Check Those Receipts
Reading this forum about bars and restaurants changing the tip amount on your receipt reminded me about the one time I was mischarged by the Islands Restaurant in West LA. They increased the tip by $1. I didn’t dispute it with my credit card, but thinking back, I should have. You might think this is no big deal, but it adds up. For example, in my roommate’s small hometown, a waiter increased the tips on all of his receipts by a buck or two. A few months and several thousand dollars later, he got caught. Lesson learned.
One thing you can do is write your numbers big so that there’s no room to cross out or modify the receipt. Another suggestion from the forum is to add a tip so that your bills are always dollar amounts, no cents. That way, it’s easy to see if any fraudulent charges were made. A more complicated but interesting suggestion is to make the dollar digits add up to the number of cents. For example, if your bill is $21.56 and the 15% tip is $3.23 for a total of $24.79, add another 7 cents so that bill is $24.86 and 2+4 = 6.