Test Purchasing

The service is very simple but very effective

A Serve Legal visitor enters your site, purchases an age-restricted item (e.g. alcohol or cigarettes) and records key information about the transaction including whether ID was requested, a description of the server, a till receipt (if provided), plus some other key facts.

Our visitors are all young-looking, 18 or 19 year old people and should be asked to provide ID to complete the transaction - particularly if you operate a Think 21 / Think 25 policy.

• If our visitor is required to provide official ID to complete the transaction then the site PASSES
• If they purchase the items without showing ID then the site FAILS. We only use passports, photocard driving licences or PASS accredited IDs
• Within 24 hours, the visitor completes a report for the visit on our online database. Within 72 hours, this report is sent by email and/or SMS to you

The reasons for using Serve Legal are compelling

Using an independent test purchase service demonstrates to the local authority that you are taking the issue seriously. A recent trading standards report cited internal test purchasing in their best practice guidelines for selling alcohol. The due diligence is invaluable if you ever receive a visit from your local officer.

Furthermore, using Serve Legal allows you to measure your own performance on the issue and benchmark this against others in your industry (we obviously protect company identities in the benchmarking).

Most importantly, using our service improves your performance.

Individual company performance improves due to a number of factors - awareness amongst staff that they are being randomly tested, increased focus from management on underage legislation, and also specific actions suggested from our analysis.

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