
Either way, the kind of people who use stolen credit cards generally wouldn’t have much trouble rigging up an ID with a matching name on it. There’s no photo to compare to, after all. At best it just works by eliminating a certain percentage of sales entirely, with some fraudulent ones hopefully caught in the net. But that’s like turning away every fifth customer to cut down on shoplifting. Exactly like, in fact.
As for the actual topic, I never get carded, and I’m only 27. I think it is pretty stupid to card everyone arbitrarily. If a teenager is clever enough to rig up convincing age makeup, let him have a beer.
Let me just say “rig up” one more time. Apparently, I want to be a trucker.
So that they can say that a credit card is equal to cash. Almost the same reason why they don’t allow stores to set minimums on credit card purchases.
The sad part about customers being upset about getting IDed is that the legitimate method takes longer. Credit card companies want store clerks to make a phone call if the signatures do not match. I wonder what someone refusing to show ID would say if I told him to wait while I make a call to verify his card?
Anyone can claim to be anyones parent. So yea, no sale. They are even doing sting operations now where a cop looks around for underage kids outside of liquor stores. If the kid asks the undercover cop to buy him alcohol and the store sells it to the cop, then the kid and the store get in trouble.
This is all because MADD has a pretty strong message that politicians don’t want to challenge. That combined with studies that say that the number one way underage kids get their liquor is by having someone of legal age buy it and you have these new fines. I really don’t mind the rational behind the fines except that it is really hard to tell when someone is buying for an underage kid.
Well, the thing is, my birthdate is part of my Korean SSN, so unless you know what the format of a Korean SSN is, all you’re going to see is a string of random numbers. The only recognizable date on my Korean ID cards is the expiration date.
I suppose I could go downtown and get an IL resident ID card or whatever those things are, but lately I can’t be arsed to leave campus. Sigh.
Here in IL, they check the ID of everyone in the group when we go to buy alcohol. If one person is underage/doesn’t have ID, no one can buy anything.