Fast food employee uses customer card to pay bill before returning it

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WhatInThe

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A fast food employee took/used a customer's debit card to pay a personal bill which happened to be a probation fine for a drug offense. The customer said the employee had their card for a few minutes.

Ga. fast-food worker accused of using diner’s card for probation fines

The employee has been charged with id theft and financial fraud. And apparently disappeared

They always say when dinning in particular keep your card in sight because there are already scams where the criminal staff swipe the information off the card on one of their own swipers. Anywhere keep your credit card in sight. Now a days not many reasons for an employee to take your card elsewhere to pay
 

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Oh brother, what inconvenience, caused by thieves, will we have next?

I eat out with friends once a month and we all pay our own checks. That means the waitress takes our bills and our four individual cards in a four little folders and is gone for a while. I'm not going to follow her through the crowded restaurant to watch her. We'll just have to take our chances.

If you work at Walmart and have Walmart health insurance, like my son does, that means you're required to use Walmart's pharmacy. So all my son's co-worker know all of the medications he takes and since they're all controlled substances, he has to ask for it at the counter each month and go through hoops while who ever is waiting on him calls to the back, "Do you have Mike's _____?" Because of the thieves and drug addicts.
 
When I'm going to a restaurant where payment is required at the table, I don't use a card. I make sure in advance that I have bills in all denominations in my wallet and at least a dollar's worth of change including 5 pennies in my pocket so I can pay the waiter the exact amount including tip.

Also, I don't use fast food drive throughs where I have to pass my card to a worker at a window. I go inside and use the POS terminal.
 

WhatInThe said:
A fast food employee took/used a customer's debit card to pay a personal bill which happened to be a probation fine for a drug offense. The customer said the employee had their card for a few minutes.

Ga. fast-food worker accused of using diner’s card for probation fines

The employee has been charged with id theft and financial fraud. And apparently disappeared

They always say when dinning in particular keep your card in sight because there are already scams where the criminal staff swipe the information off the card on one of their own swipers. Anywhere keep your credit card in sight. Now a days not many reasons for an employee to take your card elsewhere to pay
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never , never, ever, give your card to anyone, no watiers no cabbies, no shopkeepers.. NO-ONE..

In a restaurant you ask for the waiter to bring the card machine to the table..you never allow them to take your card away...

many years ago before portable card machines were a thing... my husband paid for his fuel at our local Esso petrol garage which had just been taken over as a Franchise

he handed his card over as was the way we did it it back in the day.. and unbeknown to him and all the other customers there was the real card machine under the counter along with a fake one.. and they were swiping the customers cards into the fake one getting all their details and of course the money for the fuel.

We only learned about it when the o/h got a call from the fraud dept of his bank a couple of days later.. after they'd been caught
 
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MACKTEXAS said:
Also, I don't use fast food drive throughs where I have to pass my card to a worker at a window. I go inside and use the POS terminal.
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I'm surprised more aren't aware of the skimmer scams I think they're called where the criminal uses a skimmer to swipe/steal credit card information. The restaurant industry was already notorious for it being the waiters had take cards/payments to the register for processing
 
hollydolly said:
never , never, ever, give your card to anyone, no watiers no cabbies, no shopkeepers.. NO-ONE..

In a restaurant you ask for the waiter to bring the cadr machine to the table..you never allow them to take your card away...

many years ago before portable card machines were a thing...
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And that is the problem we Americans have,,, not every restaurant has portable card machines.
I have NO idea why we lag so much behind other countries when it comes to CCs. Took forever to get chips, and now taking forever for portable card readers.
 
That Lady in PA said:
And that is the problem we Americans have,,, not every restaurant has portable card machines.
I have NO idea why we lag so much behind other countries when it comes to CCs. Took forever to get chips, and now taking forever for portable card readers.
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Actually much as the USA are leaders in so many things, their whole Banking System is way behind all of Europe.. which causes quite a problem in the business world..
 
That Lady in PA said:
And that is the problem we Americans have,,, not every restaurant has portable card machines.
I have NO idea why we lag so much behind other countries when it comes to CCs. Took forever to get chips, and now taking forever for portable card readers.
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Smaller restaurants I can see their pos(point of sale, registers etc) being very basic. I get the convenience of a card at the table but also have no problem paying at a cash register on the way out-seemed to work in past.

There are cell phone stores that use those portable readers and have seen them not work and then employee is grabbing another one. Once I see the second one come into play I start wondering.

Also with skimmers thieves have been known to place their fake ones on top of real ones at super markets in particuler. Always look at the card payment devices in all aisles pay sections and make sure they are identical. Same for gas stations and atms. Learn what their tech looks like.
 
WhatInThe said:
I'm surprised more aren't aware of the skimmer scams I think they're called where the criminal uses a skimmer to swipe/steal credit card information. The restaurant industry was already notorious for it being the waiters had take cards/payments to the register for processing
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Right, nothing is foolproof since even the machines carry a certain risk. But one thing I didn't think of to pay waiters at tables is to use a prepaid Mastercard with a limit of $50. If that card gets compromised, the most the customer could be charged is $50, or the card would be declined.
 
MACKTEXAS said:
Right, nothing is foolproof since even the machines carry a certain risk. But one thing I didn't think of to pay waiters at tables is to use a prepaid Mastercard with a limit of $50. If that card gets compromised, the most the customer could be charged is $50, or the card would be declined.
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And if your card does get compromised it is a simple call to customer service.
 
Tap to pay will limit a person’s risk of their card being skimmed. Myself, I add fraud protection onto my homeowner’s policy for $25 per year. This insurance will not pay for any loss due to my card being stolen, however, if I keep an eye on my cc statements and find that my card was used fraudulently and I contact the underwriter of the card, I will only be responsible to repay $50 according to the FCBA.

The insurance that I pay for does cover fraud protection and ID theft. I do pay any balance on my on my cards monthly.

Like a previous poster wrote, nothing is 100% certain, but we can limit our risks.
 
With few exceptions, I pay cash -- everywhere.

Exceptions are online purchases or a high ticket item that I think may need to be returned, like the walking pad recently purchased. Credit card used for those.

I never use my debit card. I have it for getting cash after hours only from the bank's atm. In six years, I have used it twice.

Admittedly, this is a small town; banks and credit union are conveniently located so getting cash is pretty simple and carrying cash isn't as risky. It would probably be different if I still lived in a large city.
 
Della said:
I eat out with friends once a month and we all pay our own checks.
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When I dine out with friends, we all bring sufficient cash to cover our tabs.

I've never used a debit card for anything other than getting cash from an ATM - and only then at actual banks, never at kiosks.

Haven't ever had a CC hacked and have been using them for 50 years. The handful of fraudulent charges that have appeared on my statements have always been reversed by the CC company with no cost or hassle to me.
 
hollydolly said:
never , never, ever, give your card to anyone, no watiers no cabbies, no shopkeepers.. NO-ONE..
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I abide by that rule, no one ever walks away with my card, if they can't bring a card machine to me I walk to the register myself.

Also never ever would I use my debit card in public or for online purchases, my debit card is only used to withdraw cash from my banks ATM. All other transactions are done with a credit card which is from a bank different than where my savings and checking.
 
{shrug} use my bank debit card for virtually every daily purchase. Never had a problem. Been doing that for ~40 years, and no plans to change it. When traveling, I use my AMEX. Never had a problem with it either.
 
GoodEnuff said:
I never use my debit card. I have it for getting cash after hours only from the bank's atm. In six years, I have used it twice.
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I don't use it nearly as much as I used to, after dining out one night, and finding Uber charges on my debit card, from all the way in Chicago! ( I live in PA) Another time it was my credit card and I was charged for a clinic in another state, too. For online purchases I used a credit card because they will usually make things right.
 
Like others here, I always pay cash at restaurants. Been doing that for decades. I also have a separate credit card with a "hard limit" that I use exclusively for online purchases. For in-person purchases, I never let my card leave my hand.

On occasion, I've also been asked for my drivers license for identification purposes - mainly at hotels and medical offices. Again, I never let my license leave my hand.
 
I have my credit cards set up to immediately send me a notice on all charges. I often get the alert before I even get the receipt. The alerts come through on my I watch so I don’t even have to look at my phone. I easily set up the alerts on the credit card sites.
 
WhatInThe said:
A fast food employee took/used a customer's debit card to pay a personal bill which happened to be a probation fine for a drug offense. The customer said the employee had their card for a few minutes.
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Ugh! I hate when people are dishonest, and thieves to boot.

Several years ago my daughter was at Applebees with friends, and the server claimed he lost her card after running it through the machine. (This was before the days of paying right at the table.) Yeah, right! It was her father's custody day, so she called him, and he told her to cancel it right then and there, so she did. No suspicious charges were ever found, but I was annoyed on her behalf. I find it very hard to believe that someone could lose a credit/debit card between the table and the payment kiosk. :rolleyes: Maybe he thought she was an easy mark because at the time she was a teenager.
 
hollydolly said:
many years ago before portable card machines were a thing... my husband paid for his fuel at our local Esso petrol garage which had just been taken over as a Franchise

he handed his card over as was the way we did it it back in the day.. and unbeknown to him and all the other customers there was the real card machine under the counter along with a fake one.. and they were swiping the customers cards into the fake one getting all their details and of course the money for the fuel.

We only learned about it when the o/h got a call from the fraud dept of his bank a couple of days later.. after they'd been caught
Click to expand...
It might be naïve of me to be unaware of the fraudulent practises that can happen to customers cards, The reason that I have always paid in cash is because I resent being profiled on my expenditure, cash is anonymous. The only use my card ever has, that's the debit card, is for cash withdrawal and that is from the cash machine inside the bank.
Carrying cash around can bring it's own problems, like theft, and if mugged, injury, but I am aware of that. I never allow the inside of my wallet to be seen. Cash brings it's own security practices, as with cards, caution is always the watchword.
 

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