Police send warning about new gift card scam

MarciKS said:
I try to avoid things like that than can be tampered with. I just don't get people. Why waste your time trying to steal from a store and then return stolen item in order to steal from it's customers? Not only is it stupid, but wouldn't it be easier to just get a damn job? LOL!
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it would be easier but it wouldn't be as lucrative. You gotta remember these people make lots of money stealing from people who are unsuspecting...and they will be doing it from many stores and outlets not just one...
 
I learned years ago always make sure you get a receipt that shows it was activated. If the receipt just says gift card it may not have been activated or processed correctly by the store employee. Also ask for a gift receipt that says the same because it makes it easier for person to correct issues on the spot.

A teenage fast food employee assured me the card was activated just by them scanning it but it wasn't. I found other gift card receipts and they said activated mine did not. The person I gave it too didn't try to use it for a couple of month so I lost track of the receipt and wound just buying another card. They must have had a lot of trouble because for about a year only a manager could ring up gift cards at that location
 
It said they apply heat to open the "jacket". Where are they doing this? Are they taking a stack to their car and doctoring them up and then resealing and then returning to store and putting them back on the rack? Total scumbags.
 
This says to me just don't buy gift cards. Period. End of sentence. Frankly, so much garbage around them that I pretty much don't. I'd rather give cash or a check then they get to decide where they spend it anyway but I also rather think giving gift cards is rather akin to giving cash and just as crude and as lacking in thought. Rather a way to say I couldn't be bothered shopping for something nice to give you so here take this, shut up, I gave you something. Sorry I felt obliged to. Put some thought in it or don't bother unless you don't care if the person receiving it knows you can't be bothered in which case, do you really care if they don't receive the benefit of it?

I'm just trying to picture this crime and it flabbergasts me. I can only figure that it's the same thing with the stores being afraid to stop shoplifting because the mechanics of it seem impossible to do without store employees noticing. How about we go after the DA's refusing to charge "petty" crimes? They are to blame for this. They've made store employees afraid to stop such crooks. Every time you turn around some employee's fired for actually doing so. smh
 
Those are something small and easy to grab. I imagine they'll probably have people in place at those stands now too like they do the makeup aisles in walmart. grown ass adults having to be babysat by employees.
 
MarciKS said:
It will quickly stop being lucrative if they get caught and tossed into jail.
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Until that happens, people should just stop buying gift cards. If we stop buying them, stores will have to come up with a better way to sell store credits.

There was a time (before gift cards) when you could go into a restaurant or coffee shop and a few other business, and ask the manager if you could pay in advance for their products or services as a gift for someone, and they'd take your money and give you a signed receipt or these little coupon cards they had printed up where they filled in the amount you paid. And they'd keep a record of it so no one got ripped off....Leroy used 5 of his 10 dollar credit today, etc.

It was all very analog.
 
I read that people should never buy gift cards that are displayed out in the open. I've only done it once and it was a grocery store card that was not in an envelope, so easy to see it wasn't tampered with. But I also read there's a way to scam those too. It's a shame that these scammers don't use their smarts to do some good for society!
 
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Murrmurr said:
Until that happens, people should just stop buying gift cards. If we stop buying them, stores will have to come up with a better way to sell store credits.

There was a time (before gift cards) when you could go into a restaurant or coffee shop and a few other business, and ask the manager if you could pay in advance for their products or services as a gift for someone, and they'd take your money and give you a signed receipt or these little coupon cards they had printed up where they filled in the amount you paid. And they'd keep a record of it so no one got ripped off....Leroy used 5 of his 10 dollar credit today, etc.

It was all very analog.
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I remember paper gift certificates, sometimes were really formal had to sign etc.
 
I dont usually buy gift cards but bought on the other day for a friend who is struggling this year and then I saw her shopping in the same market and we had a brief talk about the prices.

I thought I could buy the card at the market's service desk, but she said , just pick one from the rack, and pay for it at a check out and she showed me where the rack was. I didn't want to walk through the store with this small gift card in my cart, that might have fallen out of the cart or got mixed up with the food I bought, so I asked her if I could pay for it right there at the customer desk, so I could put it into my purse and not lose it and she said sure and gave me a receipt.

I better check and save the receipt .
 
I'm assuming that the generic Visas, Mastercard etc are the biggest targets of these criminals. Would a card good for a specific place be safer like a restaurant card?
 
WhatInThe said:
I remember paper gift certificates, sometimes were really formal had to sign etc.
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When I managed an independently owned pizza-pasta restaurant, I'd write something on a person's receipt. They'd pay in advance for Uncle Joe & Aunt Sally's meal, for example, and I'd write "Happy Anniversary" or whatever "From Frank @ Tony's" and sign my name at the bottom.

The ONLY thing we relied on is that the people who worked there could recognize my handwriting. Crazy, right? We logged that type of sale, too, but they were just a little side-note in a ledger book. And all the daily sales totals were done by hand every night. The registers weren't computerized, you had to sit there and do the math and count the money and they had to match up.

Jeez, I remember the first register we got that actually spit out the daily-totals. We still did the math for like a whole year because we didn't trust the thing. It spit out sales totals for the day, the week, the month, and year. I even remember which keys you had to hit for all that. But it wasn't yet a full-on computer, it was basically just a calculator with memory storage, I guess.

That itself was a wonder. When we learned the thing could also calculate each employee's daily and weekly wages, it was frighteningly wondrous. I'd compare it to the feeling you get today when you fear AI will take over the most important yet most stressful part of your job....totally awesome but ominously uncomfortable at the same time.

Gosh, I remember, too, that, once you hit that key for the register to spit-out totals for a day or a week or month, you couldn't do it again. I think it was like, after 24 hours, you couldn't go back and get that day's total; after 7 days, you couldn't go back and get that week's total, etc....like, you couldn't ask the register to recall a certain time that passed.

I'm not saying it right, but you probly get it.
 

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