stupid scam artists

Segue!

tonight's adventure comes courtesy of a customer who thought she could pull a fast one on me.

She works at a neighbouring store, one of the kiosks outside in the mall, and she comes in all the time after closing down her kiosk early. Five minutes before we close, she starts browsing and stays til 9:40ish. The other night she had come in asking about x-small belts, which we don't have yet, and this evening she had come in earlier to return something. Then she came back in as I said, 9:25, and started browsing. So I asked her if she needed help, and she said no. She then asked about the belts again and my coworker took her over to them to pick one out for her.

She decided on one, then headed to the clearanced jewelry rack. I asked her if I could start ringing her stuff up for her while she browsed a bit more, cause it was 9:40 when she went over there. She said, "no, that's fine I'll be only five more minutes or so." Fine, whatever.

So she finally comes over and I punch in her telephone number and rewards card, and start ringing her up. I started with her belt and then scanned in her pants, which rang up at 70% off. I thought that odd but we did have a random pair someone returned the other day, so I set them down. Then I picked up the sweaters she had, and I set them back down.

The tickets on the sweaters were red slashed, which meant that they were clearanced. Except that these were brand new sweaters we had just gotten in a couple of weeks ago and were not even on any type of sale yet. I explained this to her and told her that I would not be able to selll them to her at that price. My coworker then grabbed the pants and we noticed that the tickets had been switched on that one too.

So suddenly she didn't want any of it, and she left at 9:45, not buying a damned thing. Now I have no proof that she did switch the tickets, but it is very suspicious. I called my Loss Prevention line and my store manager and let them both know what was going on, so that was fun.

My guess is that she figured we'd be more interested in getting out of the store and not paying attention to what we were ringing up. The tags on the sweaters and pants didn't match the type of items -- they were number sizes on the tags and XS sweaters/pants.