Fri 8 May 2009
Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification) Bill
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)We work with a lot of retailers and they might find this interesting. If a bill is approved to the next stage today, many online retailers might have to change the way the sell online in the UK. EEK.
A Parliamentry Bill which looks to regulate online sales of age restricted goods will be presented to the House of Lords today (Friday 8 May 2009) for its second reading by Baroness Doreen Massey who is the Chair of the All-Party Children’s group.
Baroness Massey’s Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification) Bill is a call for all online retailers and organisations who sell age-restricted goods to establish a comprehensive system to allow them to determine whether or not a person purchasing the products meet the legal minimum age to actually allow them to make that sale.
Some of the main products for sale which would be affected by the Bill are:
- knives
- alcohol
- tobacco
- DVDs
- video games
- spray paints
- solvents
The provisions of Baroness Massey’s Bill are aligned with the Gambling Act 2005 which has resulted in remote gambling operators now using specialist age verification companies to carry out this verification or online databases to verify the age of the buyer in question, rather than users merely ticking a box to confirm that they are over 18, as is the common practice.
If Baroness Massey’s Bill does come into force, thousands of online retailers in the UK would need to change their practices according to Netidme.
“With the growth of Internet shopping, retailers face new challenges – they can no longer simply ask the person in front of them for identification so it is essential that a system is put in place to ensure adult goods are only sold to those who should have them.” NetIDme
I wonder what a game changer this will be if it comes into force? If you sell online you might want to check this one out.
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That’s going to bring a major wave of changes in online shopping industry. Don’t you think just credit cards are enough to verify the age of buyer? I always thought minors will always have problems with buying things online because they don’t have access to credit cards. I might be mistaken because some kinds might have ‘add-on’ cards that they get from parents.
Thanks for bringing this topic up,
As an online retailer of video games in the US, we also sell many games and accessories to customers in the UK. I wonder if this bill means that we would not be able to do so without verifying their age? I can’t see how they could enforce that over here seeing as it’s an entirely different country.
Anyways thanks, I’ll look into this
-Stefan