Posted on 07/26/2007 5:03:45 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
Every think twice about handing over a credit or debit card to your restaurant server when paying the check? Maybe you should. While most of the time the payment goes through just fine, when your card leaves your sight, nasty things can happen. Occasionally, crooks use devices called skimmers to steal account information that's embedded in a card's magnetic stripe, which they sell or use to make counterfeit cards to raid a bank account or run up fraudulent bills.
It's estimated 70 percent of that type of card fraud, known as skimming, happens in restaurants, one of the last places where customers give their cards to someone who disappears into a back room to process the transaction.
In 2001, a credit card ring that involved wait staff stole information from customers at Don Pablo's Mexican Kitchen in North Fayette and, prosecutors said, and made fraudulent purchases totaling $16,861.
That's not the only type of skulduggery that can happen. Ever hear of tip fraud? It happens when a server alters the tip when entering the final bill in the payment system. You could be charged an extra 50 cents, a few bucks or more, but unless you cross-check your receipts with your monthly statements, you probably wouldn't catch it.
Now, a new technology is being pushed by payment systems giant Verifone that's designed to speed transactions and combat fraud by keeping cards in customers' hands.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
We have a local Mexican restaurant that was doing the same thing. People that had used either debit or credit cards at the restaurant found that their accounts had hundreds of dollars in charges. The charges were traced to Mexico a day after they had eaten at the restaurant in Indiana. I believe the restaurant is about to go under from the bad publicity.
Can’t trust anyone with your card bump
IMO, if you can't calculate 15 % in your head, you should be eating at home.
You’ll want to see this one, too.
China uses this system in restaurants, filling stations, outdoor markets, and many other businesses in all major cities, and thousands of less major ones. It’s been around for a good while. I swiped a card at my table in two establishments just today in Shanghai.
You swipe the card, enter your PIN number, press enter, and then they take the hand-held unit (about the size of a large scientific calculator) back to the counter and drop it in its base, connected to the modems.
Do you know that mobile phones are much easier to use in China and the Philippines, too, and are much less expensive than in the USA.
what in the world is going on in the USA ? Why do we see so many reports of “NEW” stuff in the USA that is old stuff abroad.
I hate to say it, but I’ll tell you another area that seems to be in more advanced use in Asia. Packaging. Yes, the varieties of types and applications of product packaging is a good ways ahead of the USA in may areas of Asia.
I don’t want to offer any reasons for all of this. I have some ideas.
In 2002 I visited Paris. Almost every restaurant had hand held credit card readers that were brought to the table and printed a receipt on the spot. My credit cards never left my sight. Surely the technology is not so esoteric that we couldn’t have had it in 2002 in the US as well?
I've used nothing but debit cards for over 12 years and I have never had even one single problem.
I just asked the husband if we'd ever been to a restaurant that had a cc reader (I couldn't remember and we eat out alot). He said "no". Heck, I'd be happy to have it in the US in 2007.
Not true according the the Clark Howard web site. www.clarkhoward.com
It does other things!!!
I’m sorry to tell you, but even in the supermarket, you are not safe from this type of theft.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/02/19/stop__shop_reports_credit_data_was_stolen/
The Pakistanis who did this flew all the way from CA to RI to pull this caper off.
Well.... there's this thing called cash. And another thing called checks. They're kind of old fashioned, but they work.
Use the envelope system and a budget. It worked for Dave Ramsey.
My debit card turned up missing with a $350 hit at a local walmart.......I had the money back in my account within days. Could have messed up a mortgage payment or something, but it didn’t. We were lucky.
For good service, 20%, which is pretty easy to figure in your head.
For bad service, 0%, which is even easier to figure.
Or if you’re really bad at figuring in your head, $1 per person if the meals are around $5 each, or $2 a person if they’re around $10 each. And another $1 per person for every $5 per meal (’per meal’ includes drinks and desert).
Wow, thanks! I’ve shopped at the local “Stop & Shop”, had no idea they could rig those machines for fraud. I guess cash is the only 100% safe way, unless you get mugged...
I guess you are one of those dinosaurs that whips out their checkbook and cause the checkout lanes to back up at the grocery store? Everytime I see a checkbook I roll my eyes that they still exist.
What about the voices in my head? Won't they steal it? ;^)
Then you would guess wrong - I use a credit card or cash. I would guess that you're one of those belligerant douche bags on fr that's too dull to understand a position and immediately starts to flame someone rather than figure out what's going on.
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