Retail and fast food workers have turned to TikTok to show the world how they are scamming customers out of money. These low-wage workers are taking discarded customer receipts and using them to redeem rewards from various cash-back apps and websites. The method that people are using to receive rewards is through the Fetch app, which allows users to rack up points based on how much money they spent at various retailers and fast-food shops – and workers are using receipts that customers left behind to fraudulently redeem points by using the customers’ purchases.
The Fetch app uses receipts to track rewards. When customers do not take their receipts with them after their purchase, the retail and fast-food workers can use that receipts to redeem points for their own accounts. When a worker gets their hands on dozens of receipts per shift, they can rack up a ton of points on the Fetch app, which they can redeem for various rewards.
A Florida Publix grocery store employee has been raking in cash thanks to her customers’ forgotten receipts. The worker posted their hack through their TikTok handle @thatgirl.sonti and revealed how they are scamming customers out of money by taking their receipts and using them to redeem reward points on the Fetch app.
Although it is not clear how much money these scam artists are getting from their customers’ left-behind receipts, it does seem that you need to spend upwards of $3,000 on receipts to get access to a $25 reward redemption.
The TikTok user shared a video outlining how she takes customers’ receipts and uses them on the Fetch app to get reward vouchers. She shared an image of the numerous customer receipts that the shopper did not take with them after making their purchase, along with a caption that said, “Me when you all say you don’t want y’all receipt back.”
The Publix employee has since deleted the viral TikTok video, but not before the internet captured it to preserve how these grocery store employees are stealing from customers by using their receipts to redeem rewards on various cash-back apps.
In another video, a McDonald’s employee, also from Florida, shows a picture of themselves posing with a fist full of receipts that customers did not take with them. The TikTok video made it seem that they were going to use the receipts to submit a voucher request from Fetch.
Yet another video from Florida shows a worker at a smoothie store racking up receipts from customers that they are going to also turn into cash through the Fetch app.
Some viewers felt that these employees are so desperate they are going to try to redeem receipts for cash rewards.
“It takes seven years to win a $25 gift card,” wrote one person as a comment to the video.
Another person wrote, “[It] takes five hundred years just to get a $10 gift card.”
Do you think retail workers should be taking customers’ receipts to redeem for cash rewards?