I don’t have a car so when my driver’s license expired I wasn’t in a hurry to renew. Went to a night club. Got carded. I’m over 21 and look like it. Bouncer wouldn’t let me in because ID is expired.
Incident 2: Semi regular customer at a Chase Bank near my last job. Go to deposit payroll check in ATM. ATM is down so I go into the branch. The teller won’t deposit funds because my license is expired. This happened right after my birthday. So I didn’t realize the expiration had occured. I had been depositing in person for a few weeks before that though so I thought she would give me a break. She had waited on me before.
Also just today while cashing a check I needed a 2nd piece of ID along with my DL.
So the questions are: Doesn’t picture identification establish identity even if it’s expired? Why do some businesses require more than one piece of identification?
1 - “This card is invalid for its stated purpose, but should still be OK as an ID because my picture is on it.” is a more complex rule than “This card is invalid”. They don’t appreciate you trying to complicate their jobs.
2 - The person taking ID has been told to err on the side of caution anytime there’s something questionable about the ID, and refuse it.
3 - The business might back up the person taking the ID because they aren’t certain what the legal status would be if you turned out to be underage, and they wound up having to defend having let you in on an expired driver’s license, picture or no picture.
Just renew the license, buddy. Even if you don’t have a car. You might need/want to borrow a car, drive in an emergency, rent a car, etc. Also, in my state, if you go a certain amount of time without a license, when you reapply you’ll have to go through the entire written and driving test rigamarole.
If you’ve decided you’ll never drive again, most states will issue a photo ID at the same place you get your driver’s license.
Lots of people throw out their expired IDs when they get a new one. Lots of other people go through trash cans looking for something useful, like an ID they can use or sell. I’m slightly surprised the teller wouldn’t let you deposit a check with an expired ID - I’ve never even been asked for ID when depositing a check. Or were you depositing a check and withdrawing cash at the same time?
I’d wondered about this for a while, and came up with the following:
Consider for a moment - why do these things expire at all? A cynic would say that it is simply a money-maker for the government. After all, if I can get a new one mail, simply by sending them my fee by mail, then what has been accomplished other than their profit? But the truth is that there are other reasons for expirations. An obvious one is to insure that your photo is reasonably recent. But a more important one is because ofthen they institute enhancements to the system. One examples is when they switch from plain IDs to photo IDs. A bigger one is when the eligibility requirements are tightened - that happened to me a few years back when I could NOT simply rener my license by sending in a check – I had to go in person with my birth certificate and some other papers as well. Old licenses need to expire so that new rules can be instituted.
And the bar is fully within their rights to feel that if the previous requirements weren’t good enough for the gov’t, then they’re not good enough for us either – renew it, or you’re out.
Oh I’ve renewed already. It was just those two times. With the bank I can understand but at the club it was like ‘you know I’m 21 why are you being a douchebag?’
Do you not get that expired IDs are often used by other people as fake IDs? Clubs and bouncers can get in enormous legal difficulties if an underage person is found in there. Even more if said underage person is injured in someway due to being drunk. So it’s not worth it to them to allow any variation in the rules - the $40 you would spend in there isn’t worth the risk. See this blog for 8000 examples of why this is true.