Beware of Cashback Scam in Stores

In United Kingdom "cutting" is the word in the news now. The government is cutting cost in a lot of areas to reduce its debts and deficit. From January 2011, Value Added Tax (VAT) has been raised to 20%. Many government establishments are getting hit every day as a result of the cuts. It is quite interesting to imagine that some people believe that the consumers have all the money hidden away somewhere.
A horrible scam is joining the race to cut money from the public, it is known as cashback scam.

When a friend Eileen, sent my wife an email to alert us about a cashback scam. We never imagined it was real until the next day when my wife went to buy some thing from one of the stores around; at the checkout, she observed that there was a cashback of £40.00 in the machine against her payment. She called the attention of the casher to it but the casher pick up an arguement with her, saying that she asked for it. A supervisor intervened and the entry was cancelled. When I called the store, they were not willing to comfirm the incident and since my wife did not enter her PIN she was not given the receipt.

I contacted the store's central office through email to point out what happened and to ask of their plans to protect customers from this frudulent practice. Kate, who replied my enquiry, says "We have been made aware of this potential scam. Whilst we would hope that none of our own checkout staff would be involved in something of this nature, we would ask that our customers check their till receipts prior to leaving our stores"

She says "Should you find any discrepancy, please bring this to the attention of our Duty Manager immediately so that further appropriate action may be taken." The question is what could happen to an unsuspecting customer? There is cashback scam going on in the stores. Customers should be at alart when they go for shopping or risk losing their money to fraudsters.