Working with
NetIDMe we have successfully trialled and integrated an online age verification system with our
website. We are now in a position to age verify any person purchasing knives from our site. The process is seamless and secure ensuring the privacy of our customers without having any negative impact on our sales.
The UK government have been talking about age verification and online sales of age restricted goods and services for many years. The Gambling Act 2006 was brought in to ensure that online gambling companies could be made accountable for any under-age use of their services. The age verification checks needed to be independent of the payment method and so a number of online age verification services became available whereby the details of the customer could be checked against various publically accessible databases, such as the electoral roll.
The pressure is now on for all online retailers of age restricted goods (such as knives, alcohol, tobacco, DVDs and games) to take active steps to ensure that these products are not sold to under age persons. The Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification) Bill has had readings in the
House of Commons (by Margaret Moran) and
House of Lords (by Baroness Massey of Darwen) and has received generally positive comments in both. However, the general consensus is that the existing laws that govern sales of age restricted goods should be enforced online in the same way as they are offline – the retailer needs to take reasonable steps to ensure that they are not selling goods or services to under age people and there is no need to bring in new laws to govern online sales separately. No mean feat as it’s not possible to physically check the photo ID of an online customer in the same way that a high street merchant can!
A few small modifications needed to be made to our online checkout process to ensure that we were gathering customer data in as accurate a format as possible, ready for the age verification process. In this way we can perform the checks and store the customer’s account and delivery details without lengthening the checkout process in any way.
So far we’ve had great results – where an age verification check has failed we’ve been able to follow up with the customer and either correct the details they entered or get additional information so we can perform a further check. For instance, a buyer for a hotel was using a company credit card and so the billing address given was the hotel rather than the purchaser’s home address – once we had the buyer’s details we could confirm that he was over 18. Other customers had failed the checks as they had recently moved – once previous address details were collected we could perform further checks. We’ve also had a couple of orders where the customer failed the age verification check and they haven’t responded to our requests for further information. We’ve placed the orders on hold until they get back to us, but they may have been fraudulent orders in the first place (which we would have picked up on and rejected when we came to process payment) or orders from minors who decided not to try their luck any further. Either way, we’re happy!
So, as more pressure is placed on the online retailer to ensure that they are doing everything possible to stop sales of age restricted goods to minors, we hope that taking the initiative and putting these checks in place will mark us out as a knife retailer with a sense of social responsibility.
