Versions of a “Walmart Cash Back Scam” warning have been circulating since late 2004, all featuring the scenario of a WalMart customer using a credit / debit card billed for a cash back amount even though the buyer did not ask for money. and the cashier did not give any cash back, the discrepancy being noticed only when the buyer sees the amount of cash back added on the receipt:
Something happened to me last weekend and I wanted to alert everyone I know to be on the lookout when shopping at Wal Mart, especially during the busy holiday season. This trip I had a buggy full of purchases to outfit the deer camp and the usual home shopping, in other words, I had over $ 200 worth of goods to buy. When I checked out, I swiped my Wal Mart credit card through the machine and hit “No” to the “Do you want $ 20 rebate?” Question. “
The checker had fun with the registry then asked me to restart the card because it didn’t work the first time around. I don’t remember pressing “No” again or even if the question arose on the card terminal. My biggest concern at the time was making sure I picked up all the bags around the carousel that they use to wrap your purchases. As I put my bags back in the cart, I didn’t pay attention to my receipt. Anyway, the next morning I looked at my receipt (I usually throw it away without looking at it!) There was a line on it that said “$ 20.00 cash back” and another that said “Change Due 20.00”.
I called the manager and told him what had happened and that I had not asked for $ 20.00 in return nor received $ 20.00 in return. He didn’t seem at all surprised. It appears to be a ploy cashiers use to slip $ 20.00 into their pockets at customers’ expense. The manager said I could come back to the store for the credit but now I wonder how many times this has happened to me in the past that I haven’t caught. I don’t know if the cashier can cancel the “No” or if she charged the extra $ 20 on the second pass of the card. At least this time she got caught the next day but I would have loved to have caught her red handed the same day.
Please pay attention to your receipt and don’t let these thieves steal your hard earned money !!
Just to alert everyone. My colleague went to Milford DE Walmart last week. She had her things ringed by the cashier. The cashier rushed her over 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 colleague did not look at his receipt until later that night. The receipt showed that she had requested a $ 20 cash back. SHE DID NOT REQUEST A REFUND. My colleague called Walmart who investigated but couldn’t see the cashier pocketing the money. She then called her niece who works for the bank and her niece told her that. There is a scam. The cashier will ask for cash back and give it to her friend who is next in line. Please, Please check your receipts immediately when using debit cards. The store is currently under investigation by the cashier. We can only pray that she will be caught very soon.
I add to that. My husband and I were at WalMart North Salisbury and were paying by credit card when my husband went to sign the credit card signer he just noticed that a $ 20 cash back was added. He told the cashier that he didn’t ask or want cash back and she said that machine was broken and she canceled it. We really didn’t think about it until we read this email. Be careful.
This happened to me at Wal-Mart (Supercenter Store # 1279, 10411 N Freeway 45, Houston, TX 77037) a month ago. I bought a bunch of stuff, over $ 150, and glanced at my receipt as the cashier handed me the bags. I saw $ 40 cash back. I told him I didn’t ask for a refund and needed to delete it. She said I had to take the $ 40 because she couldn’t remove it. I told him to call a supervisor. The supervisor came over and said I had to take it. I said no! Taking the $ 40 would be a cash advance against my Discover and I was not paying interest on a cash advance !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If they couldn’t delete it, they would have to delete the whole order. The supervisor therefore asked the cashier to delete the entire order and re-scan everything! The second time around, I looked at the electronic notepad before signing and a $ 20 cash back popped up. At that point, I told the cashier about it and she deleted it. The total came out right. The cashier agreed that the tablet must be defective. Obviously, the cashier knew that the tablet was defective because she NEVER offered me the $ 40 at the beginning. Can you imagine how many people walked through before me and at the end of her shift how much money she pocketed?
In concept, this article was similar to a previous article that disseminated the false claim that gas stations imposed surreptitious surcharges of $ 10.00 on credit card customers. The similarity is that in both cases it seems that a false rumor of a ‘scam’ arose because a customer misunderstood or misinterpreted something that happened to them while shopping and, although he has no evidence of a deliberate attempt at fraud, quickly wrote and circulated a message falsely accusing retailers of wrongdoing.
We investigated a number of different WalMart stores in different regions (as well as outlets from other general merchandising and grocery chains), and spoke (both in person and via email) many people who were currently working as cashiers for a number of different retailers including WalMart. In no case have we found a store with a cashier system that allows cashiers to initiate cashback transactions on customers’ cards on their own, without any involvement, knowledge or approval on the part of the customer. customer. There was simply no way for a cashier working at one of these companies to surreptitiously place cash back fees on a customer’s card and stealthily pocket the money, all without the customer. client asks or knows about it. As several WalMart cashiers told us:
We CANNOT request a refund. The “buttons” you press to say no [to the “Do you want cash back?” prompt] or ask for a [cash back] amount are very close. People accidentally hit the wrong ones all the time. As cashiers, we have no control over this. Also, if you look at the post that has the registry number on it, there is a black bubble. It’s a camera they use to watch us. They check them all the time. The only way to steal the customer’s money would be to print their check for an amount greater than the total. This could be easily verified by the customer when we give it back to them.
In the “Cash Back Scam” article, I have been a Walmart cashier for 13 years now and have had a lot of weird things – but in NO cases like you said in your article – have I ever seen a customer receiving money without asking for it, accidentally or on purpose.
Even if a customer hands their debit card to us, we are still unable to request additional cash back. It is always initiated on the client side. We never have any control over it.
We have been accused of this when a customer is not expecting cash back, but to my knowledge we just cannot claim additional cash back on their card.
In all cases where customers have complained that they have collected money from credit / debit card purchases without requesting it for us to trace, the cause has been shown that these customers did not paid sufficient attention to prompts on card processing keyboards or simply pressed the wrong keys by mistake. And in almost all of these cases, it was verifiable that the complaining customers had in fact been given the appropriate amount of cash by their cashiers (even though they insisted that they had not requested it).
He is possible (and sometimes occurs) for a cashier to approach and manipulate the customer’s keyboard herself to initiate a refund request without the customer’s knowledge, but this form of theft requires the customer’s attention to be completely diverted elsewhere, and this cannot be done surreptitiously – the action takes place in full view of other employees, customers, and security cameras (and therefore, these perpetrators are easily taken).
