Woman's PIN number mistake costs her $10,000
A woman has accidentally tipped a kebab shop a whopping $10,300 after unwittingly entering her PIN number as the amount of tip she wanted to leave.
The terrible mistake happened to 37-year-old Russian Olesya Shemyakova when she was visiting the New Point kebab shop in Dietikon, a town in the Swiss canton of Zurich.
Ms Shemyakova, who lives in the French city of Mulhouse, ordered some drinks and a piece of chocolate cake for her son, a colleague and herself when she was visiting the town in German-speaking Switzerland.
When she was presented with the bill of 23.70 CHF ($32.00), Ms Shemyakova asked if she could pay by card.
“I entered my PIN code but it did not work. Then I entered it a second time and then it functioned,” she said.
“I assumed that I paid 23.70 CHF, that was also stated on my receipt.”
However two weeks later Ms Shemyakova got a nasty surprise when she saw that 7,709 CHF ($10,300) had been deducted from her account.
She did not only pay the 23.70 CHF for the bill but she also unwittingly tipped the kebab shop 7,686 CHF ($10,270).
When Ms Shemyakova realised that it was the same amount as the personal identification number of her credit card, she realised exactly what had gone wrong.
As the Russian did not speak any German, she did not know that she had first been asked to enter her PIN code.
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She then needed to enter the amount she wanted to pay, which leaves customers the chance to add an amount to the total to leave as a tip.
Instead of entering 23.70 CHF or a slightly higher amount, she mistakenly entered her PIN code again.
Since the mistake the unemployed woman has been trying in vain to get her money back, but did not get much help from the kebab shop or her credit card company, according to local reports.
However Kebab shop owner Cengiz Gokduman has vowed Ms Shemyakova will get her money back.
“I can promise that the customer will get her money,” Gokduman said.
