"Would you please do something illegal for me? Please?"

[El Pollo Guerrera]

(First, been a fan of the site for a while, but I had to join to share this with you.)

An older gentleman comes into the store yesterday and asks me if I could remove the signature from a credit card so that he could sign his name to it. He said (and I'm not saying he's lying, this is what he said) that his wife signed his card by mistake and he needs to sign it. He also said that his son told him that our business (a printshop) can erase a signature no problem and the bank will still accept the card.



I told him:

A) I'm pretty sure that if we tried to erase the signature, the strip beneath the signature would be erased, voiding the card,

B) I'm pretty sure the bank would not be happy about that,

C) I'm pretty sure it's illegal,

D) Your son is wrong, and

E) If I could erase a signature from a credit card, I wouldn't be here, I'd be at a blackjack table in Las Vegas right now.

I was just about to call the 800 number on the back of the card when he left. He said that he was going to our competition (hope they got a laugh out of it, too).

I've been asked to make illegal copies of videos, and rent porn to underage kids (I used to work in a video store... most of my stories tend to come from that experience), but this takes the cake for me.

Has anyone else been asked to do something so blatently illegal?

[Spiffy McMoron]

Has anyone else been asked to do something so blatently illegal?

No, but I just remember this story from Crappy Tire:

We were really short on help in my department, so the owner was pinching in to help on the floor one day. He's wearing a red shirt with his name on it, just like the rest of us. A customer comes up to him and asks him the price for something. (It was something cheap too--it was $5 or something.)

Owner tells the customer the price.

Customer then says, "What's the price if I pay cash?"

Owner repeats the price.

Customer: "No, no, no, I want to pay cash..."

They go back and forth with this for a couple of minutes. Eventually, the owner laughs in the guys face, tells the customer he's the owner, and he can pay the normal price or piss off. (More politely, though.)

[Slytovhand]

Ummmm - yep, I get asked to do illegal things... all the time...

Whenever someone isn't happy about a little thing called the 'Privacy Act' and the $10,000 fine that I can personally cop if I breach it. It really gets me when I explain this little 'law' thing to themm, and they then respond with the "I don't care about your privacy laws, just do it.." crap!!!

Or - when ppl had a shell card (basically, a petrol card thing.. does that make sense?) which has a rego on it (to say, only that rego can have stuff bought on it) or other restrictions - but I'm supposed to just ignore it and do whatever they want...

Does answering correctly the question "hey, can you see a booze bus near your servo?" count as illegal? My response was "I'm not going to tell you if it's safe to drink drive". I won't relate the response :P


Slyt

[Emrld]

In defense of the paying cash . . .
Some gas stations used to have a different rate for cash than credit card due to they have to pay a fee on credit card charges.
I have also seen it done in some Mom and Pop type stores.
So if the person wasn't familliar with your store . . .they could be used to that type of system.

[gunsage]

I was asked to sell alcohol past hours when I worked at a gas station. Yes, they tried to bribe me. Yes, they were undercover. No, I didn't sell to them.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've been asked why a customer's service "isn't getting their advertised bandwidth" while running Limewire.

I've been asked BY CUSTOMERS where to go to get movies, games, etc. Coworkers, that's fine, but not customers. Jeebus.

[princess4life]

i have had people ask me to allow them to keep there drugs when we find it on them during searchs at concerts

"I swear I wont smoke it, come on man"

I don't care it is still illegal to have, you can toss it in that trash can over there or I can radio to the sheriff and you can get busted for possesion it's your choice.

[Nayeli_Sabia]

We had someone at our photo store who tried to make a photo calender using a copywrited calender from the year before. The weird thing is... his calender from last year cost $5, but the photo calender was $30.

[Dave1982]

In defense of the paying cash . . .
Some gas stations used to have a different rate for cash than credit card due to they have to pay a fee on credit card charges.
I have also seen it done in some Mom and Pop type stores.

This is called surcharging. While not always illegal (it is in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas) this is a violation of their merchant agreements with the credit card companies. MC/Visa specifically prohibit it. AMEX - IIRC - doesn't specifically not allow it, but requires that AMEX not be discriminated against. Meaning that if you don't surcharge MC/Visa, you can't surcharge AMEX either. Theoretically if you accept only AMEX you add a surcharge, but I haven't heard of any place that accepts only AMEX.

If a business is reported to the CC companies for this, they can have their merchant accounts yanked.

[Sheldonrs]

I used to get the ones who thought that since software is just a disk and disks are only .20 a piece to make I should be able to sell it to them for .50 and we'd still make a profit. Usually I told them that would work if the 30 people working for the company at the time only made .002 per hour.

[Dreamstalker]

On Ebay, I used to get requests/demands to lie on Customs forms all the time. Sorry, legally this is merchandise and you paid X for it. And yes I am enclosing an invoice.

Nothing yet at the game store except being asked to give more in credit for something than we could (I don't care if you paid $20 for that GBA game 3 years ago, it's only worth 5 on the secondary market now)

[Spiffy McMoron]

In defense of the paying cash . . .
Some gas stations used to have a different rate for cash than credit card due to they have to pay a fee on credit card charges.
I have also seen it done in some Mom and Pop type stores.
So if the person wasn't familliar with your store . . .they could be used to that type of system.

Well, in my defence:

1) This wasn't a gas station
2) This wasn't a Mom and Pop type of store; it was a Canadian Tire. Think of it as Wal-Mart North.

As well, what the guy in my OP was insinuating was that the employee (the owner, in this case) take the cash and pocket it, while the "customer" walks out with a good that cost less to buy than everyone else. Sorry I didn't make that clearer.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

At both the computer store and the games store I worked at I would have people ask where they could illegally download games/software/music/whatever. My usual reply was "well you can find anything on the internet if you know where to look" but that's all I could say.

[lordlundar]

"Do you sell Mod chips?"

"Do you sell game Roms?"

"Where can I get this $50 program for free?"

etc.

[RichS]

I got the 'where can I download music/movies/etc.' question at the computer store also.

Then, there were the computers that came in, with orders to format/reload & restore data, with an obvious pirated copy of Windows.

They either got added another $125 for an OEM copy + piece of hardware + labor, or the check-out charge and they get their machine back with no work done. We weren't having the wrath of Microsoft come down on us if they found out.

Also, I've been asked to put my personal copy of Windows/Office on another person's machine. My response?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

On Ebay, I used to get requests/demands to lie on Customs forms all the time. Sorry, legally this is merchandise and you paid X for it. And yes I am enclosing an invoice.

Used to get that when I was selling on ebay too. "Hey, I'm interested in buying your item but I can only afford it if you mark the customs form as a 'gift' so I don't have to pay duties on it. Is this okay?"

Those people got to meet my blocked bidders list. I'm not going to break customs law so you can snag a bargain.

This is called surcharging. While not always illegal (it is in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas) this is a violation of their merchant agreements with the credit card companies. MC/Visa specifically prohibit it. AMEX - IIRC - doesn't specifically not allow it, but requires that AMEX not be discriminated against. Meaning that if you don't surcharge MC/Visa, you can't surcharge AMEX either. Theoretically if you accept only AMEX you add a surcharge, but I haven't heard of any place that accepts only AMEX.

If a business is reported to the CC companies for this, they can have their merchant accounts yanked.

Saw that on ebay too--sellers stating in their listings that you have to pay extra fees if you want to pay by paypal. This is because you need to have a premier paypal account to accept credit card payments (and ebay policy is you must accept cc payments if you show you accept paypal), and paypal charges fees on every payment you receive in your premier account.

Yes, it is against policy. Yes, I did report sellers for doing that.

Just a little OT heads-up for anybody still doing business on that clusterfuck of an auction site called ebay.