About a week ago, a young couple passed through the Store and made a purchase. They paid for this purchase with a check. The cashier, unfortunately, wasn't particularly incredulous and put the transaction through. Had I seen it, I would've told them in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to accept a check for this transaction, because there were a large number of red flags indicating that this was a bad check;
* Low check number (#109, when most checking accounts start at #100)
* The purchase amount was just barely below the amount that would require supervisor approval for a check purchase
* Almost the entire purchase was non-food or non-perishable items that could easily be resold
* There were five packs of cigarettes on the order
Moreover, as I mentioned, the couple was young. Young people, as a general rule, don't write personal checks to pay for groceries. The majority of people who write checks at the Store are old-timers who've been doing things the same way since the '60s. As I mentioned above, if I'd been made aware of this transaction, I wouldn't have taken the check - but the cashier did anyway.
And that's when things really got interesting.
I was covering the customer service counter for the clerk's lunch break when the husband of the duo ran back in with the cart and the receipt. He declared, in a panicked tone, that his wife (whose name the check was in) was having a seizure and he had to get her to the hospital, and he needed to return the groceries for cash. He noticeably didn't ask for the check back - he wanted a cash refund.
(This was another red flag to me - you're telling me your wife is seizing, and rather than call 911 or try to flag someone down for help, your response is to leave her unattended and try and get your money back?)
I told him I couldn't do a cash return right then and there and told him we could hold his groceries in the cooler if he'd be coming back later that evening. He agreed to this. (We noticed later that the cigarettes were missing from the cart.)
He didn't come back that evening. I made a photocopy of the check his wife had written along with a duplicate of the receipt, because I was 99% sure at this point that this was some sort of scam. Bookkeeping went ahead and preemptively put her on the hot list so that any further attempt to write a check at any of our locations would come up blocked.
Flash-forward to the following evening. I get paged up to customer service, and the couple has returned, with their receipt, asking for a return. We still have their cart in the cooler, so I personally retrieve it and bring it back to them and assure them that everything in the cart is just as they left it. The wife is disappointed by this. She says "Can't we just return it?" I tell her that since it was paid for with a check, we can't do any returns on it until the check clears. The man asks how long that'll take. I tell him it depends on the bank but it usually takes a few days to a week or so.
You'd think that'd be the end of it. They ripped us off for the product, but at least we're not out the cash.
About 10:30 that night, the husband comes back wanting to buy two cartons of cigarettes with a check from the same account. I wasn't involved with this transaction, but my fellow supervisor who was there recognized the guy and asked how he was paying for the cigarettes. He said he was paying with a check. The supervisor denied the sale.
Today we finally got the notice in our computer system that the check they'd written last week had been returned, and the account it was written on was closed.
If only the cashier who'd first interacted with them had been a little more savvy, we could've nipped this in the bud. In a way, you kind of have to admire the chutzpah of the husband who realizes we're going to find out his check bounced and tries to pass another one before the boom gets lowered. In any event, we've got all the information we need to take them to collections and we'll get ours in the end.
Bonus LOL: At the risk of getting political
Last night I got called to the receiving dock to open up the gate and sign some paperwork for a driver that was dropping off a load for us. He's a risible old guy who delivers to us five nights a week, who we've nicknamed "Buttercup" for reasons that escape me. As I unlocked the gate and pushed it up to reveal the back of the trailer he'd brought in for us, we discovered that someone had used their finger to write "TRUMP" in the layer of dust that naturally accumulates on trailers over time.
I took the flat of my hand and erased the "T" so that it instead read "RUMP".
Buttercup cracked up laughing like he was about to keel over and die.
* Low check number (#109, when most checking accounts start at #100)
* The purchase amount was just barely below the amount that would require supervisor approval for a check purchase
* Almost the entire purchase was non-food or non-perishable items that could easily be resold
* There were five packs of cigarettes on the order
Moreover, as I mentioned, the couple was young. Young people, as a general rule, don't write personal checks to pay for groceries. The majority of people who write checks at the Store are old-timers who've been doing things the same way since the '60s. As I mentioned above, if I'd been made aware of this transaction, I wouldn't have taken the check - but the cashier did anyway.
And that's when things really got interesting.
I was covering the customer service counter for the clerk's lunch break when the husband of the duo ran back in with the cart and the receipt. He declared, in a panicked tone, that his wife (whose name the check was in) was having a seizure and he had to get her to the hospital, and he needed to return the groceries for cash. He noticeably didn't ask for the check back - he wanted a cash refund.
(This was another red flag to me - you're telling me your wife is seizing, and rather than call 911 or try to flag someone down for help, your response is to leave her unattended and try and get your money back?)
I told him I couldn't do a cash return right then and there and told him we could hold his groceries in the cooler if he'd be coming back later that evening. He agreed to this. (We noticed later that the cigarettes were missing from the cart.)
He didn't come back that evening. I made a photocopy of the check his wife had written along with a duplicate of the receipt, because I was 99% sure at this point that this was some sort of scam. Bookkeeping went ahead and preemptively put her on the hot list so that any further attempt to write a check at any of our locations would come up blocked.
Flash-forward to the following evening. I get paged up to customer service, and the couple has returned, with their receipt, asking for a return. We still have their cart in the cooler, so I personally retrieve it and bring it back to them and assure them that everything in the cart is just as they left it. The wife is disappointed by this. She says "Can't we just return it?" I tell her that since it was paid for with a check, we can't do any returns on it until the check clears. The man asks how long that'll take. I tell him it depends on the bank but it usually takes a few days to a week or so.
You'd think that'd be the end of it. They ripped us off for the product, but at least we're not out the cash.
About 10:30 that night, the husband comes back wanting to buy two cartons of cigarettes with a check from the same account. I wasn't involved with this transaction, but my fellow supervisor who was there recognized the guy and asked how he was paying for the cigarettes. He said he was paying with a check. The supervisor denied the sale.
Today we finally got the notice in our computer system that the check they'd written last week had been returned, and the account it was written on was closed.
If only the cashier who'd first interacted with them had been a little more savvy, we could've nipped this in the bud. In a way, you kind of have to admire the chutzpah of the husband who realizes we're going to find out his check bounced and tries to pass another one before the boom gets lowered. In any event, we've got all the information we need to take them to collections and we'll get ours in the end.
Bonus LOL: At the risk of getting political
Last night I got called to the receiving dock to open up the gate and sign some paperwork for a driver that was dropping off a load for us. He's a risible old guy who delivers to us five nights a week, who we've nicknamed "Buttercup" for reasons that escape me. As I unlocked the gate and pushed it up to reveal the back of the trailer he'd brought in for us, we discovered that someone had used their finger to write "TRUMP" in the layer of dust that naturally accumulates on trailers over time.
I took the flat of my hand and erased the "T" so that it instead read "RUMP".
Buttercup cracked up laughing like he was about to keel over and die.
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