Scam Watch: No Change No Problem

There’s a new scam circulating right in front of our noses – or more likely knocking at our front doors. Even worse, we’re letting these scammers into our homes without even suspecting them.

Fast food delivery men and women show up at your door, with your piping hot pizza, Chinese food, fried chicken, or whatever else it is you ordered, and when you promptly offer to pay, they suddenly exclaim that they are sorry, but they don’t have any change.

This scam almost made my pizza dinner last week of $23.40 cost me $40. All I had were twenty dollar bills, and the Dominoes Pizza delivery man at the door apologized, but said he hadn’t any change. I offered to put it on my credit card, but he said he couldn’t do it, because it had originally been ordered as a cash delivery.

The delivery driver then asks for the $40, and says he’ll go and get change – but you never hear or see from him again. Sure, you have your fast food, but you just gave the delivery driver a $16.60 tip (that’s a tip of 41.5 percent!), because when you call the pizza place and complain, they inform you that the delivery driver denies it all, and shows from his returned receipts that you paid the exact amount. Now it’s your word against the delivery driver, and the fast food company – having been paid for their products and services – stands behind their employee.

An alternative play on this scam, is the delivery driver takes your $40, and tells you next time you call, they will credit your next order the outstanding amount owing to you. But again, when you call and place your order, requesting this “credit” you find out that there is no credit, not even a record of what was said between you and the delivery driver. Again you are out $16.60 (using our numbers from above, but if you ordered more or less your numbers would differ).

This isn’t the first time I was made a victim to this scam, so I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Last time I lost $10 on a pizza order with another pizza place.
This time, I simply gave the driver the $20, and told him when he brought change for the other $20 (for $40 in total) I’d give him the remainder. At first he was adamant that I overpay him – because that is the whole nature of this scam – but once burned, twice shy, so the saying goes.

Begrudgingly, he took off with the $20, and surprisingly within five-minutes he came back with the change for a $40 payment. So I gave him the second $20 and took the change he provided.

Delivering fast food isn’t the most glamorous of gigs, and usually I tip my fast food delivery drivers for their time and effort. But when they pull scams like this, they’ll be lucky if I don’t call the police.

Though the cops can’t help much in these scams. Again, it is all based on a quick conversation at your front door between you and the delivery driver. All the police can do, is advise you to talk to a lawyer – and with the average lawyer costing about $100/hour, you’d lose more money doing just that. Even small claims court usually has a filing fee above $50 in most Canadian provinces, not worth the investment for a loss of under $20.

Quite the clever scam, but we’re on to you Mr. and Ms. Fast Food Delivery Person.
Problem is, from our research, this scam isn’t that uncommon. Others have fallen victim to this fast food delivery scam, happily giving the scammers several times more money than their orders cost, with a promise of either receiving the change soon, or a credit on their next order, only to find that neither promise will ever be fulfilled.

One could argue that there probably are instances where delivery drivers legitimately are out of change; however, delivering your fast food quickly is only part of the job. Being able to make change for common denominations is just as important as getting that food to you. And when they really can’t, honesty goes a long way towards keeping loyal customers coming back, or leaving for the competition.

From now on, despite the ease of home delivery, it may be best to go and pick up fast food yourself, or if you must order take-out, put it on a credit card.

NEVER give a delivery driver more than you intend to pay for your order unless they can provide the change immediately -- no matter what they say -- because if you do, you just kissed that money good-bye.

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The Case of the Never Happy Ticket Wicket

As technology changes, so to do the ways we do some of the simplest things.

Take money for example – I remember a time not all that long ago, when in order to get your money out of the bank, you had to line up at the bank teller. Automated Bank Machines (ATMs) didn’t exist back then. And to make matters worse, banks were only open weekdays, during normal business hours, so everyone went during their lunch hour, which meant the line up to get your hard earned cash was all the longer.

Bank machines really have revolutionized our commerce-driven society. Gone are the long line ups, the tedious withdrawal slips, and worrying about getting to the bank before it closes.

You don’t even have to go to a bank to get your cash – ATMs are everywhere these days – from grocery stores, shopping malls, even bars and restaurants.

But when ATMs fail, and there isn’t anyone around at the bank to help out, you could be in a real pickle. If the ATM eats your card, runs out of cash and can’t provide you with what you need, or for whatever reason, just won’t do what you ask of it, you’ll need to find some other way of paying for whatever you were going to spend your money on.

I recently had a similar experience with an automated ticket machine. I went up to the machine, which proudly boasts that it takes Interac debit, all major credit cards, even cash and coins (which it claims to provide change).

It had a cool touch-screen, which I effortlessly went through to select the tickets I wanted, the quantity and how I’d like to pay. I selected credit card – and everything was working until it got to the next screen where it silently screamed: “We’re sorry, credit card transactions are presently unavailable.”

It gave me debit card and cash as the remaining two options to use for payment. So I touched the screen for debit card, where the machine again flashed: “We’re sorry, debit card transactions are presently unavailable.”

Batting oh-for-two, and I hadn’t even taken anything out of my wallet, I chose the one remaining payment option, cold, hard, cash. Good thing I happened to have enough cash on me at the time, or I’d have to go to the ATM!

The machine started humming, and the bill and dollar slots lit up, indicating it wanted to be fed.

So, I took a $20 bill and slid it into the bill slot. The automated ticket machine quickly gobbled up the money, hummed for a moment, then immediately spit out the same bill.

Maybe I inserted it wrong? So I turned it the other way, fed it into the machine, and after a moment, it too came back out.

Figured I’d just use another bill. Again it rejected it. There are only so many ways you can slide money into these things, and I turned the bills upside down and downside up, forwards, backwards – thought about crumpling it up and forcing it down the machine’s electronic throat – decided against it.

Image via Wikipedia

I remained calm and walked over to a newsstand kiosk nearby. I told the clerk on the other side of the kiosk what had happened, and asked her if she new anything about the machine.

She laughed, and told me people come up to her all the time because it doesn’t take their money. She said it works with coins, and offered to exchange my bills for change.

I gladly accepted her offer – though I thought to myself, how anyone uses the automated ticket machine, because carrying over $20 of coins seems ridiculous – not to mention a nuisance as they weigh a tonne.

I thanked the woman behind the kiosk, and went back to the machine.

I had to start from scratch, re-touching my complete ticket order – but this time I selected the cash option to pay. When it started humming waiting for money, I began feeding the coins into the machine.

This time it gladly swallowed the coins, though some of the coins had to be re-inserted. I guess if you feed them in too fast, it gets indigestion. Technology can be so finicky sometimes.

Eventually, I got my tickets, but despite the “wow” factor of using an automated, touch-screen ticket machine, it would have been far simpler and quicker for me to have just gone up to a living, breathing, human being selling the same tickets, and purchase them from him or her.

Automation, one day, may be a wonderful thing. But it still has a long way to go before it really is the better way to do things.

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