Gregg's Restaurants. Image from Greggsusa.com.
By Kim Kalunian, WPRO News
Gregg’s restaurants is considering asking patrons to fill out a form and provide identification if they use a $100 bill to pay for their tab.
Bob Bacon, owner of Gregg’s, said historically the restaurant would receive about one or two counterfeit $100 bills annually.
“We took it as the cost of doing business,” Bacon told Gene Valicenti on the WPRO Morning News Wednesday.
But since mid-December, they’ve received five.
All of the bills passed the standard pen and thread tests, which leads Bacon to believe counterfeits are becoming more common and complex. He said counterfeiters use $10 bills – which pass the tests created to verify $100 bills – and remove the ink to change the $10 to a $100.
“These are pretty sophisticated,” he said.
Once the transaction is complete, Bacon said Gregg’s is “the last one standing,” and they’re the ones who have to eat the cost.
“We got burned a little bit,” he said.
So Bacon thought it would help to ask for ID and information from customers, much the same way people are asked for ID when they buy alcohol or use an unsigned credit card. He said this information would allow Gregg’s to contact the person and determine the source of origin of the fake bill.
But the idea is getting some negative feedback. Robert Ellis Smith, a privacy expert, joined Bacon on the WPRO Morning News to talk about Bacon’s idea.
“I think this is kind of a hangover from 9/11,” Smith said, saying the attack on the World Trade Center prompted people to give up personal information in the name of public safety.
“We gave authorities the go ahead to demand all this stuff,” he said.
Smith said he doesn’t think a person that uses counterfeit bills would provide a valid ID anyway, and thinks the use of $100 bills in today’s economy will be increasingly common.
Though he doesn’t necessarily agree with the policy, Smith said it doesn’t break any laws – the Department of Treasury allows merchants to refuse cash altogether, and this goes along the same lines.
Bacon said he isn’t married to the idea, and will ultimately take customers’ opinions into consideration.
“We have a great relationship with our customers and we listen to them all the time,” he said.
