WE are all being scammed every day, and we very rarely even know about it.

And it’s not just the punters who are being ripped off, business owners are also falling prey to the light fingered fraternity.

We are being overcharged and short-changed in shops and supermarkets, and bosses all over the island are being swindled by staff who have worked out a myriad of ways to tickle the tills.

But there is hope on the horizon.The Scambuster has arrived.

Adrian Gardner has spent a lifetime revealing rorts and finishing fiddles, and now he and his company, Hospitality Dynamics, are offering to make businesses in Phuket more theft-proof.

“Scams are happening in businesses all over the island, from the smallest to the largest,” he said.

“It doesn’t happen in every establishment or all of the time, athough where there is an easy way to lift a few extra baht, you can be sure someone is doing it.

“There are people out there who are born to cheat, and you will never stamp it out completely.

Mr Gardner said even some big name supermarkets were ripping off their customers.

“If the total of your bill ends in a 50 satang, the cashier will very rarely have change and will round up your bill to the next baht.

“Fifty satang not a lot of money, but if you work out how many customers are forced to pay that extra 50 satang, it adds up to tens of thousands of baht every month.”

He said some cashiers were also prone to short-changing their customers.

“I checked my receipts after 15 visits to one particular supermarket, and discovered I had been short-changed 12 times,” he said.

“Most people never check their change, they just stuff it and their receipt into their pockets and forget about it.”

He said bosses were the victims of the biggest rip-offs.

“One trendy restaurant owner suspected his manager of working a fiddle, but he couldn’t work out how he was doing it.

“He personally checked the stock and the tills, and the figures were always spot on.

“But the manager was spending a lot more than he was being paid, so the proprietor called me in to investigate.

“I checked everything, and then I noticed there were two extra tills in the bar.

“This manager was a smart cookie. He bought two extra tills, each identical to the four which were already there, then at the end of the day, he would work out what had been rung up on his extra tills.

“He would then replace any food or drinks which had been sold from his own ‘stock’.

“He would replace the number of steaks sold, and top up the spirit bottles with his own spirits.

“He replaced beer barrels, sodas and food from the kitchen, exactly according to what had been rung through his own two tills.

“When the scam was revealed, the manager was fired, but it turned out that apart from his little rort, he had been a popular manager, and when he left, loyal customers stopped coming, and staff turnover went through the roof.”

Mr Gardner said the ‘checkbin’ system used in most Phuket’s bars and restaurants was also wide open to abuse.

“I went into one well known coffee house in Phuket and ordered a coffee, but when I asked to see the bill, the waitress told me there was no bill, only two scraps of paper from a notepad,” he said.

“The two ‘checkbins’ added up to 495 baht, but when I insisted on seeing a cash register print-out, it totaled only 380 baht.

“She obviously planned to throw away the notepad bills and pocket the difference.”

He advised bar and restaurant owners to have numbered bills, and to check every one of them at the end of each day.

“Customers should always be encouraged to ask for a proper receipt,” he said.
“Kick backs and back hander’s are expected to some degree in Phuket, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

“Do you have scales in your kitchen so you can check that the 22 kilos of fillet steak you had delivered really is 22kg not 18kg?”

Mr Gardner said staff often left a till drawer open, and when customers paid their bill, they processed it, giving change, without ringing it up.

“Then when the customer is gone, they take the money back out of the till and pocket it.

“When the till is cashed up, it is always spot-on, and the owner is none the wiser.”

“The best way to beat that scam is to make it a strict company rule that the till drawer is closed after every transaction, that all sales are rung up, and that stocktakes are carried out on a regular basis.

“You then plant a ‘mystery shopper’ who will check that it is being done.”

Mr Gardner has been spotting scams for more than 20 years.

“I can usually spot a scam very quickly, and put an end to it just as quickly,” he said.

If you want to know if your business is being scammed or run a health check on your systems, call Adrian Gardner at Hospitality Dynamics on 0870 892 084 or email adrian@bd-asia.com