When I called the restaurant this morning to address this, I mentioned this story to Joe, the guy I was talking to. He said this actually happens quite often! Now I don't know if he was trying to empathize with me but if he was, it was the wrong thing to say. It's a problem he's seen in his restaurant multiple times before.
Now in my case the restaurant's copy wasn't altered, however instead of charging my bank account $98 as indicated on the receipt they charged $100. It's kind of hard to mistake $98 for $100. I can't even justify that as fat fingers.
If anyone is reading this knows, don't the managers key all of the credit card receipts when they are "closing out" the waiter/waitress at the end of their shift? Or does the server do this? So who really is to blame here, and who's pocket was padded?
Joe is crediting my account the $2 dollar discrepancy (I want my two dollars!). But other than his apology and his quick action to refund me the difference there was no other offer of goodwill to reassure me that this restaurant, which is local and has multiple locations, is reputable and wants to earn my business back. Should there be? I think so, but then is that padding my pocket?
Two dollars on it's own is not much. I certainly wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been looking at my account this morning (I love online banking!). But when multiple customers are involved it becomes much, much bigger. If this is a 'normal' practice then this is
I just 'Googled' "restaurant receipt altered" to see if I could find that article I mentioned above (so I could provide a link to it). Wow, this is something that happens more often that I would have imagined. Silly me for trusting people.
