Be Excellent To Each Other

I got cashback from the local sainsburries last night, and looking at it now, I think it might be a fake.

Can I take it back if I have the receipt?

Students, with £20 notes?

Fake, surely.

Not a hope, can you prove it was that £20 note... sorry dude.

take it to the police station. Or the bank. If you try and pay for something with it, they will (or should) call the police.

Almost certainly no, otherwise this would be a perfect way for counterfeiters to get their dodgy money into circulation.

The receipt is of zero use in proving that they gave you it, so really there's no chance of that.

Don't you folks check stuff at the tills....

Scan it in and we'll check it for you

It's your responsibility now, Lewie. The best thing to do is to take it to your bank and ask them to check its veracity. If it's real then great, if it's not then it will be destroyed by the bank and thus taken out of circulation, thereby preventing it from inconveniencing anyone else. If it is fake, you will have lost twenty quid and that's tough, but you will have done the right thing by removing it from circulation.

As a last resort, you could write to the head office for the shop that handed the note to you and hope that they give you the benefit of the doubt. They might give you a voucher to use in store, or something, but I wouldn't count on it.

Damn it.

Lesson learned. Check your change.

Have you ever worked with cash? It get's to be that you can tell a dodgy note by touch alone.

Page 3 of this Bank of England guide actually advises you to take the note to the Police as holding on to a fake note is in and of itself a criminal offence, although I appreciate you are only suspicious of it at this stage:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/kyb_lo_res.pdf

So take it to the Police.

Or you take it back to the shop that gave it to you, try and spend it, and plead ignorance if it's caught as a fake, before complaining it was that shop that gave it to you, and then taking it to the police.

Edit -- see, taking it straight to the police is clearly the right moral answer, but costs £20. My Devil's Advocaat suggestion leaves you back where you started if it works out. I am the evil voice of temptation.

Nah, I'll go back, and explain what happened, but not ask for a refund or anything, just explain that I later thought the note might be fake, and that I'm going to hand it in.

If they offer me a refund, great. They do know me as "the guy who is always friendly".

Ah, but if he walks into the polis station they'll arrest him for possession of counterfeit money. Like what they did wi' that sodjer.

But that army guy took a gun into the police and he was only doing a good deed but he had the gun so they arrested him and he has to be killed at the steak now because of it.

OH FFS WULLIE

Aye, they gave him a severe grilling

That's what I'd do. Sainsbury's customer service have always been bang on in the past with me, though obviously it's a much more unusual case. Worst case is you don't get your money back, but that's what'll happen if you take it to the police anyway.

Even if it's not loaded.

Heh, I did see that parrallel before I posted this.

When you take it out in the police station, make sure the Queen's Head is pointing at the wall! I was in the ArmyBanking Sector so I know this.

In before Sinister Agent's "I have handled a lot of £20 notes, don't be such a jessie" post.

Does it have the EURion Constellation on it?

Further proof they are controlling us.

Hang on, wrong forum.

Pretty awesome idea, mind you.

Two words: Poker game.

I thought we were friends.

I have no excuse. I will, of course, commit suicide immediately