A new Facebook post has gone viral , with claims a Walmart cash back scam is being perpetrated on unwitting seniors by shady cashiers at the megaretailer.
If you’ve seen the Facebook Walmart scam posts, the situation as posited seems very tricky indeed — if you closely watch the scanning process, after all, are you really going to check to make sure some shifty person added a cashback amount to it to skim from your debit-linked checking account?
The claim made in the viral Facebook Walmart warning concerns exactly that — and preys on a few common fears we have about the ease with which unethical parties can fleece, cajole, trick, or otherwise steal from us.
Or our elders — the main “victims” in the likely spurious Walmart warning on Facebook.
If you’ve seen it circulated, it one version warns:
“It happened to me at Wal-Mart (Supercenter [redacted]) a month ago. I bought a bunch of stuff, over $150, & I glanced at my receipt as the cashier was handing me the bags. I saw a cash back of $40. I told her I didn’t request a cash back & to delete it. She said I’d have to take the $40 because she couldn’t delete it. I told her to call a supervisor. Supervisor came & said I’d have to take it. I said NO!”
The post continues, not making any mention of possible supervisor interest in the fact a cashier nearly allegedly cheated a customer out of $40, accidentally or on purpose:
“Taking the $40 would be a cash advance against my Discover & I wasn’t paying interest on a cash advance!!!!! If they couldn’t delete it then they would have to delete the whole order. So the supervisor had the cashier delete the whole order & re-scan everything!”
Again, it’s totally within the realm of plausibility that a Walmart cashier would be less than apologetic at such a convenience — but in this retelling, the cashier yet again attempts to pull the cash back scam on the customer, by her account:
“The second time I looked at the electronic pad before I signed & a cash-back of $20 popped up. At that point I told the cashier & she deleted it. The total came out right. The cashier agreed that the electronic pad must be defective. Obviously the cashier knew the electronic pad was defective because she NEVER offered me the $40 at the beginning. Can you imagine how many people went through before me & at the end of her shift how much money she pocketed?”
One wildly viral post on Facebook spurred a lot of the shares about the Walmart cash back scam story, which reads much the same:
[fb link=”https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151978732165953&set=a.81693630952.101564.734705952&type=1?][/fb]
More than half a million people have shared that image and tale — a story which relies on a few shaky assumptions.
One: that the Walmart cash back scam story happened as claimed; Two: that the cashier deliberately tried to rip the customer off rather than was careless; And Three: that this was made apparent to a supervisor without any room to believe otherwise, and that Walmart tolerates theft of money from customers by its cashiers.
Embarrassingly for many sharing it, the Walmart story has been circulating for years — Snopes has had a page on the false rumor for quite some time.
BuzzFeed quotes a Walmart rep who denies the story completely, and notes that customers are the ones who request cash back, not cashiers:
“Our cashiers have no method of initiating cash back from their register terminal… The customer is the only one who can prompt the cashier to give cash back.”
However, we think where the Walmart cash back scam rumor falls apart is the plausibility. Should any Walmart cashier engage in such a criminal act repeatedly, not only are the chances they will be caught rapidly quite high, but when that inevitability occurs, the chance they will face arrest is a near certainty.
Are you seeing this Walmart cash back scam warning on Facebook often?