Took most of Yesterday off from the blog, as well as this morning, but now I’m in a blogging mood, and this being the doldrums of the weekend I thought I’d share a thought I had.
What’s the friggin’ point with taking my signature for a Credit Card Purchase? You sign your receipt and maybe the cashier doesn’t look at it at all, or if they do they sit there for a long time like some sort of FBI Criminologist looking at your receipt and then your card. Bonus point if they stick out their tongue while doing it.
A local prankster actually played this game, and detailed it Here and here
Obviously nobody seems to care about this little song-and-dance, so why even bother?
Back in the days of check writing, I would sign either Disney character names or the real names of superheroes (yes, I was that geeky that I knew them).
Cashiers never raised a fuss at all; worse yet, my bank never said anything about the signatures.
ALL of my cards simply say “SEE ID”.
Some cashiers are very good about checking it, some simply don’t care. My scrawl is illegible anyways.
It is my understanding that every credit card transaction is effectively a contract, in that you, the customer, are agreeing to pay the charge to the store, by way of your credit card company. That way, if you do not pay, they can track you down… or something.
They are impossible to find these days, but the forms for the old, manual “chunk-chunk” credit-card swipers (the one that took the relief of your card face) used to have that legalese spelled out on them, if I am not mistaken.
Amusing.
The printed out receipts often still have the “contractual” verbiage on them, including giving $BANK$ a security interest in the item being purchased. Note that signatures are not required by $BANK$ if the total is less than some value ($50 IIRC). Which is why I dont’ have to sign at $FASTFOOD$