I was in Walmart yesterday buying groceries and the cashier asked for ID from everyone in line who paid credit. When I paid she said " I need to see your ID AND Your Credit Card"- not " I need to see the card to compare signature or anything like that..

I just did it and went on my way. 1, I had a lot of groceries that needed to get home to the fridge. 2. I really just didnt feel like making a big deal out of it/give a nice cashier a hard time about somthin she probably has no clue about.

NOT WAL*MART POLICY FOR SIGNED CARDS...

I NEVER REFUSE CUSTOMERS WHO ARE IN THE MAKE ME SHOW YOU MY ID ALL THE TIME CLICK!!!

...at the same time DON'T MAKE ME SHOW ID ON MY SIGNED CREDIT CARD

Thanks, I figured as such and knew you would have the answer. As I said it was just not worht my time to bother. If it happened in the middle of the night in a dead store and I wasnt in a hurry, I would have said something.

Our Wal-Mart barely checks to see if the customer is breathing, let alone signatures! I'd bet a corpse with a charge card could shop here.

In line yesterday at wal-mart, there was a strange situation with checking id's.

The cashier asked for id, from a lady a few spots ahead of me in line. The lady refused. The cashier said that she couldn't accept the card. The lady said: "I will report you to visa on Monday." The customer left the store.

Next guy in line pays with a credit card and has his id ready. She doesn't ask for it or even look at it. Mmmmmmmm.....

Next guy pays with cash.

The lady in front of me pulls out her credit card. The cashier doesn't ask for id. The lady says: "I think you are profiling. I'll bet TV 20 would like to hear about this." The cashier gives her a nasty look and says "next".

I suspect Walmart is going to catch hell next week.

normally, i wouldn't give it a thought if stores feel the need to ask for id

but they need to ask everybody, not just people they feel may be commiting fraud and whatnot

when i worked in retail, i only asked for id when the card wasn't signed and/or wouldn't swipe

Sounds like PROFILING to me!!!

I WOULD HAVE ASKED THE GUY WITH CASH FOR ID!!!!!!!!!!

I love walmart checkers, anytime I don't want to pay for a real hooker, I just pick up a six pack and pick a half way decent chick for a check out girl and the next thing you know I'm checking her ID if you know what I mean.

AND YOU ARE INFERRING?????????

Didn't you mean IUD?

The Walmart near me is the one place that actually does it right. They have card swipers, but the checkers always ask to SEE THE CARD. Not my ID, but the card - so they can compare the signature. I can't count the number of places that I go where I do everything myself on the card reader and nobody asks for a thing.

im still laughing over the iud post.

The people who work at my Wal Mart can't read, so they just see if the letters are the same.

YOU CALLING ME ILLITERATE???

It's a joke GEORGE, relax,

Hey, I didn't know that you worked at the West Memphis, AR Wal Mart. We'll have to get together sometime.

That's the best and fastest way.

I agree. However, if they have to handle my card at all, as far as I'm concerned they might as well run the card also.

true. I hate when I put the card back in my wallet and then they tell me they need to see it. I think whether or not they handle the card might depend on the amount purchased.

They should never need to handle it... swipe, sign* and go is the best.


* some merchants no longer require signing, so that is good too.

Back in high school I worked for Wal Mart as a cashier, (this was before all the self checkout options) so we had to swipe any credit transaction. I ALWAYS asked for ID anytime a card wasn't signed, or the signatures didn't look the same, or when the back of the card had the "Ask for ID" notation. I know a card "isn't" valid unless signed, and they aren't supposed to write "ask for ID" but the fact is a good percentage of people do. I would say 95% of the time when I asked for ID people either didn't have a problem with it, or they would thank me for taking the time to actually check for ID.

Now I know I am probably going to catch hell for the following story on here, but I'm going to share it anyway. Fast forward a few years, and I was the manager of a store in the local mall. We had a problem with a lot of our "charges" being disputed as fraudulent, so with permission from my corporate office I implemented a new CC policy. I required all associates to ID any CC purchase, as well as making an imprint of the card front (only imprinted the name and last 4 of the card). This led to some questions from customers but I never really had a problem with anyone except people that did not have an ID with them. This policy completely eliminated any of our "charge backs" from disputes.
I did get a call from a Visa representative claiming they had a complaint from a user that had the card signed and we still asked for ID, I explained to the Visa representative why we had our policy in place, and told them if they had any problems to contact our corporate office. She said "no thats fine, its understandable, sorry for taking your time".
Was this policy I had implemented "legal" since it did not discriminate and required EVERY CC user to show ID?

I understand what you are saying, but IMO chargebacks are another cost of doing business that you have to evaluate when considering accepting cards.

"CARD VOID IF NOT SIGNED"

NONE OF THESE ARE SIGNATURES...SO YOU ARE USING A VOID CREDIT CARD!!!
C.I.D.
SEE LICENSE
SEE ID

NO ID NEEDED ON A SIGNED CREDIT CARD!!!

THE SIGNATURE IS THE ID!!!

I DON'T SHOW ID ON MY SIGNED CREDIT CARDS

YOU CAN VOID THE SALE AND I WILL WALK AND YOU LOSE THE SALE or YOU WILL FOLLOW CREDIT CARD POLICY AND MAKE THE SALE

Back in high school I worked for Wal Mart as a cashier, (this was before all the self checkout options) so we had to swipe any credit transaction. I ALWAYS asked for ID anytime a card wasn't signed, or the signatures didn't look the same, or when the back of the card had the "Ask for ID" notation. I know a card "isn't" valid unless signed, and they aren't supposed to write "ask for ID" but the fact is a good percentage of people do. I would say 95% of the time when I asked for ID people either didn't have a problem with it, or they would thank me for taking the time to actually check for ID.

WAL*MART TRUE FACT...

I NEED TO SEE YOUR ID SINCE THE CARD IS NOT SIGNED...

"IT SAYS C.I.D." (WITH ATTITUDE!!!)

IT ALSO SAYS "VOID WITH-OUT A SIGNATURE"

CAN I SEE YOUR ID PLEASE...

HAD ONE YOUNG LADY THROW HER ID AT ME BUT REFUSED TO SHOW ME HER CREDIT CARD!!!
SHE SAID IT SAYS C.I.D. ON THE CREDIT CARD!!!
ME--->I'm sorry I can't allow the purchase if I can't see the card too...

THE WONDERS OF RETAIL!!!

If you want to ID people who have signed cards you must want to lose business.

I am no longer at the store, I got a promotion within the company that was beyond the retail level. However, I must reiterate, it never led to a customer refusing to purchase the item and it helped our bottom line.

The amount of lost business due to this freak rule would be so minute it would take an electron microscope to find it!
Plus the time gained by serving people not concerned with such minutia would put the revenue in the till a lot faster.

If your store was following Visa and MC procedure, you should not have had a problem with chargebacks. Charges being disputed as fraudulent mean nothing unless they are sucessful. If your store was having sucessful chargebacks, then something was wrong with your procedures. In a card present situation (swiped or imprinted), a chargeback is almost impossible.

Your imprint of the card meant nothing, unless you were unable to swipe the card. The terminal knows if the card was swiped or manually entered. All imprinting does for swiped cards is waste time.

Visa and Mastercard almost never contact a merchant directly, unless they have been unable to resolve the problem through the processor. If a customer sends a complaint to visa, they contact the processor and the processor contacts the merchant. I have also never heard of them apologizing to a merchant who violated their policies. They don't play. The letters that merchants get are kind of scary. If they don't yank the account, the fines are very unpleasant.

How did ID'ing elimainate fraud disputes? Asking for an ID does not stop someone from initiating a chargeback. Did you write down the id number? Did you have proof that the person who showed you the id was actually the cardholder? Do you know that the ID was not fraudulent? It does not matter to mastercard or visa. A customer can come into your store, show their id and initiate a chargeback. If your defense is "we check id" you will be SOL. Like I said, if the chargebacks were sucessful, something was wrong in the way the charges were being done.



I am in a town where CC fraud is rampant (they know how MC and Visa merchant accounts work and use the ignorance of some merchants to commit fraud). Due to clever University of Florida students, some CC companies stopped issuing "student" cards here for a while. I have heard some stores in the mall complain about big fraud. If the card is present, it should not be a problem.

Express
Limited
Limited Too
Rave
Lerner's
Victoria's Secret
Contempo Casuals (before Wet Seal ate them up)
Wet Seal
Hot Body
Gadzooks


I knew employees and managers at these places. All got their A$$es handed to them for requiring ID to make a charge. One company sent in secret shoppers after their processor contacted them about the ID issue. They fired the employees that asked for ID from the secret shoppers and the manager that told them to do it. That was kind of messed up, because they were just following orders. Another company did something similar.

The Express assiatant manager said that a lot of people would just leave their purchases on the counter an leave. She said the manager did not care, she thought it meant they were up to know good if they didn't want to show ID. The manager lost her job over that (and some other strange stuff). What I found funny is that the assistant manager said that they only had a few sucessful chargebacks (even though quite a few were initiated), BEFORE the ID policy. The irony is: Most of those involved unsigned cards that said "See ID".

I don't care how other merchants run their business as long as it doesn't directly affect me. If I am asked for ID, I don't give it. Usually they back down. If not, I leave the merchandise and call MC or Visa to report the problem. Next time I go back, they aren't asking for ID......With the exception of Walmart. Some of their employees take it upon themselves to do this. I have had several Walmart employees tell me recently, that if Walmart finds out which employee did it, they get reprimanded.

I have many letters similar to the following. They send you one when you complain. Some contain more detail, depending on the merchant violation.

FREAK RULE????


pfffff~~~

You know it is!
Time is money, why do I want to shop more than once for any purchase?

"IF" ID WAS REQUIRED BY VISA "LAW" AND FEDERAL "LAW" AND THERE WAS NO SIGNATURE STRIP ON ANY CREDIT CARD...FINE!!!

CHECK ID 100% OF THE TIME!!!

You don't really want to "SHOP" twice...BUT THE STORE CAN'T WIN FOR VIOLATING CREDIT CARD and/or STATE LAW!!!

How can they not win? Commerce goes on across this country everyday in violations of this inane rule.
Is your life so perfect this is the only thing left to correct?

Even if you opt to show the ID and keep your purchase, you should still report it to the appropriate issuer.

WHY? I'm not that bored! Do you people not have a spouse and kids, a house, some cars and a job? Are all their needs met?

yes yes and yes

It's nothing to do with boredom really.

INSANE?????

YES....ALWAYS REPORT THEM!!!!!!!

No! INANE!

Y'all are crazy.

Just assumed you had a spelling ERROR

Crazy as in "insane"?
I'm at peace with my insanity!

I say REPORT!!! I hate merchants who make their own rules.

Oh please!, I'll use that time and energy to call and check in with a loved one.
Life is to short to be a tattletale. Besides, do these money grubbing banks provide for you and your family? If not, why to you want to police their customers?

Thanks, orangecrush that was a masterful answer!

As both a visa/mc user and a merchant that accepts them I'd like to compliment you on your post.

Thanks,

Johnr