Co-OP and the tale of age verification

maninthestreet

biscit wrote: »

To add to this- Liquor Chocolates are licensed because unlike Chicken Tonight they contain alcohol.

Anyway the problem binge drinker is most likely to be middle aged and drinking themselves quietly to death at home, not a young person falling over drunk on a Friday night, or some government employee cheating at making chicken based meals.

Liqueur chocolates are exempt if they contain no more than 0.2 litres of liqueur (of a strength not exceeding 57%) per KG of chocolate, and consist of separate pieces weighing not more than 42g or are designed to be broken into such pieces for eating;

Binge drinking isn't covered by the 2003 Licensing Act, and checking someone's ID when they attempt to buy alcohol won't reveal whether they are prone to binge drinking or not.

mumOf2wonderfulkids

ah good ol' co-op,

i always try and remember to take id with me (im 27 this year but do get asked quite alot)
one occasion i forgot, i had a few bits of shopping, asked for 20 cigarettes which was fine,
asked for 3 lucky dips on the lotto then she asked me for id, which i didnt have. She refused to sell me the tickets but didnt mention anything about the cigarettes?!?
i was also in a bar once, drinking malibu and coke, (didnt get asked for id) went back up to the bar and asked for just a coke and got asked for id *rolls eyes*

Norant

CWCDiver wrote: »

*Sigh* sometimes I dispare, totally and utterly.

I was asked for ID because I wanted to buy chicken chasseur with red wine and herbs. Why was I asked for ID? Because it contains wine!!

Less than 5.5% wine, mixed in with chicken and sauce and all sorts of other stuff so even if I was under 18 I am hardly going to suck the wine out of it and go on the lash am I!

I didn't have any suitable ID for them, despite paying by credit card - and yes you have to be over 21 to have my credit card- the shop assistant said that she couldn't take it as ID as it didn't have a photo on and it might not be mine... And they wouldn't take any of my three government issued ID cards..

Might not be mine!?! Why is she willing to take it at all then if that's what she suspects. She also was willing to say that she thought I was over 18, but I still looked under 30

I took great pleasure in leaving all my shopping there and walking out.

While I am sure this is an isolated incident of idiocy it still gets my goat up....

And no I still won't be carrying round any ID other than what I have now!

Hello CWC.

If you are ever in that situation again turn the tables on them,when they ask for ID in order for you to purchase the product,ask them for ID to establish that they are old enough to sell the product.

Checking ID for a sauce,i have never heard of something so bloody petty.

Norant

Thinking about this.

Some stores have there own policy dont they...when i go to Asda it says about being 21 to sell you alchohol,i think im right in that,yet the legal age to buy drink is 18,so you can go to the pub and buy a drink but not the local supermarket.

I may have this wrong so please dont bereate me for it.

Mr_Lahey

Can i just add that when for example Red Wine is added to a sauce the alocohol all evaporates.
The reason is that alcohol in drinks boils at about 78 degrees, so once the sauce is at its own boiling point which is usually 100 degrees because of the water content the alcohol has all evaporated.

So strictly speaking there will not be any alcohol in the vast majority of foods/sauces.

Mr_Lahey

Norant wrote: »

Thinking about this.

Some stores have there own policy dont they...when i go to Asda it says about being 21 to sell you alchohol,i think im right in that,yet the legal age to buy drink is 18,so you can go to the pub and buy a drink but not the local supermarket.

I may have this wrong so please dont bereate me for it.

Asda et al all put the age at 21 voluntarily to further protect them against selling alcohol to minors. The law for purchasing alcohol in the UK is 18, the legal minimum age you can give anyone alcohol is 2 (But there are other laws that will sting you if you give kids alcohol) and you can drink alcohol in a restaurant from 14 (iirc)

lindyloulou

You can buy alcohol in Asda if you are 18, you just need to prove your age by providing ID, normally a passport or driving license, if you look under 25 years in the opinion of the salesperson.
I would imagine the ID request for the cooking sauce was an error in the CoOPs system, I would imagine that most retailers use a similar system for inputting data and a box would need to be ticked for age restricted items which would bring up a prompt on the till when the item is scanned. The word "wine" in the sauce caused the in-putter of the data to tick the box. I work for Asda and we sometimes get age restriction prompts for silly items, most operators apply common sense and don't ask for ID. We had lemons coming up with an age restriction the other day, it gave us a laugh and we arranged to the restriction to be removed. Sometimes we have an age restriction come up on a newspaper, this is when they are giving away a free DVD which is age restricted.

Storck

At Tesco all cutlery comes up with the age warning, including plastic spoons, it makes me laugh everytime when I'm called over about it. The cashiers have the Think 25 stuff forced down their throat so much they will ask for ID whenever the till tells them to as they are worried about getting it wrong. Common sense doesn't come into it because they are scared it could be a police check or a mystery shopper.

The manager or supervisor should have just come over and said they didn't need ID end of story.

But on the ID front it is only the three things that are acceptable, Full photo driving license, full valid passport or an ID card with the PASS logo on it. Anything else is not covered by the licensing act 2003(amended 2005).

UK2010

Storck wrote: »

Common sense doesn't come into it because they are scared it could be a police check or a mystery shopper.

Exactly. Retail is a big brother environment. The staff will when prompted because it could be any one of a number of undercover checks including mystery shoppers, some will use discretion some may be new or have recently been told off for getting something wrong and will want to use caution. Why people just can't carry the ID's you listed if they may get asked for ID. Yes I know at times someone who's 30 may get asked, you might have grey hair as I said Steve Martin was fully grey by 20, white even in his case! One persons view of age will be different to anothers.

Can't some people just carry the ID that is needed instead of deliberately not carrying it which is exactly what the op said they will do just so stamp their feet should they ever get asked. It's deliberately causing a situation just for the sake of complaining!

sherbetfountain

pimento wrote: »

My 17 year old son works part time at the Co-Op and if he sells cigs or booze to an underage it isn't the Co-Op who gets into trouble, it's him. I'd rather he turned 20 people away wrongly than get done for selling something to an underage person.

He's not a jobsworth, just a kid.

I hope you son doesn't sell alcohol to anyone being that he is only 17 and he is not allowed to!

Personally I don't see why I should have to go to the expense of getting a passport, when I have no intention of going abroad anytime soon, to buy anything containing alcohol. (would this also include cleaning products?)

I do not drive therefore I cannot just obtain a driving licence, and provisional licences were previously not suitable ID.

To the OP, even if your forms of ID are not classed as suitable I think this is ridiculous, as a citizen card is far easier to obtain fraudulently than I suspect a Government issued ID card is.