Recieved This E-mail.

[froggy]

Cash back scam!!


This is an ALERT for everybody who shops anywhere
at any time............Beware.........

This happened at Wal-Mart (Supercenter Store #1279, 10411 N Freeway 45, Houston, TX 77037 a month ago. I bought a bunch of stuff, over $150, & I glanced at my receipt as the cashier was handing me the bags. I saw a cash-back of $40. I told her I didn't request a cash back & to delete it. She said I'd have to take the $40 because she couldn't delete it. I told her to call a supervisor. Supervisor came & said I'd have to take it. I said NO! Taking the $40 would be a cash advance against my Discover & I wasn't paying interest on a cash advance!!!!! If they couldn't delete it then they would have to delete the whole order. So the supervisor had the cashier delete the whole order & re-scan everything!
The second time I looked at the electronic pad before I signed & a cash-back of $20 popped up. At that point I told the cashier & she deleted it. The total came out right.
The cashier agreed that the electronic pad must be defective. Obviously the cashier
knew the electronic pad was defective because she NEVER offered me the $40 at
the beginning. Can you imagine how many people went through before me & at the
end of her shift how much money she pocketed?
Just to alert everyone.....
My co worker went to Milford, DE Wal-Mart last week. She had her items rung up by
the cashier. The cashier hurried her along and didn't give her a receipt. She asked
the cashier for a receipt and the cashier was annoyed and gave it to her. My co worker didn't look at her receipt until later that night.. The receipt showed that she asked for $20 cash back. SHE DID NOT ASK FOR CASH BACK! My co-worker called Wal-Mart who investigated but could not see the cashier pocket the money. She then called her niece who works for the bank and her niece told her this. This is a new scam going on. The cashier will key in that you asked for cash back and then hand it to her friend who is
the next person in line.

Please, please, please check your receipts right away when using credit or debit cards! This is NOT limited to Wal-Mart, although they are the largest retailer so they have the most incidents. I am adding to this. My husband and I were in Wal-Mart North Salisbury and paying with credit card when my husband went to sign the credit card signer he just happened to notice there was a $20 cash back added. He told the cashier that he
did not ask nor want cash back and she said this machine has been messing up and
she cancelled it. We really didn't think anything of it until we read this email.

I wonder how many "seniors" have been, or will be, "stung" by this one????
To make matters worse ...THIS SCAM CAN BE DONE ANYWHERE, AT
ANY RETAIL OR WHOLESALE LOCATION!!!

 

[hjmick]

snopes.com: WalMart Cash Back Scam

 

[Valerie]

Origins: Versions of the same basic "cash back" e-mail have been circulating since late 2004, all featuring the scenario of a WalMart customer who uses a credit card which is charged for a cash back amount (despite the shopper's not having asked for cash back), but no cash is handed to the customer, and the discrepancy is noted only when the shopper spots the added amount on the receipt. In concept, this items sounds similar to an earlier piece which spread
the false claim that gas stations were imposing surreptitious $10.00 surcharges on credit card customers. That is, a customer misunderstood or misinterpreted something that happened to her while shopping, but — despite not having any evidence of a deliberate attempt to defraud — was quick to write and circulate a message erroneously accusing retailers of wrongdoing.

We checked out (and spoke with cashiers at) a number of different retailers, including WalMart, and verified that cashiers could not be "scamming" customers through the method described above, because cashiers had no method of initiating cash back transactions on their own. There was simply no way, as claimed in the examples reproduced above, for a cashier to surreptitiously place a cash back charge on a customer's card on their own and furtively pocket the money, all without the customer's requesting or knowing about it. As one cashier noted:
We CANNOT request cash back. The "buttons" that you press to say no or request an amount are very close together. People accidently press the wrong ones all the time. We as cashiers have no control over this. Also, if you look up on the pole that has the register number on it, there is a black bubble. THAT is a camera that they use to watch us. They check those all the time. The only way we could steal the customer's money would be to print their check for more than the total. That could be easily checked by the customer when we hand it back to them.
In virtually every case, when customers complain about getting cash back from credit/debit card purchases without having requested it, the cause is that those customers didn't pay close enough attention to the prompts on the card processing keypads, or they simply pressed the wrong keys. (On rare occasions, a mechanical malfunction might also result in the initiation of an erroneous cash back request.)

Of course, it's always possible that an unscrupulous cashier might "accidentally" neglect to give a customer some or all of a requested cash back amount and then pocket the money if the customer fails to notice the discrepancy before leaving the store. And it's also possible (as outlined in this news report that on occasions when customers physically hand over their cards and ask the cashiers to swipe them and key in the cash back amounts (rather than doing it themselves), some dishonest cashiers might deliberately key in a larger amount than the one requested by the customer and keep the difference. We haven't turned up any evidence showing either of these methods to be a common form of scam, however.

Tsk tsk froggy!

 

[Baruch Menachem]

It is a common scam. Always check your receipts. Always.

Just because the Email is weird is not reason to ignore the life lesson. There are scamming cashiers in lots of place, and the reason they give you a receipt is so that you have a record of what happened. And if you go out the door without checking... it is on you to prove you have been scammed.

 

[Valerie]

I had the best cashier the other day at CVS.

As I was checking out she asked for my CVS card and when she scanned it she told me I had some coupons I could redeem from my previous receipt. I didn't have my glasses on me so I asked her to read them and see which one would be best to apply. She proceeded to do some ninja coupon magic and saved me seven bucks! As she was finishing, I said oh and I got the laundry detergent for half price, right? Because there was a sign at the display buy one get one free. She said, oh I forgot and took the coupon off the top and handed me another 4 dollars! Excellent!