I’ve noticed a couple of big chain stores require that when I pay for something by credit card, I must “sign” my name on one of those electronic pads using a plastic stylus. I generally dislike and fear change, and I’m wondering what my options are to refuse doing so.
A couple of questions:
(1) Why do these companies want electronic signatures? Are they storing my signature in an in-house database, or sharing it with other companies?
(2) Do they have the right to refuse my credit card payment if I refuse to sign anything except paper?
(3) What would the credit card companies’ position be on this? I have the impression that they are generally on-guard against anything that would prejudice the public against paying by credit card (such as merchants passing on their 2%-3% credit card transaction fee to the public). Would they put pressure on merchants to accept paper signatures if enough people complained? Or are the credit companies themselves behind this whole electronic signature thing?
Your signature is stored in an electronic database. If the signature given @ the store does markedly resemble the one on file, the card will not process. It’s a theft and fraud prevention device. At least, so I’m told by my credit card company. IMHO, it’s part of the greater corporate plot for world domination.
It is at the store’s discretion to allow a paper receipt to be submitted in place of the electronic signature. Of course, the merchant has the right to accept/refuse any method of payment it desires, so if they only want to process the electronic transaction, then that’s how it has to go.
The credit card companies, at least mine, are very much in favor of the electronic signature because its potency to combat fraud and theft. The more merchants that carry the electronic signature devices, the less likely the credit card companies are left holding the bag on theft.
This info was communicated to me by the very friendly people at Chase Manhattan.
Your signature has no value [unless you’re famous :)].
Stores don’t even need you to sign the receipt in order to bill you. Buy something off the internet, no signature is required. Stores choose to have you sign the receipt and keep a copy of your signature in case you later claim you did not make the purchase.
Stores have you sign on the pad so they can have a storable image of your signature. This is easier to keep than having to handle and file tens of thousands of little pieces of paper with signatures on them. That reduces their operating costs.
Plus, on the night shift, they can write threatening letters to the President, print it out with your signature and mail it from a local post office. Then, when the Secret Service investigates, they can confirm, from your credit card history, that you were in the area.
As you’ve guessed, the credit card companies don’t care if electronic signatures are used. If people complained, they would stop it.
I’m not opposed to signing on those things, but I have a question about them as well.
Why is the string on those things so short? This isn’t a very big problem for me, but it is a problem for people who are left-handed, like my husband. There simply isn’t enough string to loop it over and start writing from the left-hand side. I’ve watched him struggle with those stupid things several times. Usually, he’ll make some joke about how these things weren’t designed for the left-handed…the clerk is always remarkably unsympathetic.
Why is there even a string at all? The UPS signature thingy doesn’t have one. It is accessable to people of all orientations :).
soularrow, I doubt the thing is used to prevent fraud. If it were, we wouldn’t have had many hundreds of dollars fraudulently charged on our credit cards at Best Buy. (Unless the guy was really quick at learning my husband’s signature.) Of course, there wasn’t anything charged on our Chase credit card. We just thought that it happened to be near the limit and was thus refused. Hmmm…I wonder now.
On a similar note, I always found it rather disturbing that the video store near the local college required a thumb print to rent. A THUMB PRINT. Christ. They have more information on me than the local police!
“Of course, the merchant has the right to accept/refuse any method of payment it desires…”
Printed money-- cash-- still has inscribed on it the words “THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.” Perhaps the word “debt” is to be taken literally and distinguished from a purchase transaction, but IMHO a merchant who flatly refused to accept cash payment for his wares would be raising a legal issue.
As to the main question, securing a signature is a scarecrow tactic, like asking for a phone number, UNLESS it is accompanied by some means of verification (such as comparing the proferred signature to that on a valid drivers license, etc.). Anyone can make a scrawl on a screen with a stylus, just as anyone can put together a bunch of numbers and call it their phone number. Other than discouraging very naive would-be felons, all the procedure really does is demonstrate, in a possible future court case, that the company really does do a shade more than just take the word of the customer in accepting what might be a stolen credit card.
Sure, EZ Buy is going to invest in sophisticated signature-recognition software!..As if.
I guess I’m still skeptical about the signature matching scheme that was mentioned since I NEVER sign my name the same way twice and usually when I’m signing the electronic thingy I am holding something or putting something in the cart and my signature looks like crap. You’re telling me they match this with another of my signatures in some database somewhere and would reject it if it wasn’t close? I sincerely doubt they are that sophisticated… I think they just use it to capture your signature on disk instead of storing lots of little pieces of paper…
Definitely the latter. I have to admit to being a bit [sup]*[/sup]leery about these electronic signature things. On occasion I have purposely signed with something that didn’t even resemble my signature and the sale went through. I don’t think there exists software that is sophisticated enough to compare signatures.
[sup]*What would happen if someone who worked in the back office and had access to all the stored signatures somehow attached my signature to a credit record that he created, using my credit card info that is also in the system. Voila! He now has a big-screen TV for free…I don’t know anything about the back-office systems, but it seems like it could be possible.[/sup]
frogstein, of course the software is not sophisticated enough to do any kind of comparison. All that happens is that the sig goes into a database of sales.
It’s just a much easier way of keeping track of records of sale. If you later complain that you were charged for something you didn’t buy, the store can pull up that record and have at least a small amount of proof that you did.
As for the bad design and apparent lack of sympathy in the clerk, well, he didn’t design it. And he probably hears the same “joke” from every lefthanded person who comes in. Let’s face it: minimum wage does not buy sympathy.
For those of you who are worried about the massive conspiracy that now has your signature on file to do whatever preverted things to it that massive conspiracies do, let me point out two things:
The resolution on those things is horrible. At the Sears where I used to work, the pad recorded at about <estimate> 50 by 70 pixels </estimate>. Sometimes it was so bad that I leaned over and checked the actual ink version to verify with the card. If anyone tried to pass this off as a genuine signature, it would be laughably machine-written.
The conspiracy already has the opportunity to have your signature in an electronic database, if we assume that the conspiracy can support the level of organization required to collect receipts and operate a scanner.