Page 29 states:
“An unsigned card is invalid and should not be accepted.”
followed later by
““See ID” or “Ask for ID” is not a valid substitute for a signature. The customer must sign the card in your presense, as stated above.”
(note: copied manually, typo’s may be present)
So they say it must be signed to be used.
I really want someone to check the ID.
What to do?
I came up with:
1- using a red sharpie write “SEE ID” in big thin well spaced letters
2- wait till it dries
3- sign my name over the top of the SEE ID
So I comply with the card holders requirements and most store clerks get the message from the big red SEE ID.
You can’t force a merchant to check your ID. This can be ignored by cashiers since the conditions of using the card have been met once they check the signature.
Ahhh. So, if I steal a credit card and it says “SEE ID” on the back, the store clerk should instead ask me to sign it and then let me buy whatever merchandise I want? I don’t doubt that this is an instruction by the credit card company, but it sounds pretty stupid to me.
No. If presented with an unsigned card, the merchant is permitted to request ID and ask the customer to sign the card. The signature on the ID is then to be compared to the signature on the card. This is supposed to be SOP, but hardly anyone bothers to follow it.
This is basically what I did, although if you follow the links GFactor provided you’ll see that I got castigated on the SDMB for writing “See ID” on the card.
Good, responsible merchants should follow your instructions and ask for ID, but I’ve come to feel that writing “See ID” is a futile gesture.
Even though the merchant agreement I had to sign with Visa/MC/etc. requires that my bookstore employees check the signature on the card, the majority of chain stores and large retailers I visit don’t do it. More and more stores have a card swipe where you run your own card through and they never even look at the card. Using a stolen card there would be trivially easy. Even when they don’t have a customer card swipe, it’s been years since I last saw a clerk at a large department store check a signature. This is yet another reason why I tend to do all of my shopping at small independently-owned stores (although I’m sure whoever steals the card is going to use it at Wal*Mart, where you could probably use a card with someone else’s photo on it and they wouldn’t notice).
My daughter used my card (with permission) at some big chain stores, and despite the fact that (a) she’s obviously female and my first name is a traditional male name, and (b) her signature on the receipt looked nothing like my signature on the back of the card (she signed her own name), it was accepted without question.
It seems to me that despite all of the problems with identity theft, using a stolen credit card is probably easier than it’s ever been before, and I feel less secure about it than I ever have.
Yes, I always laugh when the card sipe terminal reminds me to hand the card to the clerk (presumably for verification of the signature). This is especially true given that many of them have you sign that stupid little screen, and there is NO way that screen is going to identify a bogus signature!! :eek:
Basically, we’ve accepted that the card can be misused, and we have limited liability for it ourselves, and the businesses that are involved with the system have agreed to accept the idea that the losses from theft will be hashed out through some sort of less-than-easily-defined relationship between the merchant and the card company.
My mother recently went to lunch with a friend, who accidentally picked up my mother’s card when she left. The friend charged over $600 worth of purchases to the card before she discovered the error, in spite of the fact that a) her name and signature look nothing like my mother’s, and b) my mother’s picture is on the card. Never mind checking signatures, apparently no one notices if you look nothing like the picture on the front of the card.
Especially considering that I have yet to be able to put anything remotely resembling my signature on one of those screens. Hell, just the other day the “pen” started making marks before I’d even touched it to the screen, so my signature had a line across it. I’ve sometimes wondered if I could get away with questioning a charge on the basis that the signature obviously wasn’t mine.
Still imperfect tech. I notice that those screens are easily, and frequently, scratched. (Do people use their keys to sign their names, or what?!?) This messes up both my hand motion, and the optical sensors inside the pad.
Unless your card is unsigned. In which case, you can either provide ID as requested or the merchant is free to decline to process the sale and ask for an alternate method of payment.
you mean, “provide ID as requested AND require you to sign the card right then and there.” Important distinction.
The USPS is the most aggressive merchant about this I’ve ever encountered. That makes is so much funnier that you can buy stamps now on line with credit cards… :rolleyes:
It looks like there have been changes in card requirements and legal status since that staff report was written (back in the early 1800s, I think)… I’m trying to find a staff member to update it.
We don’t do that often, because usually the update is minor revisions – and often the person writing the old report doesn’t remember, doesn’t want to go resurrecting all that old research, doesn’t want to do that much work, etc, just to update one sentence. And for sure, if the originally writer is no longer around, it’s hard to find someone who wants to do all that much work afresh just to change one small bit. So, by and large, we don’t update old Staff Reports. They have a date on them, and that’s what they are. We don’t ask the Agatha Christie estate to go back and update her novels to include cell phones, either.
Yes, absolutely. They also jab at the screen with the little rubber pen like they’re trying to dig out the gold we’ve hidden behind the screen, and press the (digital, on-screen) buttons with their keys, or their credit cards, or they use a real pen… we’ve had our new machines for just over a month, and they already look like we dug them out of a dumpster.
The thing that drives me the craziest is the wild button-jabbing… what the hell do they think is going on? It’s not a button, it’s a picture of a button!
Ok, sorry, wild digression over. To address the actual topic: I used to check IDs occasionally, and always if they had CID on their card, but now we don’t even require people to sign for credit card purchases under a certain amount, and most people swipe their own cards anyway, so I only check if the transaction seems suspicious.
No, I didn’t mean that. The issue of signing the card had already been dealt with and was immaterial to answering the question of when a merchant is permitted to request an ID as a condition of the sale.