Sunday 22 August 2010

To sign or not to sign?

I just read a terrific article over at Debt Ninja about signatures and credit cards. If you are one of those people who doesn't sign your credit card (and there are far too many of you), you'll be in for a surprise. If you are one of those who just signs "See ID", again, there's a surprise.

I was surprised - and I sign my card - about the actual reasons behind why you have to sign. As a retail worker, nothing pisses me off more than people shoving unsigned credit cards at me and then getting tetchy when I ask for a driver's licence. Apart from the fact that there is no signature to compare on the card, it says right on the card, right on the back, right above/below where your signature should be "CARD NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED." They mean it, you know.

Anyway, read this. I found it interesting and am glad to know the reasons behind it. And it's not the one you probably think it is.

Sign here.

This is the link for the Creditcards.com article that was the basis for the guest post on Ninja.

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/sign-or-write-see-ID-1282.php

2 comments:

bcsmithereens said...

Thanks for sharing this! I'm glad to see you haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I hope you are doing well, and aren't too overworked. Take'er easy!

Canadian Saver said...

Glad you're posting again too :-)

This signature thing will soon become a non-issue because the more chip technology, the less clerks/cashiers will handle the cards. I'd say about 75% of my transactions are made with cards that have the chip and we don't touch the cards at all........

I'm going to go back to the article to see if it touches on this (chip technology is definitely not widespread in the US though).