Correct change not given...

Onthe3rdDay

I was in a branch of one of the major supermarkets today. I handed over 20 euro and only recieved 7 cent back, when I should have gotten 10.07 euro. I complained and I told the cashier that I had given her a twenty. She claimed that I had only given her 10.

She then produced a 10 note and said that is what I had given her. The thing is that I only had a 20 note on me when I went into the shop. I had just taken it out of the bank. She was point blank refusing to budge so I went down to customer service and complained.

I gave my name and number and asked them to ring me when they add up the takings at the end of the day. The person said they'd call tomorrow.

Should I have done anything differently and should I take things further? It's the principle that matters to me rather than the money. I presume there would be CCTV footage around the tills.

Normally, I would think this was an honest mistake but showing me a 10 euro note raised my suspicions. I checked my online banking and it was 20 that did come out. (It was a very dirty note!)

questionmark?

Onthe3rdDay wrote: »

I was in a branch of one of the major supermarkets today. I handed over 20 euro and only recieved 7 cent back, when I should have gotten 10.07 euro. I complained and I told the cashier that I had given her a twenty. She claimed that I had only given her 10.

She then produced a 10 note and said that is what I had given her. The thing is that I only had a 20 note on me when I went into the shop. I had just taken it out of the bank. She was point blank refusing to budge so I went down to customer service and complained.

I gave my name and number and asked them to ring me when they add up the takings at the end of the day. The person said they'd call tomorrow.

Should I have done anything differently and should I take things further? It's the principle that matters to me rather than the money. I presume there would be CCTV footage around the tills.

Normally, I would think this was an honest mistake but showing me a 10 euro note raised my suspicions. I checked my online banking and it was 20 that did come out. (It was a very dirty note!)

Personally i wouldn't have moved from the counter and demanded a senior manager(not a supervisor) and requested that the float be counted then and there. It might seem bitchy but for many people that could have meant they only have 7 cent left for the rest of the week instead of 10 euro and 7 cent.

Ensure that they do contact you tomorrow if not frog march yourself down their to the store manager and ask to know why you weren't contacted.

If there was a genuine mistake and tesco acknowledge this expect your money back and maybe some vouchers as a way of saying sorry.

timmywex

Yeh, have them check cctv and everything in your power. Not so bad in a tesco but the likes of a petrol station it would be a few euro out anyways so it mightnt seem like any differene!

Get the manager to check the cctv or claim you'll follow legal action

jor el

Leaving without speaking to a manager was not a good idea. Leaving without your money was not a good idea. You'll probably have to wait for them to call you back, but I'd go back in first thing tomorrow, and speak with the manager this time.

foggy_lad

The larger supermarkets all have cameras on all till which show all money in and out as well as your shopping list and total amount etc so should be easy to sort out and may mean the shop assistant gets sacked.

91011

Onthe3rdDay wrote: »

I was in a branch of one of the major supermarkets today. I handed over 20 euro and only recieved 7 cent back, when I should have gotten 10.07 euro. I complained and I told the cashier that I had given her a twenty. She claimed that I had only given her 10.

She then produced a 10 note and said that is what I had given her. The thing is that I only had a 20 note on me when I went into the shop. I had just taken it out of the bank. She was point blank refusing to budge so I went down to customer service and complained.

I gave my name and number and asked them to ring me when they add up the takings at the end of the day. The person said they'd call tomorrow.

Should I have done anything differently and should I take things further? It's the principle that matters to me rather than the money. I presume there would be CCTV footage around the tills.

Normally, I would think this was an honest mistake but showing me a 10 euro note raised my suspicions. I checked my online banking and it was 20 that did come out. (It was a very dirty note!)

You did exactly the right thing - it ridiculous for other posters to suggest that cctv should be looked at imediately / float counted immediately. Far better for it to be done properly in it right envirnoment & time.

Do call the store today and ask if it had been checked and also let them know you can show a €20 withdrawal from a cash machine close to the time you were in the store.

From the checkout persons point of view, you have to understand that many people do try this as a scam.

seamus

91011 wrote: »

You did exactly the right thing - it ridiculous for other posters to suggest that cctv should be looked at imediately / float counted immediately. Far better for it to be done properly in it right envirnoment & time.

Agreed. The OP went down to customer services, so the incident has been logged. The overs & shorts for all the tills are recorded and noted down on a daily basis. €10 over won't go unnoticed.

Unless it was €100, you lived 50 miles away or you only had that tenner to last you for the rest of the week, then anything more than what you did would be going overboard for the sake of a tenner.

A lot of shops though will just count up the till on the spot unless they're out-the-door busy. It only takes ten minutes at most.

The larger supermarkets all have cameras on all till which show all money in and out as well as your shopping list and total amount etc so should be easy to sort out and may mean the shop assistant gets sacked.

Very unlikely that a cashier would get sacked over something like this. I've seen people's tills be £50 short and they just get a warning. They're humans, they make mistakes, they count up wrong or notes get stuck together or they look at something wrong and see a tenner instead of a twenty.
A typical day on the weekend a cashier will handle around €100,000 worth of transactions. In some shops, cashiers actually get small gifts or bonusses if they ever manage to get their till spot on.

rubadub

questionmark? wrote: »

If there was a genuine mistake and tesco

timmywex wrote: »

Not so bad in a tesco

Just to note, Tesco was never mentioned.

foggy_lad wrote: »

The larger supermarkets all have cameras on all till which show all money in and out

Exactly, if I was so certain I would ask to check it and get it. Its tantamount to attempted theft.

91011 wrote: »

You did exactly the right thing - it ridiculous for other posters to suggest that cctv should be looked at imediately / float counted immediately.

What if they needed the money for a bus ticket or something? I would want it right away, it is not the OP's fault, I would not want to have to give up time to visit the shop again or ring them etc.

It happened to me in a takeaway recently, I was just given a €1 instead of a €2, the person gave me the €2 right away when I said it -which lead me to believe they knew what they were up to, they did not express any surprise or disbelief. Same thing happened again in a supermarket a few days later -again no surprise or anything. Then just last week I got charged for grapes when I only got a load of beer and peanuts, this time I had a security guard and manager looking at me trying to spot the missing/stolen grapes! and the checkout girl asking "are you certain you got no grapes?" strange as I only had gotten 2 types of items, not like it was a massive shopping trolley.

I am wondering if checkout/sales people see regulars and know if they check change or not. Quite often I just dump change in my bag so maybe they think I am a good target.

Corruptedmorals

I work in a large supermarket, drapery though. You should have asked for a manager to give the girl a till read and count her till. If you remained polite nobody would have had a problem doing that or begrudge you the time taken or anything. From personal experience, it's extremely difficult to input a 20 as a 10- but even more difficult to rob a till under a camera with constant staff and managers present as well as the fact that till overs and unders are posted up and flagged on your record as €3. Go back in with your receipt, it will have the time, till, and cashier number on it. Extremely easy to trace through the cash office and through the cameras.

Really it is not worth their whiole attempting to rob from you, even if it's done in such a way that it won't show up, there's still the major problem of the cameras, managers and staff all around, and the extreme likelihood of a customer noticing being shortchanged. In places like that, your till is your own and nobody else uses it- much different to pubs etc.

Corruptedmorals

seamus wrote: »

Very unlikely that a cashier would get sacked over something like this. I've seen people's tills be £50 short and they just get a warning. They're humans, they make mistakes, they count up wrong or notes get stuck together or they look at something wrong and see a tenner instead of a twenty.
A typical day on the weekend a cashier will handle around €100,000 worth of transactions. In some shops, cashiers actually get small gifts or bonusses if they ever manage to get their till spot on.

They would get sacked if it was proved it was deliberate, very difficult to prove though. Normal overs and unders get warnings, but these days you can start establishing patterns at €3.

You would never handle €100,000 in one shift, not unless you worked in the cash office. A 'high read' would be €2000 or more, I've never seen one above €6000, and that was before the recession/price drops. Credit cards are not counted as part of your read but even so, an entire supermarket would be lucky to make €100,000 in a day.

seamus

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

Credit cards are not counted as part of your read but even so, an entire supermarket would be lucky to make €100,000 in a day.

That's a fair point about credit cards, and I think I'm off by a factor of ten (it's been a long time since I worked on a till). £10,000 would have been a standard saturday shift where I worked, which is not an insignificant amount of cash to go through one's hands. I know you've worked in a supermarket over christmas - I remember seeing the total sales on my till one Xmas eve at over £125,000 over an 11-hour day. Baskets average around £300, largest basket I saw was nearly £1,500.

Dublindude69

I had someone try a scam last week, they paid €50 for something that was a €5 and tried to claim I left them €20 short. I knew I hadn't because I pulled 2 €20s outs of the till and counted them infront of her and handed them to her. About 30 seconds later (She stood at the counted for 30 seconds doing nothing, not even looking at the change, when we checked the camera we noticed her hand went into her left pocket) she started claiming I had given her the wrong change. Manager counted the till and it was correct. We felt it very odd that the woman seemed really calm about it and walked off without much fuss.

questionmark?

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

You would never handle €100,000 in one shift, not unless you worked in the cash office. A 'high read' would be €2000 or more, I've never seen one above €6000, and that was before the recession/price drops. Credit cards are not counted as part of your read but even so, an entire supermarket would be lucky to make €100,000 in a day.

To be fair a high read of only 2000 euro in a large supermarket chain is not a large read. Thats 20 people spending 100 yoyos a piece! Not exactly unheard of for a weekly shop. Multiply this many times over plus the smaller baskets on a busy food shopping day like a Thursday and the total adds up quickly.

Dont know about CC but surely laser cards would be counted considering the option of cashback?

Nolimits

foggy_lad wrote: »

The larger supermarkets all have cameras on all till which show all money in and out as well as your shopping list and total amount etc so should be easy to sort out and may mean the shop assistant gets sacked.

I work in a very large supermarket and there's no such thing. It's possible for them to zoom in on anyone if they want to watch them but there would only be a few cameras on all the tills might even be just the one. Certainly nothing like on every till.


edit: this is grocery, where the tills are spaced out, in drapery where the tills are together there could well be one camera that could watch every till like that.

sdanseo

Never leave the store. I wouldn't have been moved until I got my money back.

jimmycrackcorm

The same situation happened to me and I refused to leave the till as I also knew I only had a €20. The manager came over and stated that they'd do the flaot later in the day and check. I countered that I'd let them give me my tenner change and if they subsequently found €10 short they could have it back but I also had an ATM receipt from about 20 minutes previously and I showed them my empty pockets. I said I wasn't budging from the till and given my receipt and empty pockets, if he wanted to make an issue out of it, it would cost the shop a fair penny. I got my tenner without question.

Run_to_da_hills

In my old local in Dalkey a bar tender was renound for short changing customers, particularly towards the end of the night when people would be boozed up. One night I marked a twenty pound note and ordered a pint. He gave me the change of a tenner and denied completly that handed him a twenty. In those days there was no CCTV.

I then roared across the bar table in front of customers and demanded that he produce the score with the mark that I just gave him. He never tried pulling that fast one on me again.

Corruptedmorals

questionmark? wrote: »

To be fair a high read of only 2000 euro in a large supermarket chain is not a large read. Thats 20 people spending 100 yoyos a piece! Not exactly unheard of for a weekly shop. Multiply this many times over plus the smaller baskets on a busy food shopping day like a Thursday and the total adds up quickly.

Dont know about CC but surely laser cards would be counted considering the option of cashback?

Yes actually, €2000 would apply to drapery- standard read if your whole shift is on tills is €2-3k. Supermarket would be more on a busy day, not more than €5k though. I'd say 4/5 out of 10 sales are card sales sometimes. Laser isn't counted either, cashback just subtracts from your read.

Dublindude69

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

The same situation happened to me and I refused to leave the till as I also knew I only had a €20. The manager came over and stated that they'd do the flaot later in the day and check. I countered that I'd let them give me my tenner change and if they subsequently found €10 short they could have it back but I also had an ATM receipt from about 20 minutes previously and I showed them my empty pockets. I said I wasn't budging from the till and given my receipt and empty pockets, if he wanted to make an issue out of it, it would cost the shop a fair penny. I got my tenner without question.

Yeah because it would have been impossible for you to have gotten the money and put it in your car or given it to a friend and then try to pull a scam. In this day there are so many scams going around you can't really blame someone for being a tad suspicious.

muffy

People should be aware that in some stores the staff are NOT allowed to hand back money to people who claim they have been given the wrong change. This is because many stores have been targeted by people trying to do the whole buy-something-for-1 euro-and-pay-with-a-fifty scam. In the shop i work in there is normally only one member of staff on so if you insist on the till being checked there and then, you will be asked to wait outside the store whilst the shutter is pulled down and the other customers asked to leave so the float can be assessed.
PLEASE bear this in mind if it happens to you, human error can occur to even the most experienced assistant.
OP you did the right thing, ring them tommorrow if you are worried they won't remember to call you.

gerrycollins

When I worked in a large irish grocery retailer the policy in these instances was that if it was quiet the till was counted and balanced and the difference sorted.

if it was busy name taken and till counted later that day or first thing following morning. then customer called by member of cash office. If the customer made a special request then we did what we could as best we could

that was a good number of years ago, today in my last shop every till had a camera so I could check in 2 minutes a customers claim and they were about 50/50.

One such complaint, a fella claimed he was left short €20 becasue he gave in a €50. I apoligised and said I'd go upstairs to check the CCTV, by the time I got to the office(it was v far away) I got a call to say the man bolted just after I left him, turned out he was chancing his arm.

I always found that those who made the biggest scene were the one's trying it on. Oh ya and be careful of the lads who ask for the change of a few €50 and then start asking to break that change down further etc tell them your not a bank.

Dublindude69

There should be a thread on well know scams.

the groutch

this is a well known scam, although it's unlikely to be done in a supermarket

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTuy2MsevC8

VERYinterested

That Real Hustle show should be called Lemony Snicketts (A series of unlikely events) some of the scams they dream up would never fly. Mr. Smug, the Jock with the Goatee beard is an odious sort of smart arse, but Jess is nice to look at

seamus

VERYinterested wrote: »

That Real Hustle show should be called Lemony Snicketts (A series of unlikely events) some of the scams they dream up would never fly. Mr. Smug, the Jock with the Goatee beard is an odious sort of smart arse, but Jess is nice to look at

You'd be surprised. Most scams rely more on the acting ability of the scammer rather than situation itself. More outlandish scenarios can also be more effective because it overwhelms the mark with information, making it harder for them to ask, "Why doesn't he do X?" and making it harder to work through the scenario. It also exploits the person's sense of, "This is just so insane, you couldn't make it up".

I had a guy approach me in a prominent public square in Brussels. He had an English accent and he first asked me if I spoke English. When I said yes, he replied, elated, "Oh thank God, someone who speaks english". Now, if you've ever been to Brussels you'll know that you don't have to go very far to find someone who speaks english.
Anyway, he proceeded to tell "his" story. It went on for a good five minutes, during which the guy broke down into tears a couple of times. I don't remember the full story, but the jist of it was that his family lived in Sweden (or somewhere up there) and he worked elsewhere in Europe on an oil rig (or something). He was returning home to attend to a funeral or somesuch, taking a train to Brussels from where he was going to fly onto Sweden. He fell asleep on the train and when he woke up, he'd been robbed. His wallet, his bag, his plane ticket, everything. All he had was his passport and his clothes. The airline didn't want to know. He went to the Swedish embassy who wouldn't help him because he wasn't a Swedish citizen. He went to the UK embassy who could only arrange for a flight home to the UK, where he has no family. His family didn't have much money and couldn't afford to pay the last-minute flight charges home. They did find a cheapish flight from another airport, 500km north of Brussels and booked it. So now he needed to get there from Brussels with no money and the train ticket was €160.
He begged, pleaded, promised everything under the sun that if I gave him the €160, he would send it back to me once he got home.

It was an oscar-winning performance. The guy looked like a complete mess and claimed to not have slept in two days. It's got "scam" written all over it, right? Well, it still sounds relatively plausible ad his performance backed it up. And my conscience didn't want to take the risk that he might just be telling the truth. So I gave him €20 and told him that's all I could afford. And I still don't regret it even though I'm very sure that it was a con.

So it's easy to say that you'd never be caught out by a scam until you actually end up standing there in front of one. Real-life conmen, the kind that speak to you face-to-face, can be extremely difficult to spot.

VERYinterested

I know what you mean some scams are unbelievable, but there was an episode recently that featured an Art auction. They conned two fellas out of a couple of grand. It involved two lads overhearing a conversation in a pub, stepping in to buy a painting, and re-sell it to another person that was bidding over the phone and the connection to 'Tokyo' or somewhere was lost.

Anyway it turned out that they hired a room, hired a room full of people to pose as punters at an auction, and all they got was two grand. After expenses it wasn't worth their while. The moral of the story was don't get suckered in a pub eavesdropping! I think they ran out of proper scams a few series back and now come up with ridiculous ones.

JimsAlterEgo

seamus wrote: »

You'd be surprised. Most scams rely more on the acting ability of the scammer rather than situation itself. More outlandish scenarios can also be more effective because it overwhelms the mark with information, making it harder for them to ask, "Why doesn't he do X?" and making it harder to work through the scenario. It also exploits the person's sense of, "This is just so insane, you couldn't make it up".

I had a guy approach me in a prominent public square in Brussels. He had an English accent and he first asked me if I spoke English. When I said yes, he replied, elated, "Oh thank God, someone who speaks english". Now, if you've ever been to Brussels you'll know that you don't have to go very far to find someone who speaks english.
Anyway, he proceeded to tell "his" story. It went on for a good five minutes, during which the guy broke down into tears a couple of times. I don't remember the full story, but the jist of it was that his family lived in Sweden (or somewhere up there) and he worked elsewhere in Europe on an oil rig (or something). He was returning home to attend to a funeral or somesuch, taking a train to Brussels from where he was going to fly onto Sweden. He fell asleep on the train and when he woke up, he'd been robbed. His wallet, his bag, his plane ticket, everything. All he had was his passport and his clothes. The airline didn't want to know. He went to the Swedish embassy who wouldn't help him because he wasn't a Swedish citizen. He went to the UK embassy who could only arrange for a flight home to the UK, where he has no family. His family didn't have much money and couldn't afford to pay the last-minute flight charges home. They did find a cheapish flight from another airport, 500km north of Brussels and booked it. So now he needed to get there from Brussels with no money and the train ticket was €160.
He begged, pleaded, promised everything under the sun that if I gave him the €160, he would send it back to me once he got home.

It was an oscar-winning performance. The guy looked like a complete mess and claimed to not have slept in two days. It's got "scam" written all over it, right? Well, it still sounds relatively plausible ad his performance backed it up. And my conscience didn't want to take the risk that he might just be telling the truth. So I gave him €20 and told him that's all I could afford. And I still don't regret it even though I'm very sure that it was a con.

So it's easy to say that you'd never be caught out by a scam until you actually end up standing there in front of one. Real-life conmen, the kind that speak to you face-to-face, can be extremely difficult to spot.

guy used to do the quays in Dublin, not quite as elaborate a story and only wanted 20 to get somewhere down the country. Funny thing was he approached me 2 weeks in a row. The look on his face when I asked him if he still hadn't got home a week later was priceless. Have seen him since and I will warn off people if I see him talkign to them.

Onthe3rdDay

Thanks for the various answers and advice. The Store ran back to say that they had totted up the till and it balanced. I pointed out again that I only had 20 on me at the time. The person on the end of the phone was polite and professional, she said that if I was insistent that I handed over the 20 that she would give back the 10 euro change. It will be waiting at their customer service desk for me the next time I go in. She also apologised for any inconvenience.

Now while polite she at no time admitted that they had made a mistake and while I’m getting back my 10 euro it appears to be more a goodwill gesture. Are they instructed to do this because of worry of other action?

At the same time I defiantly did hand over that 20, if the till added up where did my 10 go?

1) The assistant on the till made several mistakes and it’s a happy coincidence everything added up. (It is possible)
2) The till was 10 over and they don’t want to admit their mistake.
3) The assistant kept the ten herself.

None of the above fill me with confidence.

The result is that I won’t be shopping in that store again if possible. It’s not a boycott and I have nothing against the store (that’s one of the reasons I’m not mentioning the name) but it’s an extra hassle that I don’t need. There are 3 or 4 stores roughly the same distance where I can do a weekly shop at basically the same price. That means that 10,000 euro of turnover disappears in a year. (I know they won’t even notice it)

Some will say it’s an over reaction, but my time has been wasted and I now don’t feel secure handing over money in there especially to the same assistant.

I’m tempted to follow the actions of a friend of mind from now on. He goes into the bank and gets his money out in 10 euro notes! He says it makes him feel richer. At the same time he says it’s easier to keep track!

thesandeman

Lol. I meet a guy like the above every time I arrive at Malaga airport. Hes been trying to get as far as Cordoba for 4 years now. We are on first name terms at this stage. Back on topic: having worked in the bar game for years the amount of people who thought they had given 50 or whatever who were suddenly brought to their senses when I asked them had they used the note to pay admission/cloakroom was amazing. I presume same happens in supermarkets with people getting change for the trolly. I really cant see somebody trying to skim a few pound in a supermarket.

coffeenut

OP - I wouldn't have left without the money, wouldn't have taken them long to cash up that till and in a big supermarket they'd have had a spare float to put into it anyway so the till wouldn't even have been out of action that long.

I had similar issue a while back when cashier forgot to give me €60 cashback. i don't usually take cashback so i was half way out of the store when i realised. I went to customer service desk and was told that they wouldn't be cashing up until after the store was closed so that I would have to wait until the following day for my money. I had 4 days until pay day it was my last €60 with a weekend to get through.

I very kindly explained to the manager that it was MY money, not theirs and that I wasn't budging until they returned my money to me. The cashier hadn't gotten me to initial the receipt for the cashback which would have indicated that she never gave it to me in the first place. I had no issue with waiting 20 or 30 mins for them to do up the till so i didn't see why they should have an issue with cashing it up when it wasn't going to cost them anything. Got my €60 10 minutes later.

sunnysoutheast

thesandeman wrote: »

Lol. I meet a guy like the above every time I arrive at Malaga airport. Hes been trying to get as far as Cordoba for 4 years now. We are on first name terms at this stage. Back on topic: having worked in the bar game for years the amount of people who thought they had given 50 or whatever who were suddenly brought to their senses when I asked them had they used the note to pay admission/cloakroom was amazing. I presume same happens in supermarkets with people getting change for the trolly. I really cant see somebody trying to skim a few pound in a supermarket.

I used to work in a pub in the English midland countryside a few years ago, and every summer/autumn we used to get an influx of itinerant workers on the farms plus the hangers-on. So many of them tried this particular scam (GAVE YOU A TWENTY!!!) that, for anyone other than the locals, change was only ever (publicly) counted out onto the bar and not into the hand. Every note was also inspected very carefully as forgeries were everywhere.

SSE