See ID

[pne]

This morning, I was buying loratidine tablets at a chemist's where I don't usually go; I asked whether I could pay by EC card and they say yes, if I produced photo ID.

I had heard of this practice from customers_suck (often in the context of customers writing "see ID" in the signature line of their credit card and being indignant when asked to produce said ID), but hadn't encountered it in Germany yet.

Still, why not? I showed her my passport; she compared the names, then the signatures, between the EC card and the passport. I don't think she looked at the passport photo though or compared the signature on the receipt with the one on the card.

Comments

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

You carry your passport around with you? Is this some national requirement in Germany or what? My passport never leaves the drawer it's in!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Is this some national requirement in Germany or what?

I'm not exactly sure; different people say different things as to whether Germans have to carry their ID card on them.

There is some law or other, but whether it requires you to have ID on you or only to produce it in reasonable time seems to be unclear, as are the consequences in practice of not having it on you even if that should not be not explicitly required by the law.

(Whether this even applies to non-Germans is a completely different matter.)

But yes, I typically carry my passport around with me.