Should I sign my credit card receipt?
Every time you buy something it seems you have to sign one of those stupid little receipts when you use your credit card, but recently it seems that some places are doing away with this. Why? Well, it turns out to be a liability and cost issue. Different banks charge different amounts for credit card transactions based on several variables. Things like whether or not a signature is obtained, the amount of sale, and for online purchases if they get the CVV. So, it is cheaper if stores get signatures. Also, say for Starbucks it is cheaper to just eat the occasionally $5 latte charge than to keep track of a gazillion receipts.
Now lets talk liability. If you dispute a charge to the bank and the store can make a case that they tried to verify the customers identity then the bank has to eat the charge. Yah, I know not like they are really checking anybodies identity, but that is the way it is. Though there is nothing actually saying that you need to sign it with your name or even a name for that matter. Try signing another name and see if they don’t take you money anyways. If you want to take it a little further, try drawing a little picture and tell them you are signing in hieroglyphics.
I think the most frustrating part of the whole deal is the massive amount of paper that is wasted each year on credit card receipts. To do a quick calculation and show off my Google skills lets try and estimate the amount of wasted paper each day. Well, standard paper is actually only 1/3 rough wood (what you and I think of as wood), the other 2/3’s comes from recycled paper or scraps left over from making other wood products. It is estimated that one cord of rough wood can make 460,000 personal checks if it is the only wood in checks. So, if they use current methods that means 1.38 million checks per cord. Say that for every 4 credit card receipts we can make one check. That means 5.52 million receipts per cord. Now, how many receipts per year go to waste. This is the hard part, so bear with me here. The average number of receipts that I get per day is about 3, some days I get 10 and some days I get none. With the US having roughly 232 million adults, at 3 receipts per day, that is 696 million receipts per day or 126 cords of wood a day to make credit card receipts. If we make it more conservative and say only 1 receipt per day per adult that is still 42 cords of wood a day on credit card receipts. Now ain’t that a pisser!!!