RE: tobacco sales

At 01:18 AM 5/3/00 -0400, Jason Brett wrote:

>Malcom, you've got a good point about facilitating sales to minors. But if
>you bear in mind that in order to make an online purchase, you need to (in
>most cases) use a major credit card. I don't know many minors who have their
>own credit card, and most of those who do have one have a second card on a
>parent's account.

I'm not sure that's a strong enough deterrent.  On another mailing list I'm 
on, a member wrote about her experiences working for a collections company 
whose clients included companies dealing in X-rated materials--pay-per-view 
movies, web sites, etc.  She said the vast majority of people she had to 
call were *not* adults who had simply forgotten to pay their bills--they 
were parents whose children had lifted their credit cards from their 
wallets long enough to get the number.  (She wasn't just taking the 
customer's word for this--she said that in some cases the contact 
information submitted with the credit card made it pretty clear that a kid 
was at the keyboard.)  Moreover, the parent's reaction generally wasn't, "I 
should've been watching my kid"--it was, "Why did you people accept a 
credit card from a minor over the Web?"  Like it's possible for a shopping 
cart to know the age of the user.  A human reviewing the order could make a 
guess, but can you imagine any company hiring enough people to review each 
and every order that comes in?

So if the kids will commit credit card fraud for porn, what's to stop them 
from doing it for tobacco?

Rachel Hartman
--------------------------------------------
Rachel R. Hartman, Owner
Hartman WebWrights - http://www.hww.com (512) 989-7844
Affordable, hand-crafted web pages for your company's needs

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