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Post Info TOPIC: Uscan - the jammed bill scam
Mr Frontenac

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Uscan - the jammed bill scam
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I just thought of a possible scam that may have been done on me.

Say a customer buys some stuff at Uscan, then proceeds to pay. Maybe they manage to successfully get a couple dollar bills in there. Let's say they do, for this example. And the machine now reads that the amount inserted is $2.00. Now they insert a bill that causes a jam in the cash dispenser. The machine doesn't know what's in the dispenser and neither does the attendant.

The customer calls the attendant over and says there's something wrong with the machine. This is the customer's opportunity to begin the scam. The customer tells the attendant that they put in a $20 bill in there. Really it was an old torn up $1 bill (it may even just be plain white paper, who knows!). The customer hopes the attendant believes them, so the attendant transfers their order to the attendant station and inputs $20 plus the $2 the machine acknowledged, and then gives them their change. Customer walks out with $19 profit.

I've been sorta hip to this scam now, and now every time a bill jams and a customer says it's anything higher than a $1 bill, especially if they say one amount and then a different amount if I ask them again, I go and tell a floor supervisor to come and open the machine up and retrieve the jammed bill. Even if they're gonna have to wait 15 minutes cause the floor supervisor is on register. It's sorta a judgement call, I guess. How shady does this customer look? How busy is the floor? Do I really want to make a customer wait 15 minutes for a floor supervisor to come and open up the machine?



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Anonymous

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I would open up the machine regardless of the amount the customer claimed they inserted, even if it was just change.

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Guru

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I would say play it by ear, but customers will just about say anything at times to pull something over on you. 95% of the time customers are only expecting whats right, normal and realistic thing. Is those 5% of customers that made you want to quit.

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We have that scam too. We open the machine much to the chagrin of the scamming customer. We pissed off one lady scammer so much she snarled that she was going to go home and eat her salmon without me. (I was one of the few trying to figure out what went wrong.

My reply? "Well I'm going home to eat rainbow trout WITHOUT YOU."

oh man, was she PISSED when I said that.

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How about NO?!?

 

Anonymous

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mega-kitteh wrote:

We have that scam too. We open the machine much to the chagrin of the scamming customer. We pissed off one lady scammer so much she snarled that she was going to go home and eat her salmon without me. (I was one of the few trying to figure out what went wrong.

My reply? "Well I'm going home to eat rainbow trout WITHOUT YOU."

oh man, was she PISSED when I said that.


 Lol, I would automatically open the us can and check the jam too. Can't trust. The customers at my store.



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Mr Frontenac

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Too bad I'm not allowed to open up the machine. Have to go fetch a manager. Only the managers have the keys to open up the machines.



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Anonymous

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Call for a manager to open the machine and check the cassette.

I've never had them open the cassette, check it, and go "Oh, you were right!  Here's a big handful of cash!"  It's ALWAYS a ratty (probably soaked) one dollar bill and the customer was lying or severely mistaken.  You can't argue with cassette contents.  What makes me worry is that there is a freaking ton of cash in those cassettes and that might be a setup for robbery.

**** it.  Make the customer wait as long as you possibly can.  It's almost certainly a scam so they've waited for the dinner rush in hopes you just "make it right".  Or the customer is a clueless jerk who can't even read the numbers on their bills.  Hopefully, you have to play key tag and it takes 45 minutes to crack it open.



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Anonymous

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there should be a rule, not just for kroger, but in life where if someone questions something (like the uscan scam) and the customer is proven wrong, they should be considered to have committed a crime.  Not sure how they'd enforce it, but in the case of the uscan, you can clearly tell what bill was inserted, can't you?  I see it as being no different than stealing because ultimately that's what they were trying to do.



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I am no cashier but honestly i'd shut it down / close it, open / unlock the machine, remove the cassettes (with other FE and LP / Managers around) and move to the Service desk to "check the issue out" and prevent the would be robbery scenario behind the desk in the accounting office, and if they did have the ratty bills, apologize for the issue and still make them pay regardless with a different form of payment. No free money for these jerks.

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Mr Frontenac

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UC151 wrote:

I am no cashier but honestly i'd shut it down / close it, open / unlock the machine, remove the cassettes (with other FE and LP / Managers around) ...


Too bad I'm not allowed to open up the machine. Have to go fetch a manager. Only the managers have the keys to open up the machines.



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Mr Frontenac

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Yesterday, one of our newly transferred ACSM's did something I thought was strange in regards to this.

So one of the Uscan's had it's cash options disabled. I even had a sign on it that' it's not accepting cash. So this dude goes to it and starts his order. Later he flags me down and tells me that he put a $20 bill in the machine. This just completely dumbfounded me because the machine wasn't taking cash in the first place. Where the hell did he put the cash? So I ask him several times where he put the cash? He tells me repeatedly that he put it in the right spot where all cash goes. I'm like okay...

So I had to go get the ACSM to sort this one out. And what he does completely took me by surprise. I thought he was going to argue with the guy and tell him, you didn't put anything in there, pay or gtfo. But instead.... he opens up the machine, clearly there wasn't anything in there, like I thought, and then he proceeds to transfer the order to the attendant station and give the guy his change as if he DID pay with the $20. Said he'll take care of the $20 later.

The ACSM told me, and I quote, he didn't feel like dealing with the guy's BS..... 



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Anonymous

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That guy isn't going to last long as ACSM  at your store... or ACSM period, doing stuff like that... especially if it's on a semi-regular basis. Stupid, stupid, stupid.



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Mr Frontenac

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Anonymous wrote:

That guy isn't going to last long as ACSM  at your store... or ACSM period, doing stuff like that... especially if it's on a semi-regular basis. Stupid, stupid, stupid.


Was gonna agree with you. But then it happened again and this time the CSM... yes the CSM did the same thing.

I tried my best to ask why the hell they did that without pissing them off (I don't want my hours being cut cause I asked a question that is not my place to ask or anything like that). And as vague and dismissive as they were, the closest response from them that I could get was that they didn't want to argue with the customer.

Maybe EUID_Unknown can shed some light on this. I guess Kroger must have a program in place where they'd rather take a $20 loss than lose a customer by accusing them of not paying.



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It depends on the situation, but there might be a known issue with Recycling SCO taking $$ even with Cash Disabled.  I'm not familiar with Toshiba SCO hardware, but it cash is disabled it should not take or dispense cash.  Kroger is dramatically changing, where they do not want you to question/say anything to the customer expect sure/ok/sorry.  But with your store it will get around real fast and everyone will start saying the same thing.  

While I do not know the capacity of the Toshiba SCO bill cassettes, they really need to pay better attention to them having money it them.  I bet if you made them run SCO for a while with all the units not taking CASH, they would be going nuts!  I bet if they loaded the SCO with 50 1,5,20's a week most of your issues would be corrected.  

But there isn't any policy with what your referring too, its just a call you have to make on the fly.  But what ACSM, CSM do not understand, you open a can of warms when you keep allowing something to happen.  While you don't want to piss anyone off, you just make it harder down the line to correct an issue.    



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