Strip club scam

stator

Get one of your mates to go in under cover and pretend to be drunk. See if they try and scam him (but don't let him actually put his PIN in obviously)

Burnz0

maas wrote: »

I know a girl who works in a club and she says the girls work for themselves (like freelance). They pay a fee at the start of the night (say £100) and then they keep all the money they earn (so they have to earn at least the fee before they make a profit). In those clubs there's no "dance money" going through the till, no way to pay on card for dances etc they just take cash. They can negotiate, but there's no way a customer can go the bar and pay for a dance on plastic. The way it works in the club you went to is completely different.

If the girls negotiate with the customer and the barman can simply type in "£1800 dances with Mary" on the till and then you put your card and in enter your pin then its gonna be very hard to prove. She must have been top drawer :rotfl:

It probably is a scam, although most of what is written is just conjecture. Its a warning for all us if we're buying drinks on card in bar/hotel/club make sure you double check the amount.

I can honestly say that I've only been to a handful of strip clubs a handful of times and I've only ever known it to be a cash thing - coincidentally, I actually withdrew cash not long before the first transaction and, again, whilst I can't really remember, a plausible excuse ive come up with for this is that I took cash out for dances, drinks on the card (this is what my friend did) - obviously the flipside to this is that I didn't have enough cash to pay £400+ so chose to pay on my card?
The point I was making anyway is that if the barman has no involvement in the pricing other than entering the amount in the till then it makes little sense that he kept changing the amounts.


I'm not married by the way and have no reason to hide my whereabouts that evening other than the shame of being ripped off in the type of place that has a record for ripping me off/not being in the best financial situation at the moment and therefore not needing to spend £2k in a stripclub!

PeacefulWaters

Just to save me re-reading 70+ posts ...

Were all the amounts paid authorised by you entering your PIN?

Burnz0

yes - the pin was entered and the card was used, most probably by me but the fact that the time on the cctv provided by the club doesn't match the transaction time could suggest different

PeacefulWaters

Burnz0 wrote: »

yes - the pin was entered and the card was used, most probably by me but the fact that the time on the cctv provided by the club doesn't match the transaction time could suggest different

Alas, I think you're hopes of reimbursement are doomed.

Burnz0

and you don't think the constant up and down in prices as transactions are cancelled and denied looks suspect - or simply, that the bank won't care?
Also, what about the cctv times not lining up with the transactions that went through? It's likely that the time is just out of synch by 8/9 minutes (which seems a lot) but how can they use that as proof? Could it be that I typed my pin into a blank screen or something and then whilst distracted the barman actually put through a transaction himself? I'm not saying that happened but it's quite possible if there's a big delay in the transaction going through and when im on film with my fingers on the numbers

PeacefulWaters

Burnz0 wrote: »

and you don't think the constant up and down in prices as transactions are cancelled and denied looks suspect - or simply, that the bank won't care?
Also, what about the cctv times not lining up with the transactions that went through? It's likely that the time is just out of synch by 8/9 minutes (which seems a lot) but how can they use that as proof? Could it be that I typed my pin into a blank screen or something and then whilst distracted the barman actually put through a transaction himself? I'm not saying that happened but it's quite possible if there's a big delay in the transaction going through and when im on film with my fingers on the numbers

As far as the bank are concerned your card and your PIN were used by you. That's the end of it for them. You have recourse to the FOS but I can't see how they can rule against the bank.

As far as the police are concerned it's a civil matter around agreement on the price of a service.

You could take the club to court to try and recover the money, but I'm not sure what grounds you have as, let's face it, you don't really have the faintest idea what went on. A good solicitor may get a case together, but that's going to cost and has no guarantees.

The local authority presumably licences the premises involved. You could and probably should raise your concerns with them. But this is only likely to get the place checked out ahead of the renewal of any licence.

For what it's worth, I think you've been had. But each potential route to recovering funds lost looks like a dead end to me.

Burnz0

I came across this page - very similar situation (and the same club!) albeit the chap seems quite happy paying a lot, just not that much
http://www.justanswer.co.uk/law/897hx-charged-lap-dance-club-prices.html
Sound like the idea that the club are accepting card payments on behalf of the dancers and thus possibly breaching their merchant terms could be worth pursuing... but, I doubt very much MY bank and card company will give two sh*ts about that

Burnz0

although if he's disputed it and failed presumably then it probably means it's legit or nobody cares that much about it

DCFC79

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

This thread sounds suspiciously like a few others which have appeared here in the past...

Yes that's what I thought. I thought it was the 1 from last year or was it earlier this year.