Expired ID - not proof of age?

sheramber

ScarletMarble wrote: »

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

The maximum penalty for selling to an underage person is £5000.

The law also states to see 'a valid ID' so is an out of date licence valid?

It could be check purchase.

What would you do if losing your job and a fine of £5000 and a criminal record were a possibilties.

The police and trading standards do send youngsters to try to buy alcohol to test that it is not being done.

As a cashier in held responsible for such a sale they are going to be cautious about sales.

My 39 year old son was amused that he asked for ID to purchase alcohol.

HWG

sheramber wrote: »

The maximum penalty for selling to an underage person is £5000.

The law also states to see 'a valid ID' so is an out of date licence valid?

It could be check purchase.

What would you do if losing your job and a fine of £5000 and a criminal record were a possibilties.

The police and trading standards do send youngsters to try to buy alcohol to test that it is not being done.

As a cashier in held responsible for such a sale they are going to be cautious about sales.

My 39 year old son was amused that he asked for ID to purchase alcohol.

Exactly. You cannot afford to get it wrong even once. You can't hold it against cashiers for complying with a law, especially one that's enforced so aggressively.

dacouch

HWG wrote: »

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."

Knowingly is the relevant word

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/knowingly

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/knowingly

System

I should used the term common sense.

We watch the DVD of our id policy twice a year and answer a test paper too. We sell painkillers, laxatives, fireworks, party poppers, knives too which have age restrictions as well.

It clearly states if a child is with an adult buying alcohol or tobacco then the sale should go ahead UNLESS you have knowledge it's for the child.

I heard a supermarket temporary losing their alcohol license for a few days because of two colleagues sold alcohol to under 18s in a week. Staff had to remove every single item of alcohol from the shelves from the booze aisle plus promo plinths. They lost sales obviously both directly and indirectly as some customers don't want to visit two supermarkets to do their shopping. Have no idea what the colleagues faced in both legal and company punishment.

unholyangel

sheramber wrote: »

The maximum penalty for selling to an underage person is £5000.

The law also states to see 'a valid ID' so is an out of date licence valid?

It could be check purchase.

What would you do if losing your job and a fine of £5000 and a criminal record were a possibilties.

The police and trading standards do send youngsters to try to buy alcohol to test that it is not being done.

As a cashier in held responsible for such a sale they are going to be cautious about sales.

My 39 year old son was amused that he asked for ID to purchase alcohol.

Which law states valid ID is required? Because its not the licensing act.

ETA: The act basically states this around selling to children:

146Sale of alcohol to children

(1)A person commits an offence if he sells alcohol to an individual aged under 18. <snip>
(4)Where a person is charged with an offence under this section by reason of his own conduct it is a defence that—

(a)he believed that the individual was aged 18 or over, and

(b)either—

(i)he had taken all reasonable steps to establish the individual’s age, or

(ii)nobody could reasonably have suspected from the individual’s appearance that he was aged under 18.

(5)For the purposes of subsection (4), a person is treated as having taken all reasonable steps to establish an individual’s age if—

(a)he asked the individual for evidence of his age, and

(b)the evidence would have convinced a reasonable person.

Don't get me wrong, its still up to the server. They have a licence to sell alcohol (and are personally liable for sales they make). They have the right to refuse service to anyone (except for a protected characteristic - age excluded since its an age controlled substance). But as far as I can see, theres no requirement/specification in the law itself.

Side note, its also illegal to serve alcohol to someone who is drunk.

Gavin83

I've always found supermarkets are far more strict with this than pubs are. Back in my younger days I'd barely get asked for ID in pubs but it's only recently I've stopped being asked in supermarkets. Supermarkets impose loads more rules than pubs too and I've been refused before because the person I'm with hasn't got ID. I even once got refused because I was accused of being part of a group outside, none of which I knew.

Sicard

HWG wrote: »

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.

No they're not! Can't you see the guy showed his id which proved he was legally entitled to purchase the alcohol. He was the customer not the kid nor the embrio and not the twinkle in his eye and not the wife. The idiotic cashier needs proper training.

Anyway, it's not often a swat team is waiting outside the store ready to pounce on everyone who has bought alcohol is it?

marliepanda

Sicard wrote: »

No they're not! Can't you see the guy showed his id which proved he was legally entitled to purchase the alcohol. He was the customer not the kid nor the embrio and not the twinkle in his eye and not the wife. The idiotic cashier needs proper training.

Anyway, it's not often a swat team is waiting outside the store ready to pounce on everyone who has bought alcohol is it?

No it's not. You can call people an idiot as much as you want but it's incorrect.

The wife was id'd as she was party to the purchase. Just because OP had the cash in his hand doesn't mean he's the only one to be id'd.

You do know that if a family is buying a shop including age restricted items and they give their money to the child to pay as some kids like to do that, you can't take them money off the child for it.

Do you want to call that idiotic as well?

Cashier had been trained correctly to avoid themselves and the company getting fined.

Sicard

marliepanda wrote: »

No it's not. You can call people an idiot as much as you want but it's incorrect.

The wife was id'd as she was party to the purchase. Just because OP had the cash in his hand doesn't mean he's the only one to be id'd.

You do know that if a family is buying a shop including age restricted items and they give their money to the child to pay as some kids like to do that, you can't take them money off the child for it.

Do you want to call that idiotic as well?

Cashier had been trained correctly to avoid themselves and the company getting fined.

Then it's the law that's stupid. Can I ask you personally, do you think this scenario is stupid? That an over-the-age consumer who is over thirty purchasing an age restricted item accompanied by a woman who is over thirty and who are both required by a cashier to produce id's because the said assistant believes them to be under 18 isn't stupid? There, I've said stupid once again. Okay, maybe the cashier needs training on how to judge people's ages or for them to go to Specsavers.

slashlover

Let's not forget that while everyone is mentioning the legal age to buy alcohol, every shop/pub/etc. is trained to ask for ID from anyone who looks under 25. I know some of my friends are constantly asked for ID and they are in their late 30s.

At work, I've also had someone who was trying to use their older sisters old ID to buy alcohol.

Most places I've been have gone with the 'better be on the side of caution'.