Scams you've encountered

[ZorroFonzarelli]

Anyone under 40 paying into Social Security.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Scams? What Scams? I'm too busy waiting for my billions that I won in a random British Lottery to care about you fools being scammed!!! I gave them my account details hours ago! Any minute now and so long suckers!

 

[The Floating Nose]

For me the biggest scam that i fell victim for was the "Get Xbox Live GOLD for a month for 2$ only !" When i saw this i was like "OH gee ! What a deal, it's probably to give a chance to those who don't have gold, a chance to play for a while for cheap !" WRONG !!!! Right when the konth ends, there's some kind of shit where they automatically renew your xbox live gold memebership. Which means that every month or 2 they take money from your credit card WITHOUT TELLING YOU ! So what i have to do was call "Microsoft Canada HQ" for it do be disabled. It's probably in the contract that you "agree" to when you pay your 2 dollars for the gold membership...but who seriously reads those contracts ?

Wait what? You signed up for a subscription service and feel its a scam when they take the sub out?

There are some dodgy subscription scams out there, but thats so far from one it never sent a christmas card let alone bothered to remove the scammy ones from its list......

I wasn't talking about the 2$ for the sub. When the 2 $ sub was over they took another 20 or 30 $ from my credit card because they thought i was going to renew my subscription for another 2 or 3 months.

 

[Hexenwolf]

That's not a scam, that's called working for commission.

It's not that they rip you off. It's that, unless you know a lot of rich people or are in an area without a lot competition, you end up getting payed far less then minimum wage for a job that works you to death.

Ok, true, still not a scam.

My brother worked for them for a while, and was actually doing quite well for himself. He quit because he didn't like being a salesman, but calling them a scam is flat out wrong. The knives are incredibly good.

 

[Queen Michael]

My mother bought a copy of "Who's Who Among American High School Students". That's a scam.

What is it?

Parents of High school students got a letter claiming that their child(ren) were selected to appear in Who's Who, making it sound as if it's some great honor, when in truth the "nomination" process was unclear. Sometimes children who actually have achievements get nominated, and sometimes children with no discernible achievements get nominated. In any case, the letter promised there is no cost to be listed in their book, but recommended parents buy an expensive, professionally-bound copy (I believe for something like $70). If they do so, they get a book where their child's name is listed on one line among thousands of other names.

Basically they played on parents' vanity and desire for recognition for their children in order to make money. They promised that being listed in the book will help with college applications,despite admissions officers saying they see being listed as irrelevant at best and slightly negative at worst. They also didn't fact-check or confirm their listings, so in at one case as a joke a school sent in a joke listing and it was printed despite the school later contacting the company and requesting the nomination be withdrawn.

The company is now bankrupt though, so it's no longer a going concern. But my mother still has the book(s) on the shelf. Right next to the encyclopaediae from 1988 that no one reads anymore.

Holy spit, those books are real? Go figure.

 

[Mr.Cynic88]

I recently received an automated cold call from somebody with a nigerian-esque accent saying that if I donated money to him, he would pray for me. Being both logical and an atheist, I hung up, but I'm sure there are plenty of old/religious people who may have taken the bait.

Is that a scam, though? If they really do pray for you, then it's paying for a service. Sure, a service that does nothing, but it's not like he promised for a god to help you if you donated.

Haha, I hadn't looked at it that way. Still, call my cynical, but I don't think the automated message from Africa had any intention of actually providing a service.

 

[Petromir]

For me the biggest scam that i fell victim for was the "Get Xbox Live GOLD for a month for 2$ only !" When i saw this i was like "OH gee ! What a deal, it's probably to give a chance to those who don't have gold, a chance to play for a while for cheap !" WRONG !!!! Right when the konth ends, there's some kind of shit where they automatically renew your xbox live gold memebership. Which means that every month or 2 they take money from your credit card WITHOUT TELLING YOU ! So what i have to do was call "Microsoft Canada HQ" for it do be disabled. It's probably in the contract that you "agree" to when you pay your 2 dollars for the gold membership...but who seriously reads those contracts ?

Wait what? You signed up for a subscription service and feel its a scam when they take the sub out?

There are some dodgy subscription scams out there, but thats so far from one it never sent a christmas card let alone bothered to remove the scammy ones from its list......

I wasn't talking about the 2$ for the sub. When the 2 $ sub was over they took another 20 or 30 $ from my credit card because they thought i was going to renew my subscription for another 2 or 3 months.

Thats how a subscription works........ To get out of reoccurring payments you pay higher prices.......

 

[dfphetteplace]

I had people call me saying they were going to arrest for for failure to pay something (might have been taxes or something). They said the sheriffs department had already been contacted and were ready to arrest me if I didn't pay immediately. What the person on the other side didn't know is that I personally know the sheriff of my county and almost all the deputies. So there was no way they were going to intimidate me. I asked him what county they were contacting. They got very pissed off and started yelling at me that I was going to be arrested. I said that was fine, and I looked forward to my day in court. They quickly hung up.

 

[Rylee Fox]

Mine are all basic email scams. Things I'm sure most of you have encountered yourselves.

I once got an email saying there was a complaint to the BBB about my company and I had to supply all sorts of information to do something about it. Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize I do not own any company. I also get a lot of mail saying I'm trying to sell my runescape/Diablo 3/WoW accounts and they want my account information to stop the mails. Funny thing is that I don't have an account with any of those.

Like I said, nothing fancy.

 

[Queen Michael]

My great-uncle got some email from someone who claimed to be a war victim in need of funds. He fell for it, but luckily didn't lose too much money.

 

[The Name's Bond]

I have this fantastic video of one of my high school drama students putting a Windows Support scammer onto his alter ego 'Aunty Ehtel'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALeI_LhCF1Q

 

[Quadocky]

Probably one scam that I fell for was one that was an appeal to emotion. It was very clever actually, I even knew he was a scammer but went through with it anyway because morality.

Of course, in the end they got banned and probably lost maybe nigh a $1000 in software.

But really though, how greedy and manipulative and anti-social do you have to be to try to scam people on a closed system like Steam? The person was obviously intelligent enough to string along quite a bunch of coherent sentences that could easily convince most people yet not enough to realize that the system they are using pretty much logs every transaction and that they will only end up unhappy in the end.

 

[Xannidel]

A few years ago my grandmother got a call from some people saying that their grandson, aka me, was recently in an automobile accident and needed a lot of money to pay my medical bill. When "I" talked to her "I" sounded really mucked up which I suppose COULD happen depending on how bad of an accident I was really in. "I" was apparently really rude as were the people calling and luckily my grandmother called my dad to see if this really happened. It did not happen and it makes me sad as a human being that people would act so rude to an grandmother who is around 80-85 years old. My dad also got a phone call within the next hour or so with the same bull. The problem was that I was talking to him face to face when the call came through so when he answered it he handed me the phone and I gave them a piece of my mind. We could not track them through their fax number or anything like that either which sucked but we never heard from them again.

What also freaked me out was that I have a special nickname for my grandmother and the person who was supposed to be me actually knew that nickname. That REALLY creeps me out that someone would know that nickname and use it to try and get money out of it.

 

[Riddle78]

I remember this one because of just how painfully obvious it was.

I'm a fairly computer savvy person. I can easily diagnose issues with my computer,and realize when something is wrong at it's earliest stages. So,I REPEATEDLY get calls from this guy claiming to be from Microsoft,saying that they received a notification that my computer "may or may not have a fatal software error",and they required me to open a tunnel to their network so they can "diagnose" it. I knew immediately that they were just fishing for network information,or passwords,or some other such shenanigans,as Microsoft would never take the initiative on something like that,instead reacting to a call from a customer. I outright told the guy that I know exactly what I'm doing with my computer,and he can take his half-baked scam and stick it where it fits.

And then he called two weeks later. The conversation was him getting halfway through his introduction,with me cutting him off with, "We already went down this road. Stick it where it fits,con man." Never got a call from him again.