What’s up with not having to sign any more credit card receipts at retail food counters? Am I the only one that’s noticed this recent change?
It started at Chipotle. Several months ago, I swiped the card for my burrito and…okay, my burrito and chips…the counter dude said that they’re not asking for signatures anymore on credit receipts.
The primary reason I can fathom for making this change is for operational efficiency. Some operations guy up the chain decided to emulate Starbucks and implement any change that would decrease queue system time. If true, then this seems absurd because the signature process takes 3 seconds at most. They still have to swipe the card and they still have to wait for both the merchant and customer receipts to print. What’s the point of bypassing the signature and saving 3 seconds?
Maybe the operational efficiency isn’t intended for customers. Maybe they’re sick of reconciling the receipts at the end of the day. They figure they save X amount of labor hours a year by avoiding the task of matching receipts to the roll record.
Is it for security? Are people standing out back of the restaurants, digging through trash, to lift signatures off the card receipts?
I tried searching Proquest to see if there was an article written. Couldn’t find anything. Is this weird? Am I the only one?
Not signing
I think it’s part of a new tactic against identity theft called “giving up”. The slogan is “If you’re paying for your burrito with a stolen credit card, bully for you!”
— Ben
Policy change at CC companies
Credit card issuers changed the policy so that fast food purchases under some threshold ($15? $30?) do not require a signed receipt. Evidently the incidence of fraud is very low in that circumstance.
See “Fast-food fuels migration to plastic payment,” available here.
-V
EDIT by matthew: Linked.