Restaurant’s patrons will pay for scammers’ ploy
They looked like respectable young professionals — well-dressed, well-groomed, educated, honest.
“Never in a million years would I have thought they were scammers,” says Anna Marletta, general manager of Bellini’s on Main Street in Lexington.
The two men came into the restaurant one evening recently, had a couple of beers and paid with American Express gift cards.
They also asked the bartender to give them the remainder of each card’s value in cash, a fairly common request around bars and restaurants, Marletta says. Patrons need cash for tips or other incidentals and their bank may be blocks away.
When the bartender scanned the cards, American Express approved the transactions.
A little later, the company notified the restaurant that it was declining the transactions because the cards were overdrawn.
In the end, Bellini’s and American Express shared the financial losses because American Express had approved the transactions initially.
Customers lost, too, Marletta says. The restaurant changed its policy and no longer pays the cash balances on gift cards.
The cards often look like credit cards and can be easily confused by busy employees, she says. Moreover, verifying the up-to-the-minute balance on some gift cards requires a telephone call to an 800 number.
The system is not very merchant-friendly, she said, so customers are losing the convenience of getting cash back.
“Scammers come in all shapes and sizes, and in these (tough) times, it’s good to remind people that scammers are out there preying on them,” Marletta said. “It’s pretty sad.”
