Greetings all,
Cross posting this to both catering forums to spread the word...
I had an interesting little episode today. The wife answered the phone to find a text to voice relay call wanting to book pulled pork sammies for 200. (For those unfamiliar, text to voice relay is used by deaf people to make phone calls. They type & a computer or person reads the typing to complete the relay). The wife took the time to try & determine when - where - how - etc. so she could get with me for a cost estimate. She also asked the caller to send us a request via email as that would perhaps make the discussion smoother than TTR.
We quickly received an email from micheal thomas (
[email protected] quite adamant to get a cost & our location so he "can forward that to the carrier that will be coming to your shop for the pick up of the order." (Anyone getting suspicious yet?)
He then immediately called back - perhaps minutes after the email was sent - again pressing for a cost. We explained making 200 sammies for pick up would be pointless as most of the sammies would be mush by delivery. We recommended he get pork by the pound & buns then have his guests assemble their own fresh sammies. (Anyone disagree?) He asked for both costs.
We sent a cost for selling 200 sammies @ retail cost ($1200 plus sauce cost and tax) and the cost for 65 pounds of bulk pork ($650 plus buns, sauce and tax). Can you guess which he chose?
Yep - the $1200 plus option. Then he wanted to pay by credit card IN FULL IN ADVANCE AND wanted us to charge an extra $750 that we were then to wire to his courier to pay for the heated delivery pick up. Oh yes - and he never told us exactly where all this pork was going.
Needless to say - we told him we would only accept a money order or cashier's check and he would be responsible for paying his courier. Guess what happened?
Correct - he disappeared. After basically hitting us rapid fire for an hour by email & phone, we have now heard nothing concerning the order since we said no credit cards. Been about 8 hours. Guess he moved on.
Willing to bet this is a stolen credit card scam. Foolish caterer runs the card, wires the money then sees the transaction declined in a couple of days. Meanwhile, card thief has just made $750 off of foolish caterer.
Glad I'm a suspicious cynical bastard.
