I don't see how it was inappropriate. The thread asked about scams, I posted scams.Queen Michael said:
Scams you've encountered
- Thread starter triggrhappy94
- Start date
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.Hexenwolf said:
I wasn't going to say anything. But please try to keep the gun stuff to either thread explicitly about guns or (more preferably) the RnP section.spartan231490 said:
I encountered Vector myself. They sent this brochure with pictures of young people in suits working in a business environment, but when I got to the building it was a rundown rented out space that sold knives. I immediately turned them down.
There are a couple of scams that run amongst the homeless/barely employed where I'm from. One is called the 'Pigeon Drop' where some guy claims to have found a bag of money and wants to "go find the legitimate owner" , but he wants to leave the money with you. Somehow, they're supposed to be able to convince you that in order to leave the cash with you, you have to give them collateral while they go off looking for blah blah blah. What usually happens is the victim loses maybe $50 and are left with a bag of miscellaneous paper, like a phone book, instead of actual cash. I can't believe that crap actually works, but it does.
There was another bizarre scam (I think it was a scam?) involving vacuum cleaners. There's this excellent brand of vacuum, I think it was Kirby, and the "salespeople" go door to door, showing people how good the vacuum is. Unfortunately it's usually young kids who claim they're trying to sell units in order to "win a trip to _______". And to get into your house this one girl offered me a free 2-liter of Pepsi. Wait, it gets weirder...
So the girl starts vacuuming areas of my house, the few carpets I had, and removes the filter after each pass and sure enough, it caught a lot of fine dust that normal vacuums don't catch. I kept asking her how much but she kept saying, "Wait, wait, there's more, let me show you." After maybe 30 minutes there are filters with dust sitting on them all around the house and she finally tells me how much: $900. I reacted, saying that was way more than I would pay for a vacuum, no matter how good it was. She immediately packs up and leaves, leaving all of these dust covered filters throughout my house.
The end result is that some poor girl vacuumed my house and left me with a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi, which I promptly emptied into the sink and recycled. Was it a scam or was it a hard-sell tactic? Either way, I don't think she did it right. A strange, beat up van came driving by and she jumped into the back.
So the girl starts vacuuming areas of my house, the few carpets I had, and removes the filter after each pass and sure enough, it caught a lot of fine dust that normal vacuums don't catch. I kept asking her how much but she kept saying, "Wait, wait, there's more, let me show you." After maybe 30 minutes there are filters with dust sitting on them all around the house and she finally tells me how much: $900. I reacted, saying that was way more than I would pay for a vacuum, no matter how good it was. She immediately packs up and leaves, leaving all of these dust covered filters throughout my house.
The end result is that some poor girl vacuumed my house and left me with a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi, which I promptly emptied into the sink and recycled. Was it a scam or was it a hard-sell tactic? Either way, I don't think she did it right. A strange, beat up van came driving by and she jumped into the back.
This last one isn't a scam, but it's kind of funny. So over a year ago AT&T enacted a maximum download capacity of 150GB per month for regular DSL customers. People who have their super fast UVerse service have a cap of 200GB. I noticed that somebody on my block recently installed UVerse because AT&T people in blue or orange shirts were going house to house trying to sell the service--and hopefully recover some of the cost. A few weeks later someone from AT&T called me asking if I knew about UVerse. I told him I didn't want it because of the 200GB download cap, and in return he basically accused me of downloading illegally. But here's the deal:
I say to the guy, If I'm getting streaming HDTV along with VOIP AND internet, while I have in my house a PS3, 360, Wii, 2 tower PCs and 2 laptops, I could EASILY surpass the 200GB monthly limit. I only have Netflix and Amazon right now, and I always default to the lowest definition picture. There was a pause, and I thought he was going to counterattack with a sales pitch. More seconds go by and all of a sudden he screams, "YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU'RE RIGHT!!!" He launches into a tirade about AT&T and how the other departments were sabotaging his job, so I tried to calm him down. "NO! WE'RE ENTITLED TO OUR OPINIONS!" he continued. He finally thanked me and hung up. I feel bad. I think I got him fired.
I say to the guy, If I'm getting streaming HDTV along with VOIP AND internet, while I have in my house a PS3, 360, Wii, 2 tower PCs and 2 laptops, I could EASILY surpass the 200GB monthly limit. I only have Netflix and Amazon right now, and I always default to the lowest definition picture. There was a pause, and I thought he was going to counterattack with a sales pitch. More seconds go by and all of a sudden he screams, "YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU'RE RIGHT!!!" He launches into a tirade about AT&T and how the other departments were sabotaging his job, so I tried to calm him down. "NO! WE'RE ENTITLED TO OUR OPINIONS!" he continued. He finally thanked me and hung up. I feel bad. I think I got him fired.
Wait what? You signed up for a subscription service and feel its a scam when they take the sub out?The Floating Nose said:
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......
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!
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.Petromir said:
Ok, true, still not a scam.triggrhappy94 said:
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.
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.Lieju said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALeI_LhCF1Q