Nobody saw the red flags, ehe?

[LillFilly]

Got to see some serious fraud in action today.

LP in one of our stores was helping local police with finding the sleezball couple who stole a wallet from a little old lady nearby. By the time the poor thing called police, though, this couple had already MAXED-OUT 3-STORE CREDIT CARDS (2-of the stores were ours), to the tune of several thousand dollars. To make it worse, during the interviews, police discovered that NONE of the cashiers ever asked for ID. Not even at the wholesale club where the frickin card has a picture on it! Way to go first-line-defenders-against-fraud. Never mind that it should have been just a teensy little suspicious that they were buying all gift cards. I don't know if it stemmed from apathy or an extreme aversion to possibly insulting the 'customer.' After this though, all the cashiers at the LP's store are getting a talking to, and the cashier who accepted the card no longer has a job.

Sadly, this isn't the first time someone's gotten away with this in the area, all because nobody checked ID. I'm thinking of writing a letter to the local paper warning women NOT to leave their purses in their shopping carts, and reminding cashiers that by checking for ID they could be preventing someone's nightmare.

With good reason, the police were SERIOUSLY pissed at the stores' lack of protocol.

[raw456]

An unfortunate, but necessary lesson for the employee I'm afraid.

I am horrified at the amount of cashiers who DONT check signatures/id's. I point it out to them when they dont.

One time I was at a checkout and the girl approved my credit card payment before I had even signed the reciept. I refused to sign it, made her get her manager, and explained that what she had done is basically fraud.

I made them reverse the transaction and process it again properly. The girl admitted that she never checked signatures. After my visit I'm fairly sure she does now.

My sister has "Ask for ID" on the back of her card instead of her signature (her wallet was stolen once) she says that she never gets asked.

If some cashiers were more vigilant, the amount of fraud would drop dramatically

[Ironclad Alibi]

[CYNICAL] Most likely that thieving couple bought (stole) fewer gift cards (in value and number) than corporate would have given free to customers complaining about having their IDs checked when using their charge cards. [/CYNICAL]

[Kheldarson]

Problem is, even if we as cashiers want to help prevent such undertakings, we get chewed out for it. When I worked at Wally World, there were times where I had suspicious transactions and would try to get a CSM only to be told run it anyway. Nevermind that the customer refused to show ID and was trying to do gift cards with credit card (which we aren't supposed to do anyway)....

[PepperElf]

I never leave my purse unattended in a shopping cart. If I'm carrying one I will pick it up and take it with me before I move off to look at a product.

I still remember what happened to Mom one day at her favorite grocery store: THREE TIMES some lady came up and tried to take Mom's cart - with the purse in it - claiming it was her sister's cart.

The third time Mom said accused her of attempting to steal her purse and said she was going to talk to a manager. The woman fled and Mom never saw her again.

[siead_lietrathua]

one thing i love about our manager is they do let us ID with credit cards. if a card is unsigned (see id counting) they are technically not valid (says right on the ack of the card under the signing part) so without ID they cannot use it. that and giftcards totalling more than $200. creditcard-giftcards of any value have to be paid with debit or cash.
the only people to get upset with this is those that ARE scamming. most customers think it's a great idea.

[chainedbarista]

checkers live in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' limbo, for which we all know that corporate think tanks are responsible for.

i wonder if any of these mba holding brain scientists actually read loss prevention records? yah, probably not; they're too busy thinking up new and ingenious schemes to keep 'good customers.'

[nicolecj]

1. Credit cards must have a signiture to be valid. The store has the right to refuse if the signitures doesn't match the one on the slip.

2. Some credit card companies do not allow the stores to ask for id. It is against the contract to do so.

[telecom_goddess]

1. Credit cards must have a signiture to be valid. The store has the right to refuse if the signitures doesn't match the one on the slip.

2. Some credit card companies do not allow the stores to ask for id. It is against the contract to do so.

Wow develop a skill for forgery and you have it made

[dbuzman]

Some stores don't even require a signature anymore if the amount is small enough.

Wegmans started it where I live where if it was $50 or less you didn't need to sign. I think they upped it to $75. The giant eagle store then followed suit at the $50 level.

[Little Retail Rabbit]

We don't have these sorts of measures in the UK .partly because we have Chip and Pin, and partly because I don't think cashiers are even supposed to handle the card. When I first started at my current job, we had swipe thing attached to the sides of the screens on our tills, and we had to physically swipe the cards ourselves (even with a PIN being entered). I think in some ways this was good- apart from when us newbies somehow forgot to remove the card, little old ladies never left their card behind on their own accord, and it was easier to check the marital status on the card being as it was in our hand. In this area we know a lot of people too, so we could look at the names. Boy some people didn't like that! We had a lot of people get very angry about the fact we weren't letting them use their "husband's" cards etc (you could sort of tell who WAS telling the truth, and the ones who went into a screaming rage but never returned to the shop shortly after with cash taken from an ATM with the card were the ones who had probably stolen it).

But then it came out that cashiers in some places (not our stores) could use these swipe things to clone cards so they were removed and we do regular chip and pin most of the time now. The only time I get to touch a card is when its a signed one. I am very diligent about checking signatures but I suspect some of my colleagues aren't too fussed.

[ThirdGenRetail]

At Red Vest, we're not allowed to check ID unless it's a commercial account card(Which the computer actually PROMPTS us to ID the customers), or the card says CID or some other variant of that.

Not that it actually matters sometimes. I've gotten people with those cards that have a TINY photo, less than 1/2in. x 1/2in., on the front, and CID on the back... And they insist that their photo is RIGHT THERE. Yes, that's nice, it's A photo. When it says CID, I want a legal, government-issue ID, or a club card ID of some sort(Since you tend to need an ID to get those in the first place). I am NOT taking that tiny low-quality picture as "ID."

[XCashier]

I'm thinking of writing a letter to the local paper warning women NOT to leave their purses in their shopping carts,

They shouldn't be doing that in the first place! The real world isn't Mayberry USA; you don't know everyone in town and can't trust them. I posted once (found it) about two idiot women at my son's preschool who left their purses in their cars when they went in to pick up their kids and came out to find the windows smashed and the purses gone.

I don't excuse or condone what those thieves did, but let's be blunt here. You DO NOT LEAVE YOUR VALUABLES LYING AROUND. Period, end of sentence. Use some street smarts and common sense and you won't get burned.

[fma_fanatic]

Isn't there some way to track the gift cards if they're used, or is that impossible? It seems like if the store wants to catch whoever it is who stole the cards and used them would want to do that. Even if they gave the cards to someone else.

I know that a lot of gift cards say that the company isn't responsible for lost or stolen cards, and that they should be treated like cash, but one would think that there'd be some sort of way to flag the cards if they were used.

[Helix]

one thing i love about our manager is they do let us ID with credit cards. if a card is unsigned (see id counting) they are technically not valid (says right on the ack of the card under the signing part) so without ID they cannot use it.

I've never quite got that, because if it's unsigned, surely a thief would just sign it themselves and won't have to even forge the signature?