Explain to me how it is not rude for the cashier to ask me, and in some cases demand, my telephone number. I’ll answer that myself: It is in fact “not rude” for him to ask me that because the nature of our interaction is not a typical social interaction between two people. It is likewise not impolite for me to say “You don’t need that” in return. Notice that I have not advocated for anyone to be abusive to the cashier. Playing on these simple expectations and the reluctance we feel at refusing others or making others feel potentially unhappy is the first step in manipulating people.
How is it rude to be doing their job? It’s not like they’re doing it for their own enjoyment.
:rolleyes:
That’s exactly what he’s saying. BECAUSE they’re doing their job, the question, which would normally be rude, is not rude. Therefore, by the same logic, we, as customers, can respond in like manner.
Which part?
I agree with you here. I’ve had customers question why we need certain info and I don’t consider it rude. For us it’s a simple matter of “this is the info what management asks us to get” if a customer refuses to give a phone number but everything else seems fine I have no problem with that. If a customer hands me a CC and refuses to show ID I have a problem with that. Thanks to the helpful folks in the GQ thread I see the merchant agreement actually has several other check points and technically ID is required only when the card is not signed. In that case I can check those things and let the customer be on their way.
It’s not rude for a customer to challenge why certain personal info is asked for or to insist that the merchant agreement be followed. If the customer is polite to me as a person while doing it we have no problem. If the customer gets nasty about it then the whole process will probably take longer than it has to. I’ll be checking everything extra carefully.
A big part of it for me remains people being considerate to other people while going about their day to day activities. A little mutual respect. When I worked at the big box stores there were certain customers {small percentage} who were rude and treated the staff as if they were servants they could order around. OTOH I’ve seen employees who just don’t give a shit about customers. There purpose seems to be to collect a paycheck and avoid work whenever possible. It infuriates me. There’s an employee where I work now who is extremely nice to folks when they are buying something and it will help his numbers. He will abandon customers who have a small purchase that is too time consuming or his own customers when they come back with a problem. I think thats* dam* rude.
My stepson paid $250 for a 3 year, unlimited damage/replacement policy on an HP laptop computer. Well, the screen has developed a defect 9vertical line in the display), and the store won’t do anything about it! They won’t repond to our request to either:
-fix the display
-replace the computer
-(or) refund the insurance premium
Pack of snakes they are!
Like insurance companies service providers will often give you the run around and try to get out of living up to their contract. They did it to me on an HP hand held. It’s at least aprtly my fault for allowing it to happen. I decided letting it go was easier than fighting with them. There is a contract that spells out specifocally what is covered and what isn’t etc. Get a copy of the contract and go talk to a Best Buy manager. Write a letter to the cooperate office. Keep good records of all communication. It’s a fucking pain in the ass but sometimes it works. They are counting on you giving up. The other possibility is to just tell them about this every time they offer another freakin service plan.
Here’s an interesting idea. Try again and document if they refuse. Then spend a little free time outside your local best buy telling customers about it. Print something up. Make sure the manager knows you’re doing it. It would be interesting to know how they respond.
Ummmm, so they know it’s you and not someone else who stole your card.
Know what’s funny though, I’ve bought a lot of stuff online, never do I get anything in the mail from them. Best Buy however I’m always getting crap from, how come Amazon doesn’t do that?
However, you want some place wanting real presonal information try the local hospital. When we had the baby a couple of weeks ago they gave us a form for the birth certificate. Baby’s name, ok easy, mother’s name, yeah we know that, father’s name, we’d better know that. Next part, have you ever had any miscarriages. Why the fuck do you need to know that. Then it asked, Have you ever had an abortion. WTF? Then it asked if you planned to give the baby up for adoption. Plus it asked for social security numbers and other stuff like that. We asked the nurse and she said you don’t have to fill that part out so we didn’t.
Before we left they came back and told us we had to have that part filled out or they couldn’t do it. We still tried to say no but they made us. They even told us the computer would not accept blank answers, and if we tried then CPS would be out to the house. I’d never been so glad to be away from some place as that hospital.
Only once did I get some Best Buy woman insist that I give her my number, so I did, 301. 666. 66. 6. 7.
Hmmmmm… There seems to be lots of confusion and misunderstanding about our flexible plastic friends here, so maybe I can chime in.
Cards in store - generally, according to the card companies, the merchant is supposed to:
Check that the Record of Charge signature absolutely perfectly matches the signature on the card.
Check the cardnumber on the plastic matches the cardnumber on the till slip, to make sure the card isn’t cloned, and closely examine the hologram and the physical card to ensure it is a genuine card and not cloned.
Contact the card aquiring network for authorisation of the charge.
Retailers normally turn a blind eye to variations in signature - in fact in the US they don’t seem to check at all, which freaks me out when I go over there. Usually the cardnumber/plastic checks are skipped because they take time, and aren’t usually needed outside places like Asia where cloning is super-common. The auth is often skipped for small values - a store will have a ‘floor limit’ of $20-$200, and for transactions smaller than this they just process without waiting for the go-ahead. However, where a fraudulent charge is made and the merchant does not have a signed Record of Charge that perfectly matches the cardmembers signature on record, they eat the loss. In every instance where a transaction was made without auth that would have been denied, they eat the loss. For every single transaction that IS processed, they pay anything up to 2.5% of the value as a comission to the card companies and processors. Why? Because their customers want to be able to use THEIR card and bleat loudly when they are asked to pay cash or on some other card, and retailers want to keep their customers happy.
Cards online (or card-not-present): Cardnumber must match plastic identifier (to make sure card is in posession of person making order, and shipping address must match billing address (to make sure card isn’t stolen). So in theory you shouldn’t be able to have stuff shipped to your friends/family/workplace/holiday home without calling your card company first. Some merchants will take a risk and let you ship to a different address. If it’s fraudulent, they eat the loss.
Why not just build all the losses into the pricies? Well, they do to an exptent. But fraud goes into the books as a lcost, and like all expenses, reductions go to the bottom line. If they have set aside $1MM for fraud and they can cut it to $750K, they have just made $250K extra money without needing to fire any staff, cut benefits, raise prices, etc. Also, there is a risk element - if a card network sees more chargebacks being generated at a location, they raise the rate they charge, and vice versa. Saying you can just buget for fraud and forget it is like saying you can just buy fire insurance, make sure your alarm is up to spec, and forget about it because if your customers set the place on fire, your’e covered.
Chip/stripe/pin - the key thing with these is that every transaction has to be authorised, and if the auth comes back the mercant is in the clear. They shift liability from the merchant to the network, which is great for the retailer. The magstripes aren’t really very secure, which is why EMV chip is the way forward - much much harder to clone (for now). As soon as EMV cards start becoming a significant presence in the market, expect signature cards to wither away because all the criminal activity will be concentrated on them and they will get too expensive. France had chips decades before anyone else, and foreign tourists were preferentially targeted by local pickpockets/muggers because their swipe/sign cards could be used easily whereas local cards were useless without the PIN.
Exactly my point. People were saying that asking for too much information at the register is intrusive and unnessecary. My point is that sometimes it’s to avoid CC fraud.
Checked you Email lately. Lots of sites you visit will start sending you Emails. The good part is you can take your name off the list and sometimes just check “no don’t send me anything” and avoid it altogether.
Hospitals are bad about assuming you have to do what ever they tell you. In Lamaze classes they explained what we could refuse but advised us that it can create problems when Doctors and nurses tag you as difficult.
When my Dad was ready to leave they instructed us that we had to wait for a wheelchair {policy} None arrived so I asked and offered to just walk out. I was told that wasn’t permitted. Not We’d rather you didn’t. I waited another few minutes and told them again. Once again I was told we had to wait for a wheelchair. We waited a couple of more minutes. Then I asked my Dad if he felt okay and off we went. Nobody said shit.
Not true. I did the Entertainment Weekly thing from Best Buy, and cancelled before the 8 weeks was up. I clicked on the “remove me from this mailing list” thing. Best Buy emailing continued. I clicked again. No change. I clicked again. No change. Now I just have those emails go to my junk mail file, but Best Buy are real assholes about emailing, and telling them not to send you anything appears to be the best way to get them to keep sending you things. How rude, indeed.
Cosmodan, this is the part you’re still not getting, even though it has been pointed out to you several times both in this thread and the GQ thread.
According to the merchant agreement, you are not allowed to ask for ID unless the card is unsigned. If the card is signed and you verify the signature, and you have an authorization code from the CC company, you will not be charged back if the transaction turns out to be fraudulent.
You complain about the time involved in going through the steps, but in 99.9% of the cases, the only thing you have to do is verify that the signature on the card matches the signature on the sales slip. This takes a lot less time than asking the customer to fish their ID out of their wallet.
At Best Buy, the only time you can veryify the signatures is after the transaction has taken place. This means that the register prompts you to punch in the last four numbers of the CC and check ID. There is no way to make sure the sigs match before the transaction is completed (i.e. after the card has been charged).
Verify, even.
What?! Are you saying that if the signatures don’t match you couldn’t press a “cancel” button and void the transaction? What if the 4 digits you punch in don’t match the numbers from the mag stripe? Will the transaction go through anyway?
We’ve all seen the little Point-of-sale credit card machines where the cashier scans the card and the machine prints out a receipt for the customer to sign. At this point you may think that the sale has gone through and the card has been charged, but I’m pretty sure that by pressing cancel/void/whatever on the machine the cashier can make the sale go away as if it never happened. I’m betting it’s the same with Best Buy.
Absolutely rude. Have you written a little note to cooperate offices telling them to make sure you are removed from the mailing list? Of course I think of all this crap but I realize how time consuming it can be to do it. You might include in the note that until they fix their mailing list issue you have no intention of shopping there again.
It might actually be some glitch in their set up that puts you back in from one “prospect” list to the outgoing list. Their mailing list must be huge. That’s still not an excuse.
One of the things you’re not getting is how my screen name is spelled. 
No biggie. It happens a lot.
If you’ve been reading my posts you see that I do understand what is in the actual merchant agreement. Do you understand the difference between guidelines and reality? I think we can assume the banks don’t send out security to shut you down for asking for ID. It’s also true that the recommended practice, even though it’s mentioned as not valid in the agreement, is to write “ID required”
on the card. Many customers do that and some don’t sign them at all.
You’re wrong about just checking the signiture. Thats not what the merchant agreement says. There are several steps including
checking the number on the front for irregularities , checking the hologram, checking the security number on the back. Checking the numbers on the reciept against the numbers on the card. If anything seems amiss then I am supposed to call the CC company. I don’t mind doing that if a customer wants me to follow the merchant agreement. I’m **not ** complaining about it. I’m simply pointing out that following those steps on every procedure will take as long as checking ID. Longer if I have to call. That’s in response to others complaining about the time involved.
About a third of my customers hand me their ID with their charge. Over half have it at the ready in case I do. I’ve noticed another small detail. People who design wallets don’t design the ID section well. Mine has no border and the entire ID is visible giving the clerk access to all the info with just a flip. Many have a border that obscures expiration date or part of the address or name. Not smart. Fishing for ID doesn’t have to be an ordeal for,let’s say,99.9% of our customers.
The other issue is giving some consideration to management. They need some way to make sure their employees are following procedure in order to prevent charge backs. Getting employees to enter some info off the ID is a way of making sure they are doing their job.
Now that I am aware of the specific details of the merchant agreement I’m glad to comply to any customer who requests I do so. I also need to be concerned about what management asks me to do.
Yes, if you void the sale the same day it happened it’s as if it didn’t happen {at my store anyway} It is more involved than pressing one button. That’s the first of several steps that usually involves getting a manager. How time consuming does that sound?
He’s right signing takes place after the transaction has gone through. That’s why there are those other steps to check before you even swipe the card. Then you compare the numbers on the reciept to the card and finally compare signature.
Pin numbers are so much easier.
Think before you post, or at least read through the post before impulsively responding to it. I, in fact, said that it was their job. Because it is their job, it is not a typical social interaction. It is inequitable to have a set of expectations for one person in that interaction that you do not extend to the other person. You are free to ask me questions for the sole purpose of keeping your job or keeping your bosses happy. Therefore, to expect me to extend you the politeness that I would a person in another context is bullshit.
Now, in actuality, I’m very polite to people regardless of context. For example, I find that I am one of the few people I’ve noticed who makes a point of thanking the guy who fills up my glass of water everytime he does it. And I do say please and thank you to cashiers. Yes, yes. As you said, I’m a real prince. However, once you ask me something that I feel is out of line simply because it is your job to do so, don’t expect me to be apologetic or feel compelled to comply or compelled to explain myself, my choices and my behavior to you as a result.
I agree. Earlier you said certain concepts of politness is how we are manipulated. I agree about that too. Insurance companies love it as well as others. Store policy is one that cracks me up sometimes. You can create any policy you like and but don’t expect to enforce one that is against consumer laws or employee laws of your state.
I have a friend who worked for Best Buy and they would get instructions at sales meetings that were basically instructions to lie to customers in order to sell certain things. They even got sued for it. He would routinely point out to them that they could not require their employees to lie and make that a job requirement.
I routinely hang up on phone solicitors after a hurried no thanks. I don’t feel obligated to listen to any sales spiel that I have no interest in. I will interrupt and say, “Not interested”
I am not offended if customer does that to me, although I very seldom spiel. If by chance I am giving them more details than they need they are free to interrupt and tell me so. It’s not rude by my definition. As you say. It’s a different kind of exchange.