JCPenny Employee stole my money, store ignored it, refused to check cameras, wouldn't get back to me. Middletown, New York

Live and learn.

I hear this all the time.  You cannot demand to see anything.  The video is the sole property of the store, it is not your right.  Why no receipt?  You give your money to people without proof? 

Live and learn.

" Warn them to save reciepts and be vigilant "

The people reading this website already know to save proof of payment on a credit card bill until it clears. You shouldn't have to warn people to save reciepts, everyone should already be doing it.

Your main claim is that the Cashier must have stolen the money.  Well you have one major flaw with that....You GOT(but didn't keep) a receipt.  Had the cashier actually wanted to steal the money, they would have taken the money, pretended to process your payment, but since it was never actually processed a receipt would NOT have been generated. 

I demanded to see security footage since I knew it would show me paying my bill.
- You can "demand" all you want, but you are going to find it next to impossible that any store will let you see their security footage without a court order.

If I was, why would I ask to see footage of myself paying the bill?
- Because perhaps they were thinking that you knew they wouldn't show you the footage so it was a "safe" bluff.  After all a common "defense" of shoplifters is them saying "Why would they steal something when they have the money to pay for it". 

They never answered any of my questions regarding the event and I never found out what actually happened. (Was the employee really a thief or just incompetent? Was she fired or does she still work there?)
- Guess what.  That is NONE of your business what(if anything) happened to the employee(s).  That is an INTERNAL matter that is between the employee(s) and the management.

When it comes to money, stores have been around long enough that they have heard just about every "story" out there.  Where I bet that your "well I made my payment" is not new.  Unfortunately because there are people that would outright lie about this..yes even going so far as giving the detail you did they can not just take your word for it.  Even if they "caught it on camera", it may not be enough detail to prove you made a payment to YOUR account.  For all they know you did make a payment but you knew it was to another person's account.  So if they credit you, to this one you have just gotten away with paying on two accounts.

What happened..only they know.  Perhaps they went through the actual register records(if you were given a receipt, the register would have a copy of it as well).  Since it was a couple of months it may have taken a while for them to search back that far.  Perhaps they did find that the cashier did the payment incorrectly, perhaps it went to the wrong account.  Or perhaps it was something totally different. 

Believe me, now I keep EXTENSIVE records of everything and write down every cashiers name that I make a payment with.
- Extensive?  All you need to do is keep the receipt.

While only you were there, I would bet that both sides could have handled it differently.  It would be nice if they told you the reason they finally credited your account.  But it also may have been a better idea to not "demand" things and accuse the employee of theft with really no evidence.

I know that if I owned a company and I found out that an employee of mine could be stealing I would look into it. I would not lie to my customers, but would address their concerns. I would be more worried about keeping good customers than thiefing employees.

NO, I don't expect them to cancel out  the balance for anyone who shows up claiming the same, I expect them to LOOK INTO IT.

One of their employees stole my money. That is on them. If I had been mugged on the street and I went to the police describing where and when would they demand evidence on my part, or would they look into it? At least attempt to find out what happened? I wish now that I had gone to the police. I was the one wronged here. The company had stolen from me and then ignored and covered it up.

Yes, I may have lost a reciept from weeks prior. I had never before thought that something like this would ever happen. Believe me, now I keep EXTENSIVE records of everything and write down every cashiers name that I make a payment with.

If the company had said that they checked the tapes and saw me paying the cashier, but couldn't conclusively tell exactly what happened, at least it would have been SOMETHING. At least I'd know they were trying. As I said before the thing that bothered me above all else was the way I was treated by the company. The absolute least they could have done was show respect for a previously loyal customer. I felt they could not have handled it much worse than they did. Which is why I am just trying to warn other customers. Warn them to save reciepts and be vigilant, and warn them that this company treats customers like crap and doesn't care if their employees steal.

The cashier probably had you figured, safely assuming he/she could pocket the cash on the assumption you weren't likely to keep the receipt for the payment.

Even were they to produce video footage of you and the cashier, that video would not likely have enough macro detail to determine exactly what you were paying for.

You learned an expensive lesson both about paying such bills in cash, and not keeping proof of payment.

What exactly would you expect the company to do weeks later, lacking any proof you paid them?

You think they're just gonna cancel out the balance for anyone who shows up claiming the same?

If when I first went to the store to tell them what had happened, When I told them the date, time, and register I had paid at and the amount, asking them to check the cameras; If they had looked at the camera, called me back, and told me that they did see me paying, apologized to me and refunded their error than I would have happily continued shopping at JCPenney.
I have certainly had experiences at other stores where I've had problems. Say, a sign said one price, but the item rings up another. The store apologizes and I accept and continue to shop there. But that is NOT what happened at JCPenney. The Middletown location did not apologize, lied saying they would get back to me, but never did. They didn't care enough about their employees stealing to check the security tapes. They did nothing but blame me for their mistakes and then ignore and insult me.
The corporate office after weeks of letters did reverse the fees. I was trying to be fair to the company and include this fact. This complaint was not against the corporate office, it was against the store that had stolen from me and then ignored me. Perhaps other JCPenney stores would care if their employees stole people's money and would have checked the cameras. I wouldn't know. I felt I was never justified because everyone acted like it was MY fault and not the employee who did this to me. Everyone blamed the victim because I would have never previously thought that I would have to save reciepts from weeks before. After finding out someone had stolen from me, I was told over and over it was my own fault for not doing that and that no one would believe me. No one thought it was the store's fault for stealing from me in the first place, no one thought that the store should check the cameras which would prove me right. If the store had nothing to hide, why wouldn't they at least check the tapes?
I find it very interesting that the store never ever got back to me, the company took weeks to address my issue, but I put a complaint on a website and they get back to that in 24 hours? Shows where their priorities are I guess.

This just goes to show your continued poor customer service. Continuing to blame the victim of the theft rather than look into what the company did wrong (Ignoring theft in the company, insulting the customer rather than apologize). This is exactly why I reported it. Because JCPenney continued to blame me and never gave me any answers about what happened to my money. Your response makes me even angrier than I already was. If people want to be treated like garbage, lied to, stolen from, and ignored than by all means shop at JCPenney. But I will keep trying to inform the public about how they treat customers because I think people deserve fair warning. If this happened to you, how would it make you feel? Look at how rude they are being to me after all this, would you want to be treated like this? Of course I'm upset. It was always less about the money than about principle to me.

You were issued a credit without a receipt but you still chose to file a Ripoff Report against JCP. That is an unfair act on your part. This report says more good than bad about JCP.