Tobacco 21 may have simplified age requirements for websites by overriding hundreds of state and local laws with one universal minimum age for the U.S., but there are still many by-location legal nuances tobacco businesses take into consideration when selling their products online. Some of these, such as flavor bans, only apply to certain products within the Electronic Nicotine Delivery System (ENDS) industry. For that reason our Tobacco Profiles do not reflect specific product bans. Clients may overlay any of our profile rule sets with custom rules, such as blocked locations, from their account dashboard.
In addition to location blocking, we now offer a Signature Required setting that may be applied to all orders or those from specific locations (country, state, county, city, or zip code). This allows you to collect a customer’s electronic signature during the checkout process in accordance with your company's corporate policy or a customer’s local laws. For instance, certain states such as Texas require customer signature at the point of sale to certify that they are of legal age to purchase tobacco products and that they understand it is illegal for minors to purchase such products.
We present this step directly through our popup during age verification with a message explaining why it’s required. Use our default signature terms or customize your own under the Websites tab of your account dashboard. Once the customer agrees to your terms of sale by providing an electronic signature and is successfully age verified, they may proceed with their order.
Signatures are automatically stored with other customer data in your real-time verification logs. Upon request, AgeChecker.net provides clients with detailed data exports of verification history, including customer signatures, formatted to client specifications (e.g. PDF, Excel, etc.) and date ranges (e.g. entire history, 2019 Q3, last 30 days, etc.). For audit purposes, proof of age verification and customer signature is critical documentation for businesses as the tobacco industry faces increasing regulatory oversight and enforcement efforts.
To see how our signature requirement setting works and how to implement it, watch our demo:
Collecting signature before order authorization demonstrates to the public, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other governing bodies that you are serious about complying with regulations for tobacco products, or anything age-restricted. As the FDA continues to increase enforcement efforts to prevent underage tobacco sales, having audit-ready records to back up your sales are nearly ubiquitous with regulated ecommerce in today’s landscape.
Beyond that, a signature requirement acts as an extra deterrent against minors attempting to purchase with, say, a parent’s wallet on hand, saving you the cost of fulfilling orders that are ultimately voided at the delivery point or charged back due to fraud. Additionally, you eliminate the risk of human error. Rather than rely upon the discretion of a third party shipper to collect signature upon delivery you can file the signature before you even accept payment. Signature at the point of sale, however, does not replace signature upon delivery when the latter is a requirement.
Age gates typically include an abbreviated version or link to your terms and conditions, allowing the customer to access your website by checking a box or entering any date of birth. If you track the number of customers who actually follow the link to read your terms and conditions, the results may be underwhelming. Full disclosure of your terms and conditions stamped with a personally-identifiable signature documenting your customer’s acknowledgment and agreement to them is just one more way to protect your business against fraud, chargebacks, legal penalties, and other setbacks that are often avoidable with the proper prevention tools.
The U.S. tobacco industry is evolving quickly and AgeChecker.net is committed to providing leading-edge compliance technology that is easy to use for both business and consumer. As always, our 24/7 customer support is complimentary. Simply open a support ticket from your account dashboard or contact us by phone or email for same-day assistance.
