Well friends, just after posting the previous blog post about Refund Is No Joke, we came across another case. And this man schemed even more than the last, his “refunds” totaling $300,000.
I’d like to pull an exact quote from our last post: “Fraud like this is all around us. And it’ll continue to happen so long as refund policies stay the same”. Sure enough, here we are.
Connecticut resident Alexandre Henrique Costa-Mota is the second refund thief to make headlines this week. But he didn’t go for a small business like the man in our last post. Instead, he went for one of the largest in the country: Home Depot.
Let me pull another quote from our previous blog: “Imagine the degree to which this is occurring for larger companies.”
Now, I don’t want to be the one to say I told you so, but….
Anyways, back to Mr. Costa-Mota’s scheme which lasted a full year. He would walk into a store dressed as a contractor, then head to the door aisle. He’d load his cart up with doors, often hundreds of dollars worth. Then he’d head to their customer service desk. Why? To return the doors. Which he had never even purchased.
How did he get away with this, you ask? He didn’t have a receipt. Well, yet again, the scammer took advantage of the company’s return policy. Home Depot doesn’t require proof of purchase (AKA receipts) for returns.
And what if some stores decided to be sensible and deny a return without a receipt? This only helped Costa-Mota. This way, he could walk straight out of the store with new doors. Then, he’d bring them to another store to return them. This raised zero suspicions (not that any were really raised) as opposed to walking in empty-handed and collecting the doors in-store.
Now, Home Depot still attempts to avoid return fraud by requiring an ID for non-receipted returns. Costa-Mota had a way around this, too. He used multiple fake IDs along the way to avoid suspicion.
Home Depot uses a third-party refund verification system, which appears to have missed the fraud, too.
This isn’t an isolated incident; many big retailers don’t require receipts for returns. These include J.C. Penny, Walmart, and Kohl’s. Candidly, it won’t be long until a fraud story emerges from their stores, too.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “the customer is always right” across the board. Looks like that statement needs to be reevaluated. I propose “the customer is always a liability”.
Well, fraudulent returns live to see another day, and the refund industry takes yet another L.
Definitely won’t be the last.
IYKYK.
Just the latest reason to get your refund game ready for the Major League!
Yours Truly,
The Instant Refund Expert™
The Refunds Blog 