Well sooner or later I had to get caught out by it :( I am currently in dispute with my credit card company (well not so much them as Textiles Fair Jaipur). When we were India last November we bought a carpet from a shop in Jaipur called Jalmahal Carpets. Now I am not a suspicious person but the longer I stayed in the shop the more uneasy I became. I know now I should go with my gut instincts. When we arrived the proprietor seemed a really nice bloke, showed us around the shop, demonstrated how carpets were made etc. etc. We are used to all this pre-sales blah as we live in Sri Lanka and have seen it many times before. However, when we went upstairs to actually view some carpets he announced it was his birthday and would we like some food and beer? My wife readily accepted but something made me refuse the beer, probably because I knew we were about to end up in a bartering situation, which after 12 months in Sri Lanka, I am still not imparticularly good at. All during the sale he tried to make me have a beer and I did relent but only once I had seen the carpet I wanted and decided how much I was willing to pay. In the end I got about 20-25% off the price of the carpet but experienced barterers say they could have got 40-50% knocked off. But hey, I was happy with the carpet and the price I paid so I've no issues.
I hadn't got enough money to pay cash so I produced the credit card, signed the receipt along with a couple of other documents, which I was told were local government documents (and they looked the part). Now when the proprietor was filling out the receipt he asked what the date was so I immediately assumed the front about his birthday was to put us in a good mood in the hope we would not barter him down and we left. (Had he really forgotten what day his birthday was on). I smiled and assumed that was all part of the bartering experience and we left, carpet in hand and went on to a restaurant.
When we got back from India I checked my credit card statement and I immediately noticed an entry I could not account for. It wasn't for much, 2700 rupees, for a company called Textiles Fair Jaipur but I simply could not match the entry up with any receipts and neither my wife nor myself could recall what it was for. So I rang the credit card company and requested the receipt and the transaction has been marked as in dispute. They sent my mother-in-law a copy of the receipt for us to check the signature, which my father did (We currently live in Sri Lanka and all my post goes to either my father or my mother-in-law in the UK). It matched. However, it was not the orginal receipt but a photocopy. I can guarantee I did not sign for it but I assume that the bogus receipt was placed under one the the documents I signed. Interestingly the transaction of the bogus receipt was 1 minute after the legitimate receipt. i.e. Jalmahal Carpets was 20:02 and Textiles Fair Jaipur was 20:03.
Alarmingly I also came across this thread, http://www.indiamike.com/india/archive/index.php/t-7162.html. Another person had been to the same shop and had one legitimate and one bogus transaction placed against their card using exactly the same two companies. So this appears to be a not uncommon occurrance with this shop.
Needless to say I have no intention of paying the bill. The amount is imaterial. I just don't like to be conned. It will be interesting to see the reaction of my credit card company. I assume I am not liable until the original, pen written receipt is produced but I know nothing about law. You'd assume that once a few people had complained about this the credit card companies would have some sort of agreement where they take the criminal to court and got him locked up ...
Anyway I thought I'd write this blog entry in case anyone else got caught out using this shop and does a search like I did on google. At least they will have two people to back up their claims of being conned.