Are cashiers stealing cashback from unaware shoppers? Fact Check

Warnings are circulating on social media that claim cashiers at a supermarket are covertly adding cashback requests to customer’s orders and pocketing the cash.

Typically, the warnings circulate as a tale told by a would-be victim who managed to spot the cashback request on their receipt, to which the cashier blamed the incident on a defective electronic pad. As example is below –

Bought a bunch of stuff, over £150, & I glanced at my receipt as the cashier was handing me the bags. I saw a cash-ba…ck 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! Taking the £40 would be a cash advance against my Credit card & 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! 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?
Just to alert everyone. My co worker went to Milford, Sainsbury’s last week. She had her items rung up by the cashier. The cashier hurried her along and didn’t give her a receipt. She asked the cashier for a receipt and the cashier was annoyed and gave it to her. My co worker didn’t look at her receipt until later that night. The receipt showed that she asked for £20 cash back. SHE DID NOT ASK FOR CASH BACK!
My co-worker called Sainsbury’s who investigated but could not see the cashier pocket the money. She then called her niece who works for the bank and her niece told her this. This is a new scam going on. The cashier will key in that you asked for cash back and then hand it to her friend who is the next person in the queue.
Please, please, please check your receipts right away when using credit or debit cards!
This is NOT limited to Sainsbury’s; they are one of the largest retailers so they have the most incidents.
I am adding to this. My husband and I were in Sainsbury’s and paying with credit card when my husband went to sign the credit card signer he just happen to notice there was a £20 cash back added. He told the cashier that he did not ask nor want cash back and she said this machine has been messing up and she cancelled it. We really didn’t think anything of it until we read this email.
I wonder how many “seniors” have been, or will be, “stung” by this one????
To make matters worse ….THIS SCAM CAN BE DONE ANYWHERE, AT ANY RETAIL OR WHOLESALE LOCATION!!!
BEFORE LEAVING THE CHECK-OUT……..CHECK YOUR RECEIPT!!!!!
Pass on to your friends

This warning has actually been spreading since 2004, well over a decade at the time of writing. Originally, the warning spread across the United States and had a number of different Walmart stores attached to it, despite the warning otherwise remaining the same.

The warning then subsequently travelled overseas, with someone removing references to Walmart and replacing them with Sainsburys in the UK, yet the warning still remaining the same.

As to the validity of the warning itself, while it would not be impossible to commit such a crime, it would not be as simple as the above warning claims, and there has been no evidence since this warning began to spread that this has ever been a popular or trending type of scam.

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For this scam to work, the cashier would have to rely on the customer being at least partially distracted. Whether it’s in the UK, USA or elsewhere, most card payments would require the customer to either initiate or at least approve the transaction, which will show the total amount of the sale including the cashback amount.

As such, it would seem likely that most would-be victims would spot such a scheme before it ever reached its conclusion, rendering it an unattractive opportunist crime for any potential scammer. That fact, coupled with the increase in CCTV, would mean any repeat offender would more than likely be easily caught.

As such, while the message describes a potentially feasible albeit risky type of crime that may work in certain situations, the facts above mean this crime certainly isn’t going to prove popular, if indeed it has ever happened at all; something that is further backed up by the complete lack of news or police reports about seemingly non-existent type of crime.

And the fact that this warning has spread for so long and been attributed to so many different locations is certainly the final nail in the coffin for this piece of years old scarelore.