Here’s whats happening. We think we are being scammed, but we just can’t figure out how.
Customer comes in, says he shops with us in another state, and he’s in our preferred customer program. his home was broken into, and he lost a lot of property. The insurance company has told him to re-buy the things he has lost, and they will reimburse him. he has obtained a list of the items he has purchased from us in the last year from our Home Office, and he is trying to buy the same items, or as near as he can get. Since a lot of the stuff he bought originally were on clearance, we can’t find the exact item. He keeps picking things out, then exchanging them…he’s been in about four times. He has a pile of about $700 worth of merchandise he plans to purchase today.
He can’t, or won’t answer basic questions, like, “how long will you be here in our state?” It seems odd that the insurance company would say to rebuy everything, and THEN they will reimburse…instead of asking for receipts for what he purchased that was stolen (which the Home Office provided). He says he’s a doctor. So far he has used a credit card for all that he has purchased and exchanged, but today when he comes in to buy the bulk of it, he says he’s using a check. We have an electronic check clearance system, but it’s not totally infallible.
Something about this smells, fishy, but we can’t figure out where we are vulnerable, as opposed to him scamming the insurance company. The girls that have worked with him say he’s sort of flakey for a doctor, and can’t imagine that he had quite this much of our merchandise for his own use…most people buy our stuff to give away to other people.
So is there some basic scam we are all completely overlooking? The store manager in question has already left messages for our Loss prevention Unit to get their opinion, but so far he has not viloated any of our refund/exchange policies, so they can’t really tell him to leave…
No…we’re in Ohio, he bought it in Michigan…but he’s not using those receipts for any returns or exchanges…just as a list of what he bought in the past.
Say you’re selling toasters. Guy steals a toaster from Store 1, only he doesn’t really want a toster, he wants the $19.95. He goes to Store 2, tells you a story about losing the toaster and buys the same model. Next day, he exchanges it for merchandise he will pay for later (with a rubber check). Because all he really wants is the register receipt. He then takes the register receipt and stolen toaster back to Store 1 for a cash refund. He now has $19.95. He pays for the merchandise waiting at your store with a bad check (or even a good check). He has the stuff and the cash.
'Course, this doesn’t explain the preferred customer part. Is his list siomething your company gave him, or something he worte out himself? Does he have a preferred customer card that checks out?
As long as you’re getting money, I can’t see the scam. Just make sure the check clears first. If your check system sucks, just say, “Crap, our check system is down, we can’t take that check today”. Make him give you cash. Other than that, I got nothin’.
So he initially bought these things with a credit card, returned them for some kind of store credit or put items on hold? And now he’s going to come back, pick up everything, get his charges on credit card refunded, and pay with a check? Is that what’s happening?
If so, it looks to me like he’s establishing himself as a real customer with the credit card purchases, and then will give you a phony check that will take a couple of weeks to completely clear, while he’s already disappeared with what sounds like several thousand dollars of new electronic office equipment that he can fence.
Also, insurance companies understand depreciation and equipment going obsolete. They just normally write the theft victim a check for what they say the cost is, not pay for stuff after the victim bought it.
However, when my wife was in a rear-ender, our car insurance company told us to buy whatever car seat we would like and they would reimburse us for it. (And, to be clear, they did.)
Actually, your store manager CAN tell him to leave. You can refuse to do business with anyone you want, for any reason outside of a specific set of protected classes, like race and gender. Your manager can’t tell him to go away because he’s black, but he can tell him to go away because he seems like he’s trying to scam you.
I can’t figure the scam either, he’s paying full price for all the products up front, returning them in resaleable condition, within the return/exchange rules. The only thing I’d worry about is the check, but if you normally take checks, why the rigamarole to “establish” his customer status?
Your store manager may want to discuss this with the regional manager to ensure he handles it in a way the RM will support.
Sure, but did you try typing in random account numbers and seeing if you could get money from them? And if you did, and it worked, would you give those numbers to me, too?
Depends on your insurance policy. You can obtain coverage based on actual value (normal, and lower premium), or you can insure your stuff for “replacement value”, meaning they cut you a check for the MSRP of whatever it is you’ve lost.
My dad’s garage in London was once broken into, and his old golf clubs and various knickknacks were absconded with, and since he had a Porsche of some vintage and rarity in there (a 1973 “ducktail” Carrera RSR, of which there were less than 500 road-legal versions built), he had the contents insured for replacement value.
He had a field day deciding what the modern equivalent of his clubs would be (it was a top-of-the-line set of Titleists, but purchased 14 years earlier, and he kept his new set in the members’ lockers at his golf club); the adjuster called and essentially said, “what sort of clubs would you like to replace them with?”
In retrospect, maybe they were just happy the Porsche was still there.
We used the local (Florida) BOA routing number and random account numbers. And no, we couldn’t have gotten money, since it was a store and I’d have needed an actual cancelled check to stick in the drawer as well as the approval code.
1 - The customer still has all of the clearance items, is buying and returning similar items in hopes to obtain a higher priced receipt so they can go home, return the clearance items and have the more expensive items at the clearance cost. If copies are made of the receipts then the more expensive items could be returned netting a profit of the difference between the regular price and the clearance price. A lot of work for a reasonably small pay off, especially crossing state lines to pull it off.
2 - It’s tax fraud. He bought these items in his home state, then repurchased them in another state. He takes them home and returns them using the original receipts and files the receipt from the other state on his taxes to write off the out of state sales tax. He could be counting on your Home Office not having records of return handy or that no one notices the items not fully matching up with the receipt.
The third possibility is that he is legit… Strange and needlessly complicated but still legit.
Many check systems aren’t really verifying the amount in the checking account, they’re just reporting if the account has had any previous negative activity.
Check verification systems predate computer money transfers. A long time ago, someone came up with the idea of storing numbers of either checking accounts or driver’s license numbers of people who bounced a check. It was pretty simple to see if the requested number was on the list or not. And the worst that can happen is (1) the customer is approved and the merchant is out the amount of the check, or (2) the customer is denied thru a false positive and can’t use his check for a while.
In contrast, transferring funds requires much more security, as the worst that can happen is someone empties your bank account or you are denied access to your legitimate funds.
And yes, they can do that now. Wal-Mart runs a blank check thru the cashier’s machine very much like a credit or debit card for instant transfer.
