Duped, the conclusion.

So I get in to work today and the manager (We’ll call him Fred) starts telling me the rest of the Pre-Paid Card Saga.  He called the company that basically brokers the cards (Co. A) and they told him that he had to call the company that actually sells and manages the cards (Co. B).  Company B tells him that they just manage the cards, he has to talk to company A, who actually sold it.  Somewhere in there he called the police and talked to someone in the Fraud Division, who all but told him not to even bother filing a complaint.  They didn’t put it that bluntly, but said that all he really could prove is that this guy tried to buy the card, but didn’t.  We had no actual evidence that he was the one that got the $100.  Mister criminal douchebag could always claim he has absolutely no idea who got the $100 or where it went, after all we still had the physical card.  True point, but you’d think they would at least want the car’s plate number and our surveillance of him so they could at least keep half an eye on him.  Like Fred said, we don’t expect to ever see the $100 again, we just want to prevent it from happening again.

So Fred calls company B back, to see if he can get a list of where the $100 was spent, to somehow track it so we could prove the guy spent it.  Let’s just say he got so mad and frustrated that he ended up hanging up on them.  Seems that there is absolutely no way to track those cards.  The numbers on the physical card actually have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, the real numbers are somewhere on that electronic strip.  And even if we had those numbers, the company only keeps track of the balance, not of where the money is spent.  Fred spent 20 minutes on the phone trying to get someway to track down the purchases, and in the end said something like “So, in other words, you produce something that seems to be designed for fraud?”  and then hung up the phone.

So there’s nothing we can do, except now that we know the scam we can prevent it from happening again.  At least at our stores.

Arrrgh!