Many customers of San Diego-based Colima's Mexican Food are reporting fraudulent charges on their credit cards, but the restaurant is saying it is a simple mistake.
"Heads up! We love Colima's Mexican Food on University and go there often," read a thread by user @rubberwhisk posted to the San Diego Reddit Page on January 20, 2022. "We've been eating at home all year and noticed 2 charges for Colima’s that we didn’t make. A friend that also goes often has a charge on his account from when he was out of town. If you frequent the San Diego Burrito like me, check your statements! We notified our banks and they’re investigating."
"From September through December, our merchant services company was not taking money out of the account of customers who paid by credit and debit card, so people were not actually charged at point of sale for their orders," explained Colima's Mexican Food General Manager Elmer. "When we noticed that the money in our bank account was actually going down, we called the bank and explained what was going on. People were coming in and actually never getting charged during those three months, over 28,000 transactions just pending on there. So we asked our bank to help us out. There is a lot of money just sitting there. We were actually about to close the restaurant, and we are a family-fun eatery that has been here for over 20 years. The bank said they could help us out, so now they are going back and charging those transactions. We are not committing fraud or anything like that. We have to recoup money so we don't have to close the store. A lot of people knew they were getting free food and nobody told us anything. People can double check their bank statements from back in September - December 2021 that there was no transactions made from Colima's. I just hope our customers can be honest about it."
According to public records, Colima's Mexican Food at 2302 University Avenue in San Diego is owned by Ramon Verduzco Jr. and Graciela Verduzco. Colima's opened its North Park location in 1999 and is known as a 24-hour destination for Mexican food in San Diego.
