DAYS after the police reported that more than 80 per cent of calls to the 119 emergency number are prank calls, a popular fast food restaurant has revealed that it is facing a similar problem.

The fast food franchise, whose name is being withheld, told the Jamaica Observer that credit card fraud and prank calls have been hampering its operations, causing much frustration among its workers and customers.

An assistant manager for the franchise said more than 10 prank calls are usually made to its numbers each week.

“We will get the calls, but we have a system that the [bike delivery] riders have to call the customers before leaving the store, although you have instances where the riders don’t call. So, they will arrive at the location [and] persons would say they didn’t order anything,” he told the Observer.

“Sometimes when we call the number that is listed, the person would say they didn’t order anything so we do not know how the numbers have been accessed to make the call for the delivery,” he added.

As for card scams, the assistant manager said he has received complaints from people about their credit card information being used to purchase food.

“It is very frustrating. The problems come back to my desk, or you will have customers calling and crying that their cards have been used and they changed the card and it is still happening,” he said.

“But one has to ask the question, how do these people get other people’s information? Because I have an instance where a customer called — and she had just pulled her credit card out of the envelope — and she went to one place and the card never left her side, but yet still she was sitting there watching the text messages coming in and she had to call the bank to have them block the card,” he added.

In the meantime, the assistant manager said there has been some upgrading of the franchise’s security systems to lessen the issues.

He said that the role of these systems includes tracking the history of food orders made by recurring customers for any suspicious activity.

“We put systems in place to help us be more aware or raise a certain suspicion of a certain dollar value and the condiments being added to the particular product, because you would now question the credibility of the client and then also check the order history for this client,” he added.

“Once there is a track record of history you look back to see if the orders would be the same but if it is an account that was just created it will be flagged and logged. That is how we try our best to minimise, but we cannot do it alone. There is a trend… and it is not going to get relinquished overnight,” he lamented.