Quick change scam

[Victoria J]

I've posted this before but I was in a store with my mother when the worker managed to quick change themselves.

It was a very odd shop, half specialist record shop half odd mexican stuff. Whether that or the amazing incompetence shown in this story was the cause they sadly closed after about 6 months.

We looked round and my mother decided to buy a small item. Took it up to the worker and got a price (not everything was labelled) and went to pay. She offers a £20, they didn't have change. We started trying to pool change, they checked with the manager.

Cue much swapping off money and items.

My mother (who I have literally heard add 2 + 2 and get 5) leaves and is putting money in her purse. We walk out the door and she's

"Is it right that I now have £20 and change ?"

We looked. And double checked. She'd ended up with the item, her £20, and they had appeared to have given her extra change as well. We had to go back and try again.

Other than the time we went to a shop where they didn't tell us until we wanted to buy something that they were actually opening the day after, and then had to get a staple remover to remove the bag we were buying from the shelf, it is possibly the most surreal customer experience I've had.

I'm a bit mystified by getting 300 scamming with 100 though - most scams would get some extra change but lower than the big bill amount. Did they get you more than once before you were told about the scam ?

Victoria J

[saturnz_dragon]

And not to pry or call you stupid, but how did you give 300 dollars out?!

Like I said, I was new at the job so I was nervous and flustered. Also, I'm not that amazing with math... But yeah, it was mainly because I was freaking out internally and just got very confused and lost count.

[saturnz_dragon]

I have never had it happen to me, and I've been told its because they look for cashiers who they think might be weak or slow.

Yes, that is usually what they look for. Either people that look really young or really old. I'm 21 but I could pass for 16, so obviously I was an easy target. Also, my name badge at the time said "new team member" so I was just an open invitation to scammers. From what I've noticed since then, however, we no longer give out the "new team member" badges and just give new employees normal name badges. I think it's smarter that way.

[Red_Dazes]

When I was working cash register I had a few people try to pull that with me... as I started to count out the change they kept asking for it in different ways. Luckily for me, I always count change to myself, and then count it as I hand it to them... it's an extra step but it has kept my drawer pretty much balanced for as long as I worked.

[Aut]

I have a lady that comes in to pay her storage rent every month and I don't know if she's dense, or if she's trying to scam me, but it doesn't work. She always asks if I have change for $100. She actually wants me to break the bill for her BEFORE she pays her rent. Sometimes I don't have that much cash in the drawer, but I almost always have enough for the change that would be due to her. Sometimes I break the bill for her, then she pulls some smaller bills out of the stash she still has on her and it gets messy. But it never works for her.

[ottid]

I wonder if someone was going to try this on me last weekend. I had one customer, whom I had just served ask to change a $10 for some coins for parking, which we aren't really supposed to do, but it was slow and I knew I had enough in the till. Cue lady who came in about 3min after (may have been less) to ask for change for a $50 which I promptly said I couldn't do and she walked off in a huff. What, do I look like a bank?*

*Ok, this may have been the case because we are also a post centre which means people can bring in their parcels etc to send, but we can't do anything else a post shop does, which in most cases now has a bank attached to it, but there is no way that my counter looked like it was a bank counter.

[EricKei]

I would imagine that this is part of the reason why many fast food/convenience stores refuse to accept bills in any denominations above a twenty.

[StanFlouride]

The only time someone tried to scam me at a register he nearly lost a finger.
Scammer A came to the register and asked for change and while I was getting it his partner tipped over something on the counter a few feet away. When I turned to deal with that A tried to reach into the open drawer. I slammed the drawer closed and he dashed, sucking on his finger.
I was really sorry I missed.

[RxBoy]

My store has a very strict policy about dealing with these types of people. We are told that if someone gets us confused, we are to stop, close the drawer, and call over a manager. Not following that policy at our store can get us written up.

[Magpie]

When I worked at the theatre we had to watch an hour-long video about how to spot fake money... it was terrible, but informative. And yet I still accepted a fake $50 bill on a busy night! All the preparation in the world can't prevent everything.

I have to ask: was it one of the new ones? If so, ouch. If not, that's why they redesigned the bills!

I would imagine that this is part of the reason why many fast food/convenience stores refuse to accept bills in any denominations above a twenty.

That and the SCs who insist that you should have change for their $100 AT ALL TIMES!!eleventy!!!

[Estil]

So far I've not had a quick changer in my over five years (knock on wood), but that may be because I take a few precautions:

1. You know how in many places change can only be made when the drawer is still open from a purchase (and many customers actually will say "while you still have your draw open" thinking that's true here)? Well, here we have to do just the opposite. I have to complete the sale and close the drawer BEFORE I reopen it to make change. And if the customer does that "while the drawer is still open" bit, I'll explain that to the customer so s/he isn't disappointed when I close the drawer for the purchase. I just do not feel comfortable trying to make change for a big bill while in the middle of a purchase in addition to doing the change for the purchase itself.

2. If a customer asks for change (say from a c-note) I'll first ask how do they want the change and WILL NOT even open the drawer without first confirming exactly how they want their change. For change for a c-note (from a purchase or otherwise) especially I double check the amount to be sure it's right so the customer doesn't try to question it later.

3. Not really anything to do with quick changing but for $50's/$100's I'll hold it up to the light to check the watermark/stripe (US bills) in addition to using the counterfeit marker, just to be safe (and frankly those markers don't always work right).

Hopefully these steps have deterred any quick change artists that would've tried it. I'm guessing quick changers typically try to target beginner checkers who they hope don't really know what they're doing.

[SourRobot]

I've always wondered what I should do if I ever had to deal with this kind of scammer. At my store we cannot make change unless this is done during a transaction where of course the customer is paying with cash. The register will tell me how much to take out (which is great because I'm pretty slow with math sometimes), and if the customer asks me what they want I'll take out the amount but count it all first so that the amount matches what the computer's telling me.

[Andara Bledin]

I've always wondered what I should do if I ever had to deal with this kind of scammer. At my store we cannot make change unless this is done during a transaction where of course the customer is paying with cash. The register will tell me how much to take out (which is great because I'm pretty slow with math sometimes), and if the customer asks me what they want I'll take out the amount but count it all first so that the amount matches what the computer's telling me.

One thing you can do is give out the change as you normally would, and then have them trade in one bill at a time, that you then change into whatever it is they wanted. Wait until you've handed them the changed amount, at which point the bill it was changed from gets put in the till. If you're only trading on single bills and don't hand over any money (or take any new money) until the trade is completed, it's much harder to become confused over what you have and have not changed.

^-.-^

[saturnz_dragon]

My store has a very strict policy about dealing with these types of people. We are told that if someone gets us confused, we are to stop, close the drawer, and call over a manager. Not following that policy at our store can get us written up.

I think that is a very good policy and all stores should follow it. In my training, however, I was NEVER told about scammers, which is quite ridiculous. I had to watch plenty of intro videos about how to bag properly, etc... The movies were all happy and peppy like working in retail is always such fun and nothing bad ever happens! Of course we all know the truth. I just wish that they would make a video for the new cashiers about scammers and some of the tricks they try to pull.

[Food Lady]

It only had to happen to me once and it was so long ago I forget the details. But I'm so fast at counting back now that scammers don't even have a chance. It's part of my whole "This is my register. I am in control here, not the customers" attitude.