A small toy store in Victoria is out $2100 and now the owners want to warn other businesses so that they don’t fall victim to the same scam.
When Candice Woodward of Cherry Bomb Toys checked her business bank account late September, she said she felt sick to her stomach. A large amount of money had been taken out by their credit card processing company. “There was no warning or anything. Just $2100 gone from our account when we needed it most,” said Candice.
She phoned her husband right away and figured that it was the high priced LEGO set they had sold in early August, to a man and woman who had visited the shop.
They phoned Moneris, their credit card processing company, and talked to one of the representatives about the chargeback. It was confirmed it had been the LEGO sale – the woman who had purchased it claimed she wasn’t in the store. Moneris sent a letter a few days later notifying of the chargeback. “I can’t believe they would not take the time to warn someone first over the phone. They just took this large amount of money and sent a letter. It was right before rent time,” Candice tells Victoria Buzz.
The couple thought they were covered because B, Candice’s husband who owns the store with her, had seen the woman’s ID. “I checked her Drivers License and her Care Card” said B, wanting to verify that this was a legitimate purchase. The couple sent in the signature on the approved Visa slip, the invoice and the imprint B had taken on a piece of paper showing it was her card that had been used. That wasn’t good enough for Moneris and Visa. Cherry Bomb Toys got the final word by letter that Moneris and Visa were ruling in the purchasers favour.
“They argued our imprint wasn’t good enough, because it wasn’t taken on one of those old credit card swipers. We are completely devastated by this decision and loss of these funds. This is a huge hit to our small business. It’s been hard enough doing business downtown the last few years,” states Candice.
Cherry Bomb Toys has been in business downtown for almost 13 years. They just started The National Toy Museum of Canada, a non-profit society, hoping to grow it to a larger location in the future to provide a fun attraction for families and people downtown.
“We care about the community and try to help whenever we can. We aren’t a large corporation. We are a small family-run business that works extremely hard. I can’t believe someone would scam us this way. They should be ashamed of themselves. This has been a horrible lesson to learn and very stressful for us,” says a tearful Candice.
“We want to warn other business so that they don’t fall victim to this scam. We found out the purchaser was able to bypass the PIN somehow because we had manual transactions allowed on our machine. They can do this various ways like tape or nail polish over the chip. I’ve also read they can insert their cards backwards and then swipe when the machine says it can’t read it. We had no idea this was even possible. Be wary of any transaction that requests a signature or if the person is taking too long on the machine and has to swipe. Get out that old swiper and take an imprint. There was no warning on the statement that the PIN wasn’t used. It just said approved and to take an imprint of the card. If the business does not use one of those swiping machines with an official carbon copy, your business could fall prey to this horrible scam and the credit card company will give the money back to the purchaser. While this is great for people who fall victim to credit card theft, it creates a loophole for honest merchants and scammers to get their money back.” Candice warns.
Moneris told Cherry Bomb Toys that they should disable manual transactions on their end to keep this from happening.
“They knew about this and we were never told this could be a scam. I think a warning should pop up on your machine tape that says the PIN wasn’t used. That way the merchant can decide if they want to take that risk. I know we wouldn’t have, even though we confirmed her with her ID.” says Candice. “I’ve been in many local businesses where I have had to sign and have never been asked for ID or have had my card swiped with a carbon machine. Please be vigilant with watching your transactions and train your employees to take carbon copies on anything that asks for a signature. Moneris even warned us to not take them as they could be fraud. ID will not help you confirm anymore. This chargeback hit us at a time we need the money the most. I have no idea how people can sleep at night after ripping off a family-run small business. We have small children to feed, we are far from well off enough to take a hit like this. It’s heartbreaking.”
A police report has been started, and Candice is hoping other retail businesses who may have been hit with a credit card chargeback downtown on or around August 5th, to get in touch with them.
“We are hoping someone may come forward with some additional information so we can catch who did this,” said Candice.
Friends of the store owners have launched a GoFundMe campaign to help the family recover the lost funds.
