You keep saying this, and I understand that it is your store’s policy and as an employee you must follow it, but one store’s policy does not affect the legality of the temporary paper ID.
Your store could require an attestation with a wax seal from the governor if it so chose, but that doesn’t mean that other stores won’t accept temporary paper IDs and it doesn’t change the fact that it is a legal document.
Ok. So what has your experience at other stores been? Do they accept the paper license?
No, but the fact that it’s a legal document doesn’t change the fact that it’s useless at stores or anyplace else that requires unexpired photo ID - which is everywhere in my experience. Either no ID is necessary at all, or the ID shown must have a photo and be unexpired. The unexpired part really makes no sense- I can take my expired license to DMV , pay the fee and be issued a new license of the same type ( standard, Real ID or enhanced) without providing any additional proof as long as it less than two years since the expiration date but one day after it’s expired it’s no good to buy beer.
As I have said - the paper copy of the driver’s license works perfectly fine as a driver’s license. But that is all that it is. For it to serve other ID functions it must conform to certain requirements and a black-and-white paper copy does not meet those requirements.
No different than an unreal license being perfectly fine for driving purposes but not meeting the requirements to make it a RealID license.
Since the penalties for screwing up even a little bit, even unintentionally, on an ID-requiring transaction are harsh for the seller no one is willing to take a risk for those. Not the company/employer which can lose the right to sell those items, and certainly not the front-line cashier who, where I work, at a minimum lose their job on first offense with no recourse (and also lose unemployment benefits) and can face legal problems from it.
I always renew mine at least a couple of weeks before it runs out, just in case there’s some sort of holdup. So probably my old one would still have worked at stores; especially presuming that if all they do is look at it, and if I’d just pulled out the old one and not mentioned the slip of paper I had behind it in the wallet, a store would have no way of telling that I’d already gotten the new one.
Sure, an unexpired, photo license would work even if you have already renewed it. And it’s a good idea to renew before expiration for just this reason. But if you only have the paper, non-photo temporary license (perhaps because your wallet with your license was lost or stolen and you needed to replace it, not renew it) , don’t expect anyplace requiring ID to accept it. Because IME, none of them will.
I don’t care if you do “slip” and show me your new paper license - if your old plastic license is unexpired you can use that for any transaction I am assisting you the customer in completing.
We did once have a woman with an old, unexpired license, a new paper license, and a credit card whose billing address had been changed to that of the new license - we couldn’t accept the paper license as ID, and the address on the plastic license did not match the one on the credit card account. She was VERY upset. Well, sorry - we were actually pretty sure she was on the level but there was nothing we could do - the rules were very clear. I hear she complained all the way up to corporate headquarters, but I dodn’t think they were willing to make an exception for her.
But as proof of age? Yeah, the old license would have worked just fine because we don’t need or bother with the address for that.
Your state doesn’t have a defense provision like this:
I don’t understand this. She tried to pay with a credit card and you asked for her ID? And then you somehow knew what the billing address was on the credit card, and then denied her because the billing address didn’t match the old photo ID?
My company allows holders of their company credit card to make purchases without the physical card under limited conditions. Among other conditions, said customer must produce an ID with their name and address on it - both of which have to match what is on the account. This can go awry in several ways, such as mis-matching addresses due to a recent move. Also, while one member of married couple might loan the card to the other partner, that partner would not be able to use the no-card option because the name on their ID would not match the name on the account.
Cashiers can’t call up the name and address information, but we can type what we see on the ID into the system. Since the card is owned by the store the store computers including the cash registers, have access to the card database. The system then tries to match the two. If they don’t match it won’t complete the transaction.
Interesting to see the requirement for an SSN card. While I still have both my SIN cards (Canadian equivalent of the SSN card), my 50-year-old original and the second one issued when I worked in the issuing office and they wanted to test a new imprint machine, most people wouldn’t. Currently, you are not even given a card when you apply, just a letter informing you of the number you have been issued.
At one point the SIN regulations specifically stated that the number MUST be used for anything related to income tax or social insurance programs, but could NOT be legally required for any other purpose, and was NOT a valid form of ID. (This may still be the case, but it is several decades since I needed to be up to date on the legal issues.)
I suspect the US driver’s licence requirement is because it is being used as an ersatz national ID number in various federal and state databases, using all the other ID to validate the SSN since there is no real validation when the SSN is issued.
Decades ago the same was true of the SSN in the USA.
Ah, thanks for the info. Your company have a lot of ID/credit card fraud? The rules you have been posting seem overly ridiculous.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous. Most stores won’t allow you to make purchases without the physical card under *any *circumstances. Broomstick’s store wants to make sure that when they let someone do this that they are charging the correct John Smith’s account - which they will know by the matching address. It’s very unlikely that the customer will have the account number but not the card , so the only way to distinguish between the multiple John Smiths is by using personal information such as birthday, SSN, phone number or address. It’s not about ID fraud - it’s about my purchases being charged to my account rather than to my cousin with the same name.
Yep. From Thanksgiving through January 1 each store in the chain can have losses to credit card fraud alone in the tens of thousands per month (we also have outright theft, employee theft, counterfeit money, quick-change artists, and a dozen other schemes going on in the same time frame). Granted, the same stores are making multi-millions in that same month, but it’s more than worth it to try to minimize these losses. It’s a constant arms-race between store security and the bad guys. The losses would be at least an order of magnitude greater if we didn’t take steps to combat it.
Sure, if someone makes a fraudulent purposes with your card YOU don’t have to pay for it… but someone does. Sometimes, that someone is the store the purchase was made from.
Then there are the hackers - a local competitor got hit with something that completely shut down their stores. All of them. Completely. Which resulted in some amazingly good sales days for us but was devastating to the other corporation.
Really, it’s enough to scare a budding entrepreneur back into wage-slavery.
By the way - this level of theft/fraud/etc. is a NORMAL amount for a big retail store. This is what EVERY big box store has to deal with, every single day. Also a lot of smaller businesses.
Yeah - “I’m Sue Schmoo. Here’s my photo ID. My address is 123 Main street. Thanks!”
It all depends on what you are trying to use the ID for, who you are dealing with, and will vary from state to state. I know that in Tennessee, for example, a valid ID is required for ALL retail alcohol sales. The Alcohol Beverage Commission in most states will allow a “Valid” drivers license as proper ID. I believe some may require a “picture ID” as well.
Most states will not allow you to have two valid driver licenses. I know that in Texas, when you renew your license, they will take a pair of scissors and cut off the word “TEXAS” at the top where it says “TEXAS Drivers License” and/or the State Seal. I asked why one time and was told, “Because you cannot have two valid licenses. You can still use it as an ID, but you need the paper one to have a valid driver’s license. You will receive your new license in the mail in one to three weeks.”
So, the way I understand it, an expired photo ID driver’s license and a new paper license would work for purchasing alcohol, in most (if not all) states. That doesn’t mean every store must honor it. Any store can refuse to sell alcohol to anyone if they believe that person is underage or that their ID is not accurate. You don’t have a right to buy alcohol. As the penalty for selling to minors has become much stiffer in recent years, it would not surprise me to find some stores have policies that would not allow the cashier to accept a paper license. In this case, it isn’t the law, but the store’s policy and if you really need a drink, you can probably just go to the next store to get your fix.
That’s my point - even if it’s “store policy” in my experience you *can’t *go to the next store. Because (again in my experience) they all have the same policy.
In my neighborhood, in Brooklyn, there are three of the big chain drug stores within a couple of square blocks. There’s a CVS, a Rite Aid, and two Duane Reades. Which is ridiculous, but that’s capitalism, I guess.
If I buy beer at one of them, here’s how it goes:
Anyway, the Rite Aid always requires ID. Current ID, can’t use an expired licence. No exceptions whatsoever, no matter if you’ve been shopping there for ten years, no matter if you are (like me) 59 years old and look every minute of it. No exceptions at all. And it has to be a drivers license, or a passport. They wil not accept the NYC ID card.
The Duane Reades pretty much never ask me for ID.
The CVS will sometimes ask for ID, but they’re fine with an expired license. As long as I show them something, they seem to be happy.
On the paper temporary license topic, I recently renewed my license. I live in a non-compliant state, but I think all the requirements have been implemented except the data-sharing one. I was renewing before the old one expired. They gave me the paper license, punched a hole in my old plastic one, and gave it back to me as well. I’m not sure what would have happened if I had needed to show ID with that. The old license was unexpired, but had a hole punched in it. I don’t know if people who scrutinize IDs professionally would take that to mean it was no longer valid.
The DMV person did explain that the paper license was basically to satisfy the requirements that you carry your license, and would not necessarily work for any other purposes.
I also recently learned that my state is going to comply with the data-sharing requirement for the 2020 deadline. They will give the option of a RealID license or a regular one. If that means keeping a regular one keeps my info out of the national database, I’ll probably just use my passport for flying. That database is such a rich target for hackers.