Apparently hubby found out the one problem with “tap cards” the hard way
Have you ever been overcharged a large amount like this ? and if so did you catch it in time?
All modern cash registers are just database-driven computer programs, and all transactions, including all the detailed line-items, are recorded. The store should be able to find the transaction. One way might be to look it up by the total amount, if that’s all the customer knows. I know at least some cash registers can do that.
I’ve got a tap card, but it’s limited to $100 a day, using the tap. That’s good for a couple of beers at the sports bar, and/or a few things at the grocery store, and/or a case of beer.
But it’s not good for $725. For everything over that $100 daily limit, I have to use the chip and my PIN. Why did a similar limit not happen in this case?
I can anecdotally confirm that this sort of thing is not an uncommon occurence at the store I work at. Cashiers are under pressure to ring people up as fast as possible, and sometimes fingers slip when typing in quantities or product codes. Usually it gets noticed right away and corrected before payment happens, but there are instances in which neither the cashier nor the customer notices the total is way too high, and the customer happens to have enough balance on their card to cover that excessively high payment. It’s usually not too hard to fix - even if the customer doesn’t have their receipt, we can usually find the transaction in the POS system and verify via the security cameras that they didn’t actually buy 80 tubs of ice cream.
Frankly, I’m surprised that this sort of thing was deemed newsworthy in the first place, seeing as the store fixed the problem as soon as they were made aware of it.
Well, not over charged as it was our fault, but I was having dinner with friends once in Paris (not boasting, it’s relevant). You can tell how long ago as we were paying in Francs, back when 10 Francs = £1. My friend ordered the wine thinking it was £16 per bottle (160 Francs/c.$20), and between 8 of us we went on to drink 7 bottles of the same wine. Turns out it was actually $200 per bottle (1600F), not $20. Total bill c.$2000, of which food was about $300.
We didn’t leave a tip.
My mother has been visiting us. Yesterday, she wanted to buy a present for her grand-dog. I waited outside the store with the aforementioned dog. My wife came out to tell me that the $12-ish dog toy had produced a charge (and a receipt) of $801.00 (that’s eight-hundred and one dollars).
It got resolved, but …
Whole Foods, right?
As a cashier, I have occasionally mis-typed quantities into the register. I think I or the customer have always caught it in time, except for that one instance of 22 green peppers which customer service was happy to fix. We’re human. We make mistakes. We also have the ability to correct those mistakes at the point of sale IF it is caught in time.
If the total was $725 for eight items I would definitely double-check before finalizing the transaction. There are a few things in our store that could, in fact, result in a total like that but they aren’t routine,
Our registers do have upper quantity limits on most items so, for example, I couldn’t type in 222 green peppers, that would give an error message. I don’t know what the exact number is the limit.
A problem with the tap cards, though is that sometimes it just has to be within range of the pickup sensor so it’s possible to accidentally trigger the process without intending to do so. In early days this sometimes resulted in the machine going “oh! we’re done!” and spitting out a receipt while I was still ringing up the order. If that happened before a correction was made yep, you can definitely get an overcharge. The software has since been updated so transactions don’t automatically complete like that but triggering the response can screw up other things, like sale and activation of gift cards.
Another response can be to entirely lock up the register, although software tweaks have made that less common.
^ This.
At my store we are now on a time that starts the moment we ring up the first item and does not stop until the receipt is printed. Failure to finish a transaction “on time” counts against us. Do that often enough and you lose your job. There is nothing built in to compensate for complex transactions, large objects, disabled customers who need additional time and help, or even for the customer who INSISTS on slowly loading everything into the cart and chatting with the person behind them before actually paying and completing the transaction. Speed is all. That is all that is being measured right now.
Again - failure to meet speed benchmarks can result in losing your job.
This is not imposed by local management. This is from corporate management, and the reporting goes direct to the corporate office.
^ And this is also the case where I work. We have to fix a couple transactions a week after the fact (keep in mind we have thousands of transactions every day).
Is tipping a thing in France? Honest question. I didn’t think it was common in Europe.
Once the helpful cashier double-checked, did I really want to buy that much fresh porcini at $60 per pound, and, it turns out, I didn’t. Saffron and caviar isn’t that cheap, either.
That’s the thing I don’t understand about this story. I have no reason to believe it didn’t happen, but I find it kind of hard to believe that neither the customer nor the cashier noticed that the total was off by so much. I’m not one of those people who goes through the store adding up totals in my head , and I might not notice that the total was $20 too high or that I had been charged for 4 containers of ice cream rather than 2 - but there’s no way I wouldn’t have looked at the total at some point.
Too bad the corporate clowns aren’t required to work in the trenches for a while before making decisions.
Not required in the sense it is in the US, but a small amount is seen as a nice gesture. Anything from 2-10% if you want to. You won’t get run out of town if you don’t
I once bought a bag of carrots and a bottle of fruit juice at a grocery store (Giant, not Whole Foods, and it was just run of the mill produce, not some expensive organic food) and the total came to around $25. I told the clerk that couldn’t be right, and she rolled her eyes and wearily told me that was the price, so I’d have to pay it. When I said I wanted to talk to the manager, she grudgingly looked at the sum, and saw that the previous customer’s purchases had somehow been included on my tab. It was corrected and I went on my way.
In tens of thousands of transactions with people being in a hurry a good part of the time yes, this could happen. Because people are human and get distracted or make mistakes. It just requires that to happen to two people at once instead of just one. Less like than just one person being distracted/mistaken, but eventually it will happen.
I’m not sure how this incident is at all related to using a tap card?
Preview in the OP shows MSN picked it up from the Daily Fail. The real question is why MSN would do that.
What that means is the prior transaction was never completed and the prior customer walked out without paying. Could have been entirely unintentional (distraction/mistakes again). We have had that happen every so often where I work. Loss prevention usually reviews the situation and most of the time there was no malice involved and the store eats the loss because it’s our mistake.
Wait, you ask, why didn’t the prior customer notice a lack of receipt? Well, we have these coupon printers at the point of sale, and it often churns out coupons before the receipt is printed. Every so often the customer takes those and assumes they’re the receipt because they’re not looking at the bits of paper, just taking them. So they walk out thinking they’ve paid when they haven’t.
Indeed, why would it matter if it were a tap card, a chip&pin, mag stripe slide, or chip in slot?
Never mind. Pointless gripe.