So, part of my job as a customer service specialist is to do wire transfers through MoneyGram.
Last night, literally 3 minutes before the customer service center closed, a person and his (I assume) girlfriend came up with a child, and tried to receive money. At our location, they do this by calling Moneygram with a dedicated phone, no dialing required.
First, they shouldn't have even been able to set it up because our MoneyGram system shuts off at 15 minutes before closing, because it can take up to 20 minutes to set up a transfer. So when the guy was on the "MoneyGram phone", I can guarantee with 99% accuracy that they didn't answer. I told them that since our location was about to close, they could to go to WalMart because their terminal is open later than ours. That's when the woman called WalMart - or at least pretended to, I highly doubt she actually did.
The guy hung up the Moneygram phone and handed me a slip of paper with nothing but a number on it. I asked him for his ID, and he told me that it was just a test question to set up an account, he wasn't doing any sending or receiving. That's when the big red flag went up - yes, Moneygram will do "test questions" for transactions for certain things, but I had never heard of this technique before. So I entered the lookup number, and up popped a screen telling me to pay out $40 to the recipient. Since he didn't have his ID, and he had said he wasn't receiving anything, I told him I was coming up with a different result. He completely flipped out on me, told me he was just trying to set up his ID, blah blah blah... so, the next logical thing for me to do was ask what his name was. He wouldn't tell me his name. Instead, he again said how he was just trying to set up an account with them, which at this point I knew to be complete and utter nonsense. I asked for his name again, and his response was that it was just a "Test question", and then he demanded a manager.
So the manager comes up, and luckily has my back 100% on this. Like I said, yes, Moneygram does do test questions, but only for transactions, NOT to set up any "account". When I explained to the manager everything that was going on, the people yelled over me, so I finally just gave up and said to the manager "They won't tell me their name and they have no ID, I'm unable to do anything further until I can confirm their ID", and the guy just shouted that they did this all the time without any issues, blah blah blah, and the manager reiterated what I said. They cussed us out, asked for the reference number, and when I handed it to him he practically ripped it in half. I put up the closed sign, grabbed my till out, and closed down before they could come back.
I love my job.
I have seen so many attempts at scams, it's just ridiculous. That one takes the cake for sheer dumbness, though. The minute he wouldn't tell me his name, I knew it was likely a fake.
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