In the real world, verifying age when face to face with a merchant is relatively straightforward...you are asked to present identification and the merchant decides whether they accept it or not and ultimately sell you your desired age restricted item. When it comes to the sale of age restricted products online it is certainly more challenging and there are stringent regulations when it comes to selling e-cigarettes via the internet. 

Selling an e-cigarette to somebody below the age of 18 is a serious offence and in some cases can carry a hefty fine, it is due to this that any website selling e-cigarettes in the UK is required by law to have an age verification system which must be satisfied before an order can be shipped out. 

All orders placed at fogfathers.co.uk go through an automatic age verification test courtesy of AgeChecked who are one of the pioneers of this sector. AgeChecked works by extracting data from an order(ie name, address, DOB) and cross checking this with an extensive national database to confirm that you are over the age of 18. If this process comes back as failed, we would converse with our customers directly to obtain a picture of their ID and process the order once satisfied. The process is smooth and in most instances would not inconvenience the end user, the process of sending a photo of identification is tedious yet necessary due to the fact that we are not face to face with our customers.  

As vaping becomes more popular in the UK, the inevitable rise of uncomplying websites comes with it, some may be guilty of not going that extra mile to ensure the end user of their product is of legal age. Here at Fogfathers, we feel it is important to provide a safe and secure service to our customers and rally our fellow retailers to carry out sufficient age verification in order to help the vaping industry grow & thrive.