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Thread: Caesars Palace gift shop overcharging customers, pocketing the difference?

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Caesars Palace gift shop overcharging customers, pocketing the difference?

    Disturbing story out of Caesars Palace.

    I have a friend who is a heavy player at Caesars properties. He already renewed his Seven Stars early this year, and continued to play enough to where he earned $500 "Caesars gift cards", which are good for any charges at Caesars properties.

    He was at Caeasrs Palace over Labor Day weekend, and decided to use his gift card to buy a watch in the gift shop.

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    Notice anything weird already? If not, look again.

    First off, they oddly charged his gift card $500 when the watch was $372.95, and the receipt says he was due "change" of $127.05! Have you ever heard of this? When you purchase items with a credit card or gift card, you're always charged the exact price and are never due any "change". So this was already shady. My friend did not notice this at the time.

    The charge is apparently listed as "Mastercard" because the Caesars Gift card is some weird sort of Mastercard.

    Anyway, he went to use his gift card again today, and found it had a zero balance instead of the $127.05 that it was supposed to have.

    He called the gift shop, and told the first person who answered the phone that he felt there had to be a mistake. They put the phone down and he overheard, "Amanda overcharged him $127.05."

    He found this especially odd because he hadn't yet given them any specific information, such as the amount overcharged or the receipt number. He asked how they could have possibly known that Amanda overcharged him $127 before looking it up.

    Then he was given a REALLY lame excuse:

    "I was at lunch then, and when I saw the transaction I knew you were overcharged."



    He then asked the obvious question: "If you knew I was overcharged at the time, why haven't you corrected it four days later?"

    The person didn't have an answer for that, and promised him a call back about the matter.

    That's where it stands right now.

    To me, it looks very possible that Amanda purposely overcharged him the $127.05, and then pocketed the equivalent amount of cash out of the register, thus allowing her to steal without the register coming up short.

    And it looks like other employees were in on it, as they knew immediately about the $127 when he called in, before looking anything up.

    Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaady.

    I'd still like to know why Amanda charged him $500 on a $372.95 gift card purchase. And why they didn't immediately return the funds to his gift card if the person at lunch "noticed" this four days ago.

    So if you go to the Caesars gift shop, beware, especially if a woman named Amanda rings up your purchase.

  2. #2
    Cubic Zirconia
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    Damnit! I reread it 3 times & still wasn't able to figure it out completely before reading your explanation.

    That obviously makes me embarrassingly stupid & this a seemingly decent scam; @ least on the front end.

    Not a lot of consumers are gonna catch what happened at the T.O.P. even if they look the receipt over b4 leaving I.M.O.

    However, a majority if not all consumers ARE gonna catch the discrepancy when they go to use the remaining balance. Given that its Las Vegas & non-locals are going to want to use their balance before they leave this could happen relatively quickly..

    Amanda was lucky that your buddy did not keep shopping at other stores in Ceasars & windup back @ her counter an hr. later confronting her about what is after the fact a very transparent attempt to rip him off. There isn't an easy "oops I hit the wrong button" excuse to back peddle out of this one, once the cats out of the bag & the balance is confirmed to be zero the scam is obvious.
    Even if he threw the receipt away he could still electronically go back & view the last purchase & see that the store charged him $500.

    I agree that Amanda is not the only employee who works at this store who uses this technique to steal.
    I am sure the employees have shared their "tip generating" secrets with each other at one point or another & if you purchase something from that store with a gift card & the remaining balance is below $20 I am sure most of them would help themselves to it knowing that for the most part tourists do not want to spend their limited vacation time chasing down 20 bucks.

    I doubt all the employees would use it to pocket $125+ from a single transaction though. The chance of that going unnoticed and not coming back to bite you is virtually zero & thats why I think Amanda was getting ready to quit or simply did not care because she knew the other employees couldn't say anything. likely because of their own involvement.

    The employee your friend talked to probably saw the transaction when she was looking at the scorecard after lunch. i am sure she knew Amanda fucked up & let greed cloud her judgment but her involvement probably kept her from being able to do much since reversing the charge, putting money back on your friends card etc. would all need to include Amanda returning them money she took out of the drawer. Obviously that wasn't gonna happen!

    These employees need to spend a day or two in jail & have there moral compass straightened out before its too late.

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    Mad Neg Repper 1marley1's Avatar
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    Maybe Amanda is just an idiot. Maybe she's new at her job. Seems like an unlikely scam because she would eventually get caught almost every time. Her name is right on the receipt. She probably hit the button for gift card then it asks how much and like a dummy she types in the $500 she sees on the back of the gift card. The change comes up and she assumes this means the balance, because remember she's an idiot. When he calls they have the $ amount memorized because nobody could figure out why the drawer was $127 over the other day...

     
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    Quote Originally Posted by 1marley1 View Post
    Maybe Amanda is just an idiot. Maybe she's new at her job. Seems like an unlikely scam because she would eventually get caught almost every time. Her name is right on the receipt. She probably hit the button for gift card then it asks how much and like a dummy she types in the $500 she sees on the back of the gift card. The change comes up and she assumes this means the balance, because remember she's an idiot. When he calls they have the $ amount memorized because nobody could figure out why the drawer was $127 over the other day...

    Great observation... Even if it is found to be wrong...

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    Plutonium Sanlmar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 1marley1 View Post
    Maybe Amanda is just an idiot. Maybe she's new at her job. Seems like an unlikely scam because she would eventually get caught almost every time. Her name is right on the receipt. She probably hit the button for gift card then it asks how much and like a dummy she types in the $500 she sees on the back of the gift card. The change comes up and she assumes this means the balance, because remember she's an idiot. When he calls they have the $ amount memorized because nobody could figure out why the drawer was $127 over the other day...
    Marley has the correct read, I think.

    Daughter works in one of these retail shops at the Venetian part time.

    These kids are minimum wage, bored, untrained & poorly supervised.

    Guy prolly said, "I have a $500 gift card" and away she went.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 1marley1 View Post
    Maybe Amanda is just an idiot. Maybe she's new at her job. Seems like an unlikely scam because she would eventually get caught almost every time. Her name is right on the receipt. She probably hit the button for gift card then it asks how much and like a dummy she types in the $500 she sees on the back of the gift card. The change comes up and she assumes this means the balance, because remember she's an idiot. When he calls they have the $ amount memorized because nobody could figure out why the drawer was $127 over the other day...
    I considered this theory before posting this thread.

    I decided that it's not likely, primarily because the other employee knew about it when it happened and chose to do nothing about it.

    So in your scenario, it would make sense to pull up all of Amanda's receipts, quickly look them over, and then figure out why her drawer was over $127. It's not rocket science.

    And once they figured it out, they could return the funds to this guy's card, or at least contact him to let him know they will be making it right.

    But that's not what happened. Four days passed, and nothing was done.

    To me, this either looks like an intentional overcharge, or more likely catching an overcharge later and either covering it up or hoping to pocket the money later if no one came forward.

    Keep in mind that they didn't tell my friend right when he called that they knew what happened. They discussed it in the background, and he overheard. When the person returned to the phone, she was probably shocked by the fact that he had heard them, and stupidly blurted out that she had known about this for 4 days.

    I will say that it's possible that this was more of a cover up than an attempt at theft. That is, perhaps it's not trivial to return the money to this guy's TR Gift Card, and would involve some higher-up finding out about the matter. So it's possible the conversation went like this:

    "Amanda, look at this receipt! You overcharged this guy $127!"

    "Oh crap! Can we put it back on his card before he realizes it?"

    "No, we can't put back money on these things. We need to call management to do that."

    "Please don't! If management finds out, I'm gone from here."

    "Okay, okay... maybe the guy won't notice. Let's see if he comes back and says anything about it, otherwise we will just ignore it."

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