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Overcharged at a Caesars Palace gift shop
You can be overcharged anywhere when you use a credit card or charge card and it happened to me at Caesars Palace when I used a $500 Total Rewards Gift Card to make a purchase at a gift shop inside Caesars Palace.
When we use credit cards and ATM cards we get monthly statements from our card companies to check and verify our charges and purchases.
But the only way to confirm the correct charges with the Total Rewards Gift Cards is to call the phone number on the back of the card or go to the website address on the back of the card.
No matter if you use a card at a restaurant or a store or to pay your dentist or to buy online you should always check your statements each month.
And in the case of using the Total Rewards Gift Cards you should verify the charges and purchases.
On Labor Day I made a purchase in the gift shop in the Augustus Tower. it was for a watch and the total charge with tax was $372.95 and I paid for the purchase with a $500 Total Rewards Gift Card.
The photo below shows the actual store receipt with the numbers 7939 which are the last numbers on the Gift Card.
The receipt shows I should have had a remaining balance of $127.05 but when I called today to verify the charges and to check the remaining balances on four other Gift Cards I was surprised to be told that card 7939 was maxed out. I was told there was only one purchase of $500 made on the card -- and it was the purchase at the Augustus Caesars Exclusively shop.
I called the store immediately and ironically when I told the store employee who answered the phone that I was overcharged she immediately knew what I was calling about. I overheard her say to someone else "he was overcharged $127 by Amanda."
I asked her, "how did you know it was $127.05?" I hadn't mentioned the amount. And she said to me, "I was at lunch then, and when I saw the transaction I knew you were overcharged."
Well, now it's September 5th, and why didn't this get fixed before I noticed it and before I called?
They took my number.
Besides the overcharge, I later realized I wasn't given the 25% 7 Stars discount, which another employee told me about when I called.
Now, I am wondering how is it possible that the receipt shows "change due" but the Gift Card has no balance? I wonder if the card was run-through twice once for the card maximum of $500 and once for the actual purchase amount -- and I was given the receipt for the actual purchase amount showing the change.
This reminds me of an employee theft/scam that I almost fell victim to years ago when I was in Miami. I went to a restaurant/bar for a drink with a coworker. I paid for our drinks using an American Express Card. I kept the receipt and always keep receipts to confirm the monthly bills.
When my bill came in the mail, the amount from the restaurant was much greater than my receipt. I immediately called Amex to dispute the charge. Amex told me to contact the restaurant and Amex told me that I would probably be told that the server involved no longer worked there. Here is the scam:
An employee/server is paid in cash by some customers and pockets that cash. Then the server adds the charges that were paid in cash to a "second swipe" of a credit card. This is what happened to me. That restaurant server swiped my card once for the correct amount and gave me that correct receipt. But the server then swiped my card a second time to cover my bill and the bills paid in cash -- forged my signature -- and turned in that forged charge amount to cover the receipts for his shift.
Before customers receive their monthly statements and discover the scam -- the server has moved on to another job -- which is what happened years ago at that restaurant/bar in Miami.
