Dear MediaMarkt

Tuesday Jan 24, 2006

Submitted to MediaMarkt via their website, 24/1/06

Alvast excuses: ik schrijf in het engels. Als dit voor uw niet te begrijpen is, kunt uw dat per email melden, ga ik opnieuw schrijven in het nederlands. Nederlands, zoals uw waarschijnlijk al ziet, is niet mijn moedertaal, sterker nog, ik ben van plan om deze email op mijn eigen blog te zetten, http://blogs.sun.com/patrickf, daarom kies ik voor engels.

m.v.g.

Patrick



Dear Sir / Madam,

I was recently at your store in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost, attempting to purchase a digital camera.

As I see on your website:

Kan ik met VISA of Mastercard betalen?
Betalen met creditcard in onze vestigingen is mogelijk. Hier kunnen echter kosten aan verbonden zijn. Let erop dat bij betaling met creditcard het tonen van een geldige legitimatie verplicht is.

Which I will loosely translate as:

Can I pay with VISA or Mastercard?
Paying with a credit card in our stores is possible. There may be additional charges for this. Please note that when paying with a credit card, a valid ID is required.

Seems reasonable.

So I was surprised when attempting to pay at your store and producing my verblijfsvergunning (residence permit), to be told by the shop assistant that this would only be considered a valid ID if accompanied by the original passport. I asked whether my passport alone would be considered valid ID. Yes, he assured me, it would.

I felt it necessary to point out that that saying that a verblijfsvergunning is only valid with a passport, and that a passport is valid by itself, is pretty much the same as saying that a verblijfsvergunning is not considered valid ID.

Translation: MediaMarkt. I am not mad.

The shop assitant agreed with me and also informed me that he receives a lot of complaints about this ("ik krijg het altijd aan mijn kop"). It wasn't because his employer was institutionally racist, he didn't go on to tell me, it was just because they had given little thought to the public perception of their policies.

So, I would like to call your attention to the fact that you do consider a Dutch driving license or a Dutch ID card a valid ID.

A verblijfsvergunning is issued by the Dutch immigration and naturalisation authorities. To obtain one requires your passport and birth certificate authenticated by apostille. I doubt that even the amazing array of technology on offer at MediaMarkt could produce a convincing forgery of one. The Dutch authorities, including the police, accept it as a proof of identity. It is every bit as official as a Dutch ID card and much, much harder to reproduce than, for example, a driving license. It is, in short, a valid ID.

So, please can you advise me why you consider ID issued by the Dutch authorities to non-Dutch nationals for the purposes of identification within the Netherlands not a valid ID ? I am sure you can appreciate the implications of your policy.


Yours sincerely,

Patrick Finch


ps. these views are not necessarily those of my employer, and I don't mean to pick on MediaMarkt. The nice chap that we spoke to was very apologetic about it all.

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Posted at 08:56AM Jan 24, 2006 by Patrick Finch in General
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