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It’s not a real scam, but it is still good advice

August 18, 2010

I get lots of e-mails that seem suspicious.  Most of them are politically driven.  Some are in regards to my life/health/safety being in danger.  And some are financial scams.

Before I believe and/or forward any of these e-mails I always try to do a little fact checking to see if they’re really legitimate.  Most aren’t.  I’ve learned over the years that no attacker is playing a recording of a crying baby outside of my home to lure me out.  Starbucks has never refused to send coffee to our troops.  And a rich nobleman from Nigeria is not going to pay me boatloads of money to help him transfer some funds.

This morning I got an e-mail that caught my attention.  It was warning people to check their receipts when they leave a store.  The e-mail claimed that Wal-Mart cashiers were putting a “cash back” option on customers’ cards, the customers didn’t notice and the cashier pocketed the cash herself.  This sounded like it might be true, but I’m still a skeptic.

I went to Snopes, which is a great fact-checking resource for these types of things, and found that the claims in the e-mail are not legitimate.  It turns out only the customer can choose to receive cash back, and there is no way for a cashier to do this.  However, Snopes also says that many customers accidentally select the cash back option because they don’t pay attention and don’t realize they’ve asked for money back.

There are still some good lessons to be learned from this.  One is to pay close attention to what buttons you’re pushing as you check out.  There is always the possibility that you could ask for cash back, not realize and a dishonest clerk (at any store) could pocket the cash.  But you should also always check your receipts.  Cashiers are people, and they can make honest mistakes.  But you don’t want someone else’s mistake to cost you your hard-earned cash.

Written by Lauralynn Schueckler · Filed Under Credit Counseling 

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