Expired ID - not proof of age?

esuhl

biscuit333 wrote: »

...I was trying to purchase some wine this afternoon at a well known supermarket with my wife and toddler. The cashier asked to see my and the wife's ID, which we produced as we are 34 and 32 years old. I drive but my wife hasn't drove in a few years and so she didn't realise her drivers license had expired. The cashier refused to make the sale as a result and we went home empty handed.

That's crazy! You were buying the alcohol and could prove you were over 18, which is all that matters.

If the cashier was worried about your companions, why did she ID your wife but not your kid?! Does your toddler look over 18?!

I would have demanded to see the manager for a proper explanation.

marliepanda

esuhl wrote: »

That's crazy! You were buying the alcohol and could prove you were over 18, which is all that matters.

If the cashier was worried about your companions, why did she ID your wife but not your kid?! Does your toddler look over 18?!

I would have demanded to see the manager for a proper explanation.

It isn't what matters at all.

If the alcohol was sold to someone who may share the alcohol with someone who is underage the cashier would be in trouble. The wine was likely to be shared with his partner, not his toddlers.

The same way an 18 year old can't come in with a rabble of underage mates and buy a load of booze and say it's all for him.

Demanding to see a manager would have got that explanation as well.

barmonkey

easy wrote: »

I don't understand ... if you had valid id that showed you were over 18, why did you leave empty handed ?

If I call in to the supermarket with my son (17), and buy a bottle of wine, they don't refuse me because I have someone under age with me !!

Something is definitely not right here.

I had a friend who was in the local Asda, she had gone through the tills with 2 trollies full of shopping, well over £200 worth. They refused to sell her 2 bottles of wine because her 11 year old son was with her. She walked out and left all the shopping unpaid for.
The funny thing is that its perfectly legal to give alcohol to a child over 5 in the privacy of your home.

esuhl

marliepanda wrote: »

If the alcohol was sold to someone who may share the alcohol with someone who is underage the cashier would be in trouble.

Really? How would the cashier be responsible for what someone has done when they've left the shop?

What kind of trouble would the cashier be in?

marliepanda wrote: »

The wine was likely to be shared with his partner, not his toddlers.

But how is the cashier supposed to know that he's not going to give some to his underage kid... or give it to the youths waiting outside the shop...?

And why not accept what is clearly proof-of-age for the OP's partner?

This is just completely ridiculous. It's hardly a big deal, but... still ridiculous.

esuhl

barmonkey wrote: »

I had a friend who was in the local Asda, she had gone through the tills with 2 trollies full of shopping, well over £200 worth. They refused to sell her 2 bottles of wine because her 11 year old son was with her. She walked out and left all the shopping unpaid for.
The funny thing is that its perfectly legal to give alcohol to a child over 5 in the privacy of your home.

Mind-blowing! What's wrong with shop staff these days? Are they not given any training? :-/

Gavin83

Sharon87 wrote: »

I would also suggest your wife renew her photo on her licence, she can be fined for not renewing it (even if she doesn't drive).

No she can't. It's illegal to drive with a licence that has an expired photo but not illegal to simply own one. The address on mine has been out of date for about a year but I don't currently drive. Once I buy a car again I'll get it updated.

JReacher1

barmonkey wrote: »

I had a friend who was in the local Asda, she had gone through the tills with 2 trollies full of shopping, well over £200 worth. They refused to sell her 2 bottles of wine because her 11 year old son was with her. She walked out and left all the shopping unpaid for.
The funny thing is that its perfectly legal to give alcohol to a child over 5 in the privacy of your home.

Problem with doing things like this is Asda won't care about losing £200 but your friend has to go through the inconvenience of doing all her shopping again.

So although she probably felt good doing it at the time in the end it probably turned out to be a pain for them

barmonkey

marliepanda wrote: »

If the alcohol was sold to someone who may share the alcohol with someone who is underage the cashier would be in trouble. The wine was likely to be shared with his partner, not his toddlers.

As I have said earlier, If he was taking it home to give to his toddler, as long as it was over 5 years old, its not illegal. So why should he be refused a sale.

System

barmonkey wrote: »

I had a friend who was in the local Asda, she had gone through the tills with 2 trollies full of shopping, well over £200 worth. They refused to sell her 2 bottles of wine because her 11 year old son was with her. She walked out and left all the shopping unpaid for.
The funny thing is that its perfectly legal to give alcohol to a child over 5 in the privacy of your home.

The cashier needs to be retrained. You don't refuse alcohol if the customers have children with h them! Did you complain? Hopefully the cashier was told to put the shopping away!

Cashiers are fined £90, get a criminal record and perhaps disciplinary actions if they are caught selling alcohol to underage people or proxy. Retailers get trading standards or mystery shoppers doing underage testing.

I think everyone should do some retail work especially at Christmas time to understand how some customers treat them like dirt

HWG

There are a lot of comments along the lines of "the staff need retrained" - no they don't. They're doing exactly what they should.

As a former barman, I know that frontline sales staff are personally liable if they directly or indirectly allow alcohol to be sold to someone under the age of 18. Here's the text from the Licensing Act 2003:

"If you knowingly allow the sale of alcohol to children you could be prosecuted and the maximum penalty on conviction is an unlimited fine."

We know that most checkout staff tend to be pragmatic - if it looks like a parent is buying wine with their toddler in tow, or someone clearly over 18 has an out-of-date ID, the common sense approach usually prevails. However, those are all situations where the vendor cannot be certain that the alcohol is not being purchased for someone under the age of 18 - and thus these are situations where the vendor is putting themselves at risk.

I was frequently put in a nasty situation (forgotten ID, shopping with teenage child, out-of-date photo on the licence) where I had to put myself at risk of prosecution in order to allow a (likely) above board transaction to take place.

On one occasion, I refused a sale to someone young looking with dubious ID (despite some particularly aggressive "jobsworth" type comments from them and also other customers), who was later caught by police and turned out to be well under 18.

I narrowly avoided a criminal conviction that night.

So spare a though for the minimum wage retail staff next time you fail to bring proper ID. You're asking them to put themselves at risk.