A PROMINENT Hamilton business owner has warned of taking phone orders which were paid by credit card after his business got scammed of about $950 this week.

Speaking with The Spectator and asking not to be named, the owner said an employee took a call to order an item not in stock, but then the customer later requested a majority refund, claiming they just wanted to pay the deposit.

“She’s rung back a bit later,” he said.

“We don’t write down people’s card numbers, so she’s given him … a different card (number), which obviously we didn’t pick that up, we just take it on good faith.

“But it was obviously (originally) someone’s stolen card.

“So we’ve refunded back to the scammers and still have to refund the money back to whoever’s card was used because we’re actually liable for it because we didn’t put the money back on the original card number.”

The owner said the deceit would’ve been detected if the employee had checked the last four digits of the original EFTPOS transaction and hoped making the criminal tactic known would save other local businesses the same loss.