$5 in to $50

Gift Card

There are always customers that will try to do shady things to small businesses.

This past August, when we were open to customers, a customer came into The Game Capital with his kids and said he had a gift card that he had won at a video game tournament in the area, called the Tundra Bowl. 

He gave our employee the gift card and said he thought there was $50 on it. When our employee scanned it, it came up as $5 in the system.

The employee brought the situation to the attention of Jeff, myself, and our store Manager, “C”. We all thought it seemed off. It was unlikely that we donated $50 gift cards to anyone to give out as prizes. 

Jeff remembered donating a few $5 gift cards to the gentleman that runs the Tundra Bowl, along with a few sports figurines. Jeff called and confirmed this with him, so we knew the gift card was only worth $5.

Scammer

The gentleman that had won the gift card apparently tried to scam money out of us by pretending a $5 gift card he won was worth $50. 

It seemed odd to me that the $50 was written so large on the card envelope. I didn’t think we would have given out something sloppy like that for a donation. But, I figured it could have been an employee with not great handwriting that had put it together.

But, no. If you look at the $ on the envelope closely, you can see that it originally said $5, nice and small on the dotted line. The recipient (we assume) scribbled it out and drew the $ over the $5 and then wrote the 50 big.

Seriously?

People like this suck.

Why would someone ever think to even do this? It was unlikely that he wouldn’t get caught. He didn’t think we would have it in the system correctly?

Would he have felt good about himself if our employee had taken his word for it and given him the $50 off of his purchase?

Who knows? I know I would have felt terrible.