McDonalds customer ripoff a hoax, then comes true
In one of those ‘this is clearly a hoax’ moments, a letter photoshopped by some guy David Thorne has been taken seriously by some people; enough so so that McDonalds even posted a response to the email on their website.
The memo in circulation online and via email supposedly written by the Managing Director/Proprietor of Frewville McDonald’s in South Australia is a complete fabrication.
Robert Trugabe is not, and has never been, a McDonald’s Australia employee.
The contents of the letter are also completely fabricated.
McDonald’s practices the highest standards of consumer ethics and would never encourage employees to act in a way that undermines our core customer values.
While it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a clue the letter has been faked and (as far as anyone knows) McDonalds weren’t involved, it was kind of amusing to read later on today that McDonalds customers were actually being ripped off in an unrelated scam.
…so far to the tune of two and a half million dollars.
Personally I’ve never had an item left out of my drive thru order. Mind you when I’ve ordered in the past it’s usually been for myself and a +1 or just myself. You kind of notice pretty quickly if the 1-2 items that should be in the bag aren’t there.
Having said that I can appreciate how irritating it must be to be expected to check 5 large bags stuffed full of food that your kids are fighting to scoff down before you’ve even pulled away from the counter.
Also I imagine staff get their fair share of scrummy customers coming back into the store after being served and trying to claim ‘missing’ items.
Despite the annoyance though, you’d have to be pretty gullible (or sick and tired of being ripped off) to take Thorne’s mock up seriously. Click to enlarge below.
Forget the contents of the letter itself, as soon as I saw the signed name my hoax alarm bells went off.
Hoaxes aside however it seems that some enterprising McDonalds employees have decided to take charge and start ripping off customers across multiple restaurants in Perth.
“Police are continuing to work closely with numerous financial institutions and McDonald’s, with McDonald’s being the only EFTPOS sale devices affected at this time,” he said.
Det Heise said more than $2.5 million had been stolen from at least 3500 cards.
Now although it hasn’t been confirmed, it’s pretty obvious that this is a bunch of teenage employees running a little racket here. With companies like DealExtreme selling a variety of card readers for less then $100 US it’s not hard to see this becoming more common.
Admittedly the reader/writers DealExtreme sell would probably be a difficult to hide but I’m sure there’s people retailing more stealth versions online in abundance at cheap prices.
Personally I always swipe my cards myself and even if they were using a reader designed to sit on top of an eftpos machine I think it’d bre pretty obvious, let alone the employee managing to take your card and swipe it into an external scanner while you’re right there watching.
How 3,500 people got scammed I have no idea.
Meanwhile the police seem determined to keep people in the dark for as long as possible.
Police say they cannot reveal the nature of the skimming devices being used in the scam due to operational concerns.
The number of McDonald’s stores targeted and their location have also not been released.
I’d have thought it’d be in the public’s best interest to know exactly how they are being scammed. Instead police are urging people to “regularly change their pin number, check their bank statements and report any questionable transactions to their bank or financial institution.”
Right, can anyone remember the last time they changed an eftpos card pin, or even know how you go about doing so without requesting a brand new card? And for anyone who doesn’t use NetBank statements come out every 3-4 months by which case the thieves have already run.
Feels like I haven’t changed my eftpos pin for the better part of a decade…
One thing I don’t understand thus far is how come nobody has been caught? I mean it’s not like the employees running the scam are criminal masterminds. McDonalds, like any other low paying company have what, 39,000 cameras pointed at anyone working the registers?
Police have probably got a full 360 degree view of what’s been going on so why are these dopes on the run still? If police can’t catch McDonalds employees skimming customer’s cards whilst behind 24/7 surveillance, what bloody hope do the rest of us have?
October 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pm Nick(Quote)
The new McDonalds Skim Burger, it leaves you with an empty feeling weeks later.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm AB(Quote)
I suspect the skimming set up was a little more complicated than just a few tech-delinquents in a scamming ring.
Either that or someone has paid big money to keep a tight lid on this. To prevent a major PR disaster? Who knows?
Whichever way, it doesn’t look like we’re getting any of the story. Everybody is being tight lipped, allegedly because of the perpetuality impending police investigations.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we never find out about this. A few more weeks / months and this whole thing will probably fade into obscurity, forgotten about by the majority of the general public.