Bark Di Trute!

HOW SECURE ARE YOUR POINT OF SALES TRANSACTIONS

By Elesean Gordon-Fuller

Elesean Gordon-Fuller is a 2012 graduate of the University of the West Indies, Mona- CARIMAC. She is seeking to become a media practitioner and has an interest in journalism and customer relations. For feedback, please send emails to eleseang@yahoo.com.

Our banks have been doing a lot to emphasize the importance of protecting ourselves from the unauthorized access of our electronic cards especially with an increase in scamming activities. But are our merchants doing enough to protect us from these unfortunate occurrences?

I decided to put this to the test. There have been several occasions when my husband I joked about me using his credit card to make purchases without him being present but decided against it out of concern for me being embarrassed when not being able to produce an id to verify card ownership.

Here we were in a clothes store about to make a purchase… So we decided let’s not offer the sales clerk an id but wait for it to be requested. To our surprise the transaction was completed, he signed the receipt to approve the transaction without proving that he was the owner of the credit card! Ok, maybe the clerk had forgotten but wait, here is the issue of your card possibly being compromised; there is no room for excuses. What if his card had been stolen?  Is it so easy to make purchases with a stolen credit card?

As if this wasn’t enough to think about we decided to try this again. On another occasion in a popular franchise restaurant our purchase was completed and no id requested. And I could go on and on about the numerous stores where this occurred. We were now noticing a trend so much so that on one occasion when he did not have his id we were able to deduce based on our experiences that we could go to a particular store because the possibility of the cashier asking for your id before confirming a credit card purchase is nil.

While we should not begin to assume that this is the practice of most business places, one cannot help but imagine the exorbitant bills that could have been charged to his individual were he not the owner of this credit card.

Customer service extends beyond smiling, greeting and assisting your customer with a purchase but also looking out for their interests especially where the use of electronic cards are involved. We all have a role to play in ensuring that the highest level of security is observed especially electronic card purchases. It involves a team effort from; me, you, our banks and merchants too.

 Editor's Note: Persons should check to see if a signature is on the credit card and if it matches the signature signed by the person using the credit card.