Don't shop at Wal-Mart #70 in West Memphis, AR

Rather than writing anything more, I'm simply going to copy and paste my complaint to Wal-Mart corporate; I've merely removed the manager's name. I've also reported this issue to MasterCard. If you're in West Memphis, avoid the store near the I-40/55 split, since that's where this malarkey took place.

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I attempted to purchase about $140 of merchandise from Wal-Mart store #0070 on April 4. A prompt on the register asked the cashier to compare the signature on my credit card with that on the slip. I showed my signed MasterCard, but then the cashier asked for ID. Asking for ID is expressly forbidden under the merchant agreement and I refused to comply with that request. This led to a supervisor of some sort - who was wearing no Wal-Mart identification of any kind - radioing for a manger. The store co-manager, [redacted], repeated the same request and refused to provide any assistance whatsoever. He refused to call either MasterCard's approval hotline with me witnessing the call, nor refused to allow me to witness any of his alleged attempted to verify that an ID was somehow mandatory for my transaction. During this time, I received an e-mail from my bank confirming that the transaction had been approved; there was clearly no need for this alleged requirement.
I was threatened with store security and not allowed to leave the store with my merchandise. I was not allowed to pay for my merchandise with the card, even when I offered to run it as a debit card, bypassing the signature issues entirely. Ultimately, after nearly an hour of arguing about this, I paid for my merchandise with cash, leaving me without any other funds for the weekend. The manager - and the entire store's staff - need the be reeducated on credit card policies and adhere to them strictly; this entire mess would have been avoided if MasterCard's procedures had been followed from the beginning.

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Also, here's the relevant text, copied directly from the October 2008 revision of Mastercard's Rules. The first sentence is the important part: merchants can't refuse to process a transaction just because a cardholder won't show ID.

5.6.3 Additional Cardholder Identification: A Merchant must not refuse to complete a Transaction solely because a Cardholder who has complied with the conditions for presentment of a Card at the POI refuses to provide additional identification information, except as specifically permitted or required by the Standards. A Merchant may require additional identification from the Cardholder if the information is required to complete the Transaction, such as for shipping purposes. A Merchant in a country or region that supports use of the MasterCard Address Verification Service (AVS) may require the Cardholder’s ZIP or postal code to complete a Cardholder-Activated Terminal (CAT) Transaction, or the Cardholder’s address and ZIP or postal code to complete a mail order, phone order, or e-commerce Transaction.