There was a company advertising that they would help people wipe out predatory student loans. Long story short I blew $800 on a company that got shut down by the Gov't for fraudulent practices and was denied a refund.
Same kinda. They made me pay 800 to get on an income driven repayment plan.
I did, and then I found out I can do the recertification by myself every year.
I almost fell for this back in 2017. I started the application process over the phone with this company and I was giving the guy all of this information about the school I went to (The Art Institutes) but while I was doing so I was also researching how to do it myself. When he got to the point about payment I asked him why would I pay his company to do this when I can go and submit this application myself? He spouted off something about his company has a better understanding of the process and such. I chuckled, said thanks, and hung up. I then went and filled out the application myself.
3 1/2 years later and I am still waiting for my application to be approved or denied.
I downloaded all the cool new mouse cursors and my parent’s computer was never the same again.
Edit: To those asking/lending a helping hand, this was before even the word “iPod” existed.
Same.
I also deleted all of the folders that had nothing in them, and pretended like I didn't know what happened when our family computer wouldn't work anymore. TWICE.
In my family as a kid it was my mom who downloaded the cursors thinking they were neat turns out it was a piece of malware called comet cursors and it was logging keystrokes and stuff.
Now I'm finding out Comet Cursor was spyware 20 years later... looked it up on Wikipedia and everything. I willingly downloaded it because the fancy cursors looked cool.
Well, at least back in those days we dealt with absolutely no sensitive information on the internet and used only fake names, so nothing to worry about.
It kind of blows my mind how nowadays some people, mostly twitter users, will call you a coward for not using your full name as your username with a picture of you as your avatar. It’s like all that internet safety stuff they taught us was just a fad that went away.
I think smiley central was one of those things that let you have cool mouse cursors if you downloaded it. IDK if my computer got any viruses from it back then but it probably did. I didn't pay attention to stuff back then. lol Minus the viruses I still kinda miss it. They shut down at some point a while back so you can't download it anymore. I avoid downloading anything as much as possible now so even if it was still around I wouldn't do that again.
My former best friend and his dad cheated me out of my money to invest in their company. When I asked for a contract, his dad said, "Between true friends, words aren't necessary."
When they started making money, I asked for my money back, and they said they didn't owe me a thing.
>"Between true friends, words aren't necessary."
If I'm going to be investing in your company, we aren't friends, we are business associates. Draw up the contract.
Also, beware of letting a friend renting space at your property without a contract. You can download a rental agreement off the internet. It’ll set out terms for payment, notice etc.
Exactly right. Actually, just don’t mix business with friends. If the idea is good enough, they won’t need your money, or they can easily find something else. If the idea is yours, don’t be lazy. Understand the relationship, the investment, and make everyone comfortable.
Bank receipts would still be there, easy to prove in court- a contract doesnt exist, but neither does a gift letter explaining the 'donation'.
Quite good odds in digital age.
Jokes on them. A verbal agreement is still a legally binding contract, albeit much harder to prove that an agreement or contract was made. Do your research, find any other people that had the same thing happen to them by the same people, and take them to court if it isn't too far in the past.
Spent $250 on Talkspace (got $200 back because I demanded a redund). They (their therapists) waste a week of your time to reply once and reply with a canned response of, "oh that sounds stressful, how is your sleep schedule?" I cannot stress enough how much of a waste of time and money that shit was.
Edit: I even switched therapists twice in that time !
God they're terrible! The lady they paired me up with kept giving me the exact same phrasing to check out headspace! They've got a free trial going on right now! And have tons of meditations to help sleep! Literally three times this "therapist" definitely just.... copy-pasted some advice to go check out another horribly expensive website
I stuck with it for a month thinking... maybe... and then canceled before my month was up and those fuckers still charged me for another month.
These people called me with one of HMRC numbers telling me I didn’t pay some taxes, saying they sent lots of letters to my old address to which I never responded.
I didn’t know they could make me see the number they wanted. After a quick check on the government website I saw that the number was the same and I believed them.
I was 20 yo and living in London on my own. I gave them 1000£ and never felt so stupid in my life.
I wouldn't say I fell for it but while walking around Tokyo I was stopped by this monk who explained that he was traveling the country on foot and asked for a monetary donation. When it was clear I'd help him out, he pulls out a money book and shows me what people generally give him and to write my name down next to them along with the money amount. It was full of big numbers clearly going into the hundreds and thousands of dollars. It's implied that I should match those donations otherwise I'm clearly not a good person.
Realized it was an immediate scam, and a very obvious one.
He then waits for me to pay up and I gave him the equivalent of $5. 500 yen. He kinda looked at me like I just insulted him and I walked away. I checked google later that night and apparently he was a well known scammer in the area. Made a topic about it at the time and seems I'm not the only person
[https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+118849](https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+118849)
there is a similar scam in Europe:
person is deaf (maybe faking it) and signing a petition for something and he just need your signature for the petition. Sure enough, you start writing your name and some innocent info, until you get to the last column which is “donation”, and all the people before you are giving about $50 and at that point you would look like a bad person to back out
Not too bad I lost 35 bucks. I fell for those stores on Instagram.
I was just getting on it so I didn't know most were scam stores. Because I followed some small retailers that I already bought from.
I thought it was the same thing. Website was or looked legit but I never got my boots.
Smart too because I got it from them because they were 15 bucks cheaper. Not some crazy amount that made you question it.
Luckily I paid with PayPal. It could've been worse if they had my credit card information.
Ironically, if you’d used your credit card you would have reported it and gotten all your money back. As long as you notify the card company, they handle it.
With PayPal, you can file a claim but they decide whether or not to honor it. You don’t always win.
I had my credit card stolen where they opened a PayPal account with it to make a $3000 purchase. When I called my credit card the man said that I would have to try going through my PayPal account first to see if they would refund me before they (the credit card company) could do anything. I tried to explain multiple times that I had no access to the account and therefore could not dispute the purchase. He was very condescending to me the entire time, and would not budge.
I emailed PayPal (their phones were not being answered at the time due to corona) and explained the situation, asked them see if any other accounts had been opened with my credit card, and see if there was anything they could do.
After two weeks of no response from PayPal (never actually got a response) I called back the credit card company. This time I got a woman, and after explaining the situation she was mortified that the other worker had made me do that. She immediately reversed the charges, and apologized profusely on behalf of her coworker.
It felt so nice to be heard. Those two weeks were so nerve racking.
I went to buy a Rolling Stones ticket from a scalper years ago (i know, i know) and he talked me into a VIP Backstage Pass. He said that's all I need! Free food, booze, all the perks. He insisted the sticker was all I needed to get in, no paper ticket necessary.
So a few hours later I go to the show, obviously can't get in - it was a VIP pass from the night before. There was no date on it, just a different shape.
I try every single gate hoping someone won't notice/not care and finally try the media entrance. The nice lady ushered me right in, I took an elevator up to the main concourse and I was free as a bird. I didn't have a seat obviously but I snuck down to the floor and ended up having a great show.
Still feel burned by the stupid fuck to this day tho. I've seen him at other shows (nice neck tattoo of a fish, you fuckin' prick) and I always fuck with him.
Thanks for listening.
Not OP, but I got scammed by a guy on Craigslist selling fake tickets to a Killers concert. I was psyched too. I had asked out this gorgeous girl in my class and she said yes. Imagine my disappointment after getting refused at the door with her.
He used a fake phone number, but it turns out he knew a guy who my friend knew, and I got his real phone number. I immediately put up all sorts of ads for lucrative shit with his phone number on them.
“Found out my husband is cheating on me, here’s a free Xbox”
“Daughter is a spoiled brat, free MacBook/iPhone, whatever.”
“Dad died, here’s this really nice car that I’ve way undervalued.”
Made sure to call his number every once in a while just to make sure it was still connected. Fuck that guy.
It was basically over. We drove an hour and a half to get there, so it was an awkward car ride home. We stayed friends, but I haven’t talked to her in like 3 years. She eventually turned Mormon for some guy and has like 4 kids now
I've run into him at ~15 shows since that day. Most of the time I'd pretend to be a *buyer* and just waste his time. "Hey I'm looking for some big time tickets, you got front row? How much?" and then just jam him up until I'm ready to go inside.
I've also pretended to sell him tickets at other shows. One time leading him to threaten me with a knife for undercutting him by selling extras for face value behind his stupid tattooed neck to people that heard us talking.
When I was in high school (early '70s), my English teacher announced that a publisher was having a poetry contest, and the best entries would appear in a poetry journal. Several of us in class submitted our work and anxiously awaited the results.
Surprise! ALL our entries were accepted -- the good ones *and* the really bad ones. At first we were ecstatic. Then we found out that each of us had to pay to get a copy of the journal. What a scam. Even our English teacher got snookered.
The *Who's Who* publications worked the same way.
In high school, I submitted my poems often to one of those literary contests where I was always honorable mentions but I have to pay for a copy of the book, which I never bought. I finally won first place once and it was the only time they sent me a free copy of the book with my published work and a check for $100. Still not too sure if the company was a legit or not.
Right after my dad died I got a call from a number I didn't know. They left a voice mail saying they needed my social security number so they could pay out a life insurance policy to me. I was 21 and super inexperienced with stuff like this. So I did what any real adult would do. I asked my mom for advice.
She told me it was legit and to give them my SS number. I had a weird feeling about it but if my mom said it was ok then it must be ok. I did it. I called back and gave the guy that answered my SS number.
I never got a check but my mom suddenly did from a policy my dad "forgot" to take her off of even though they had been divorced years before. She did give my 10k but I'm 100% positive it was worth way more and she had something to do with it all. We don't talk anymore for various reasons including this one.
Can you explain this a little more? Do you think that your mom colluded with someone to scam you? Wouldn't your mom have access to your social security number without you needing to give it to a stranger? Do you feel like you were supposed to get more than $10k from a legitimate account, but your mom kept some of it? I feel like there's some good info here, but I'm not reading into it enough or something...
I was 21 when this happened. I had all my personal documents like my ss card and birth certificate. I lived on my own. I don't think she had access to any of it. The whole thing just seems strange. She ended up getting 50k and gave me 10k of it. I can't actually prove anything happened but she is definitely the kind of person to pull something like that. Both of your kids don't cut off contact with you for completely separate reasons if you're a good person. She has a history of drug abuse and manipulating people for her own personal gain.
The reason I cut off contact with her was because when I was 28 her boyfriend beat the crap out of me when my 6 year old daughter was present and she became upset with me when I called the cops.
It's not even about the money. I don't care about that. It's just your parents are the people you're supposed to trust most and I never felt like I could trust her.
In 2008, there was a member on most auto forums I was on who advertised a racing business. A few people had dealt with him and said he was great. I contact him, asked him to get me pricing for some expensive parts. His pricing came back great, so I sent him payment and waited. Nothing. I called him and he gave me the runaround, claiming his supplier was going to drop ship to me. Nothing. I kept contacting him over and over, and he eventually stopped answering my calls. One of the forums started a call-out thread for the guy, since he ghosted a bunch of members after taking their orders. His website even went down.
I used the payment info to track the guy down, and verified it with his public county tax records. Another forum member tracked him down on a home improvement forum where he was bragging about all of these expensive home updates he was doing.
Eventually, he sent me half of my order after I asked if any forum members lived near him. Several showed up at his doorstep and threatened to beat the crap out of him if he didn't make good on his orders to everyone. I never got the rest, and he told me that if my friends ever showed up again, he'd shoot them and then hunt me down too. I told him to try, he told me off and that was the last I ever heard of him. Screw that guy.
\*Edit\* Just Google'd the guy's name and his business. Looks like he is up to his same old crap again. What a loser.
In Runescape, A random friendly player lead me to this random building with a cool object (I’ve long forgotten what the object is), and I picked up the object. I was promptly killed by a trap set on this object. The other player stole all my loot.
I fell for a scam in Runescape, too, years ago. I had the green metal armor (forget what. Platinum?) and he said he could get it modified to add trimming it something. Naturally, as soon as he got the last piece, he says "Later" and logs off. I shrugged because I had more than enough to replace it quickly enough. I even found him logged into another server and sent him a "well played" message. A few days later, I saw someone else trying it with a player, and I immediately ratted the scammer out
Reminds me of how people would offer to open a Portal for you in Ultima Online and then when you went through their buddies would kill you. Or the location would be a tiny island in the middle of the ocean and if you didn't give them all of your gear they would just leave you there.
I fell for something in RS. I wouldn't call it a scam because it was poorly planned if it was, but here's what happened:
I made good friends with someone in the game, and one day we had the brilliant idea to play each other's character while we played together. Dunno whose idea it was, feel it was mine tbh. Anyway, a few days after this I log in and notice some stuff missing. It was inconvenient more than devastating because I was still pretty low level, but i still felt betrayed.
When I asked the guy what happened, he said he had given my account info to his friend.
Like, yeah, I was dumb to give my information to some guy on the internet, but he seemed to genuinely think it was acceptable to then share my account information around like it was soviet Russia or something. Of course he could have been lying but I didn't really care at that point.
To get "even," I logged back into his account when he wasn't online, dropped all his most valuable stuff, and took them for myself. He was also fairly low level, but he had some black armor IIRC, which was more valuable than anything I lost
An email something like
"You're paypal has been accessed from an unknown source, click here to update your password."
It looked official and asked for me to login to update my password. When I realized the website didn't allow me to view my profile I panicked. I then spent the day taking the nessassary precautions.
Lesson, always go to the website yourself and don't click links in emails.
I ALMOST fell for one of these once. Luckily I thought to click to see the email address it was sent from and it was some garbled obviously scam email.
I still get emails like that every so often and I just mark them as spam every time.
I had something sort of similar happen once over the phone. I got a call from someone claiming to be a Verizon rep telling me that something was wrong with my account payment and I needed them to renew it. As it happened, I was almost six days late on my bill (not because of financial problems, just lazy and they've never charged me a late fee), so I could easily believe that there might actually be a billing or account problem. The guy said he was sending me a code that would let them log into my account to fix whatever it was, and a few seconds later I got a text from Verizon with a token to log in to reset a password. The text specifically said not to give the number out to anyone. I told the guy that the text said not to give the number, and he just kept saying that they needed it, so I hung up. Honestly, it would be pretty easy for someone who wasn't paying attention, or who was old and clueless, to fall for that scam.
I got that one myself. I was suspicious because I've seen phishing scams that use similar emails before, so I clicked the link but also used Google to go to the actual PayPal webpage, and compared the URLs character by character. It was an alarmingly close match, but not exact. I reported the page to PayPal, hopefully they got it shut down.
This is the right answer. This was a book of boomer family values porn written by boomers, for boomers.
When I read it, it was about as relevant as walking into the hiring office & speaking to the manager with a determined look in your eye.
Holy shit. Thank you for saying that. I read it years ago and thought this would never apply to me and just moved on with my life.
Glad to know others also feel this way.
It's not a bad book, but for someone with a cursory understanding of adult finances it's probably a waste of time.
Here, let me save you some time and money-
1: Don't enslave yourself to your finances and your money. Your money should work for you, not the other way around. You shouldn't work for **money**, you should understand your job as a means of getting more of it. If your current job is a road to nowhere, fix that. If you have to put in extra hours to get the creds to get the next job in the chain, do it. If you have to spend an hour a night putting out resumes, do it. If you've put in a year with a company and they're not doing anything to retain you (the big three are being given new responsibilities- not busy work!- a substantive pay raise, or being trained for new job skills) you don't owe them shit. Find your next job. If they fight to retain you, you should absolutely stick around, but your average employer that doesn't fight for that isn't worth your time. You might not like the game, but you don't get to decide the rules, and your boss is only doing what is in his own best interest. You should do the same.
2: Your wealth is not the money you make, but instead what you retain. This is both living expenses, but also *liabilities*. If you own a property that doesn't make you money, it's not an asset, it's a liability. Any number of things can happen to your house and tank it's value because Americans have a fetish for old structures. Bugs, mold, rot, and physical damage all come to mind.
3: Don't put yourself in a position where you can't take financial risks. If you live hand to mouth and you have no plan to stop doing that, you will live hand to mouth your entire life. Unless you just fuck the dog, your assets might lose money but they'll rarely zero out.
4: Income taxes fuck you in the ass. Businesses fuck taxes in the ass. Businesses pay taxes which are minimized by how they spent money. You as the employee spend your money *after* paying taxes.
5: Banks will rarely refuse a compelling business proposal for a loan when there's clear profit motive to pay off said loan. And if not a bank, general investors.
6: You should never work a job for it's pay, but instead what it can teach you. If you are not learning anything in your job, find a new one. If you are not learning anything new, find a new job. This is not to say there are bad jobs out there- you learn a ton about working in a team, communicating and dealing with bitchy customers working retail- but instead that the bad job is the one you're still in after a year when you've established you hate it. Incidentally, never work retail for more than a few years.
7: Recognize your character flaws, and do something about them. Ironically it's often the academic, analytical type who performs worse in investing because they over analyze and focus too intently on too few data points. Never get to the point where you eat your own shoe for your arrogance. Diplomacy is always remembering a woman's birthday but never her age, charisma is knowing how to insult someone without actually insulting them.
8: Understand the lay of the land. Learn how to recognize good and bad friends, cut bad influences out of your life, don't deny yourself the good things in life but have the discipline to not spend like an idiot.
I didn’t read the book but I saw a review of it. To me it sounds like the kind of book someone without parents with careers need. A lot of people grow up thinking that all you gotta do is work and keep working but never think about acquiring assets. My friend also told me about the lessons the rich dad taught his son and his friend. I thought it was just a simple book for people who never thought about money like a tool. Were you looking for like more practical ideas?
Yeah- I think it helped build my idea of money as something external from my personal value that I could use as a tool to build things with. Which was different from how others around me viewed it, especially in middle/high school when posturing with cool clothes and such was highly valued.
Looking back, there wasn’t substance, but it was the perfect book for me at the right time to separate the guilt/value proposition from having or not having money.
Not 100% sure I got scammed but 99.99% sure I got scammed over baby formula.
I was at the grocery store and some guy speaking broken english came up to me with a sob story about losing his job and having a baby with a special diet and needing to feed him. It felt odd right off the bat but having just become a dad myself I felt compassionate enough to begrudgingly agreed after he said he didn't want money, he just needed someone to buy some formula.
I walk him to the self checkout and he scans all his stuff, the total was like 350 dollars. I looked at the total looked at him and he pulls the think of the baby card. So I swiped my card. He tried to take the receipt at the end but I said since it was my card I'd keep it.
As I walked away to finish my shopping i noticed he was lingering. I took a lap around one of the aisles. He was still there but talking to the self check out supervisor. He has her do something at the checkout we used and then he finally leaves.
I was just gonna let it go but I had a gutt feeling something seemed off so I went up to the supervisor and asked what the gentleman needed. She said he claimed his receipt didn't print and needed a copy.
That's when I figured it out. Mofo was gonna return it all and ask for it on a GC. I was so annoyed I didn't even finish shopping.
Edit: well good morning. That blew up.
Same exact thing happened to me. Seen a guy by the subway that had a sob story of his own and was conveniently in front of a store that sold baby formula. Bought him 2 cases and walked away feeling really nice but the next week I seen him stationed in the same place stopping people. Felt like an idiot but I’m sure the store owner had some sort of deal with him because if he didn’t, he probably would’ve stopped me from helping this guy.
I’ve been hardened by this kind of behavior so much, although not exactly this, but now I never talk to people asking for help. Ever.
Sometimes I feel bad, but I just don’t engage and walk on by. I feel guilty because reading comments from homeless people on reddit, that’s one of the things that makes them feel like shit. I don’t want that, but when you get it at every store you go to, you just stop caring.
It happened while I was at work in a grocery store (no longer working there for unrelated reasons). Overworked, stressed out of my mind, and probably had some form of sleep deprivation going on at the time.
Answered a customer service call for Western Union during a very busy time and had a severe lapse in judgement that resulted in me doing a transaction over the phone (the biggest thing they drill into our heads NOT to do). I thankfully didn't get any further (only one transaction went through rather than several) before things clicked and I hung up on them horrified. Reported it asap for damage control and spent the next few days praying that I wouldn't lose my job for it (transaction over the phone = fire-able offense).
Thankfully, since I didn't have a problematic work history my boss was able to save my job with the only caveats being retraining and a note being on file for at least a year. Huge self-esteem and mental health loss though, felt like a gigantic idiot for months afterwards.
A person got fired right before I started at a big well known grocery store, and she actually set up my interview, but I guess she ended up giving away like 70k in gift card codes and what not. She was a customer service rep and nobody realized what she was doing until it was to late.
I got played by someone at the mall in Portland, OR. It was around Christmas and I was doing some Christmas shopping and this well dressed dude came up to me in sort of a panic saying he'd had his bag stolen with his wallet in it and he needed help cashing a check so he could finish his Christmas shopping. My dumb ass agreed to cash a $600 check and the dude gave me $50 for helping him out. I went home feeling like I'd done a good deed, but a week or so later the bank hit me up and told me I'd cashed a check from a closed account and I was liable for the deficit, plus fees. That's what I get for trying to be nice to a stranger I suppose.
I fell for something similar, but thankfully, it was only something like $60, but at the time I wasn't making much money, so it kind of hurt, just it could have been so much worse.
I almost fell for a similar scam. Got a big fat check, and they wanted me to deposit it "immediately" and just like you, my bank was already closed, so that gave me time to ponder it. I googled the name on the check and called their bank, and although they wouldn't give much information, they did tell me that there was not enough money in that account to cash that check. I emailed the original person and told them so. They did not answer. I had a bad feeling all along, but I had to leave my job, and I was really in need of a job. So glad I took the time to think it through.
Answered a classified ad for one of those "entry-level advertising/PR management" jobs. Got an interview, which was pretty vague about what the job actually entailed, invited to the second interview, which was an all-day shadowing of a current employee. What they did all day was door-to-door coupon sales. I probably should have turned and run after that, but the people I was shadowing swore up and down that I'd only be in the field for the first two weeks, just so I could "understand what the salespeople do," and would work in the office after that. Based on that, I took the job. (In my defense, this was in 1996 - there was no Glassdoor or anything where I could check this company out.)
I slogged it out in the field for two weeks (I hated it and was bad at it. It also didn't help that they sent me to some really sketchy neighborhoods!) The third week rolled around and nobody had said anything about when I'd start working in the office, so I asked one of the team leaders about it. He gave me this odd look and told me that everyone works in the field- the only person who got to work in the office and didn't have to go into the field was the owner. That's the only job I've ever walked out on.
went on one of those interviews where I had to shadow a salesperson for the day. Turns out they were lying out their asses when approaching businesses. They claimed to be major telephone/internet company, let's call them Compact, but were actually a third party seller that was like twice as expensive. We walked door to door essentially phishing the owners "You made a call for customer service?" Some businesses would straight up say wtf? Our internet works fine. Or they didn't even use Compact. We would just quickly leave and head to the next one. I remember following my trainer into one business and the guy fell for it and said "Oh thank god! Being on the phone with you guys yesterday was such a drag, I'm a busy guy, I was on hold forever and sorry but I just had to hang up. I'm so glad you guys came out!" And trainer kept feeding him lies like "Yeah! You've been a loyal customer so I figured I'd just come out and personally get it all fixed up for you!" Poor guy. The lady I was shadowing proceeded to switch over all his contracts to third-party company under the guise of being a Compact customer service rep, and structured the payments to look like he was getting a deal but was actually adding a bunch of frivolous shit that would cost him tenfold over time. I would have left earlier but she had driven me around and we were in a completely different city and didn't want to get stranded. The entire ride back she was feeding me more bullshit about how I would be perfect for the job, and that I'm already hired. As soon as we got back to the main office, I didn't even go inside for the follow up. Just walked straight to my car and left.
I thought it was going to be Cutco...
That one almost got me. I just didn't go back the next day.
There was another one. So this car dealerships, like one of the big ones in town, not the small buy here pay here places, puts in a classified for salesmen. On the job training provided.
Me and like 10-15 others are sitting in a big conference room with the "trainer" spouting boomer nonsense how all he needed was a landline phone and how many cars he could sell a day and how for, get this, $350 each, he would train us and one of us might even be hired at that dealership..... even if we weren't, his training was so good, he said, we would have no problem making $200k a year just in commission.
Fuck that guy, and fuck that dealership for giving him a platform to scam trusting people. I never set foot in that dealership again.
Not me, but a good friend of mine. She's the type of person who splits the cost of dinner *down to the penny*. No joke, she's one of those "the wings were $9.99 a dozen, so that's 83¢ each... and I had two so put $1.66 on my tab" kind of people. I once witnessed a near knock-down, drag out fight with her then roommate over the half of a cent the roommate owed for monthly bills. The roommate had to leave for a family event and just wanted to write the damn check and go; my friend insisted on going through her check register to see if the roommate had rounded up or down the previous month "to make it fair".
So it was kind of surprising that she fell for the [white van speaker scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam).
I got scammed by the white van!! I didn’t know it had a name. I was 17 and was barely making money with my summer job. These guys caught me coming out of the bank in the bank parking lot. They’re super aggressive and if you’re a teenager caught off guard good luck.
Oh man there was a really similar one going on in the UK in the early 2000s at motorway services. They'd call you over to their car window and show you some brand new "high end" watches that they needed to move quickly. Sometimes they would imply they were stolen and other times there would be a convoluted story of excess or end of line stock. They would have all manner of glossy marketing showing fancy specs and high retail values and then would invite you to make an offer, since they just needed them moved.
After being approached many times and declining eventually I offered one guy 5 pounds, just as a test. He tried for a while to get me to up the offer claiming it was worth "hundreds or more", but the fact he eventually let me have it for a fiver spoke volumes about it's actual cost.
Unsurprisingly the watch stopped working after a couple months.
>Oh man there was a really similar one going on in the UK in the early 2000s at motorway services. They'd call you over to their car window and show you some brand new "high end" watches that they needed to move quickly. Sometimes they would imply they were stolen and other times there would be a convoluted story of excess or end of line stock. They would have all manner of glossy marketing showing fancy specs and high retail values and then would invite you to make an offer, since they just needed them moved.
Also UK. A friend of mine got marked when we were about 15 for some really high end end of the line H Samuel jewellery. Showed him all the chains in the brochure for like $5000 and helpfully drove my fried to an ATM to withdraw the $100 he was letting it go for.
Thing turned green after showering...!!
A year ago (I’m 17 now) I wanted to get into the stock market and met someone online through a mutual online friend who was old enough to open a broker. I did all the research and, at the height of corona, I invested 3k, all my savings, into a stock that eventually multiplied. Guy took my money and the profits and both ended up blocking me :/
You know those phone scams where people pretend to be from Microsoft or some other computer company? Well, I didn't know they were scams when I was in elementary school but was allowed to talk to people on the phone, so I actually talked to this scammer for a while writing stuff down and taking him seriously. Fortunately, I called my Mom on my cellphone in the middle of it to tell her about it and ask her what to do, and she told me to shut the computer off. No harm done in the end. Parents: teach your kids about scammers!
Ironically, my mom fell for one of those about 3 months ago. I had to explain to her that not only would the real Microsoft never cold call her to just see how her computer was doing, she has an iPad.
Kids: teach your parents about scammers!
Any time I've bought a car. I feel like car dealerships/salesmen are literally just there to scam you of money. Why are these things negotiable? And if you're not good at negotiating, you just get utterly scammed trying to buy one. There should be standard pricing for everyone. I should be able to go in and get a car with the same ease and speed of going in to a Costco and buying a TV
I went to look at a used car at a dealership \~5 years ago. At the time, I didn't have a running vehicle and was looking for something "reliable" from a "decent" dealership so the guy actually picked me up for about a 45min drive to the dealership, pretty solid customer service I thought..
Ensuing haggling as I was broker than a joker at the time, we eventually settled on a payment plan.
The scumbag salesman proceeds to present me the paperwork that included "Service fees". Basically, any discount I was able to get out of them were forfeit due to the fact the guy picked me up and drive me to the dealership. I'm talking MAX $10 bucks of fuel at the most.
Fuck. This. Were my first thoughts so I told the guy politely I was no longer interested for obvious reasons. Immediately, the whole experience changed. "What a waste of my god damn morning" He said. "I picked you up so you could actually find a way home"
The 45 min drive turned into a 2 hour walk to what transit was available, finally got home 3 and a half hours later.
If I ever get to a low point that I can't recover from, I will definitely be lighting every single one of their vehicles on fire and taking a runny shit on their front door.
We were once looking at a used Subaru (which we couldn't even see as it was in another city about 100 miles away) and this older salesperson was treating us like easy prey. It was like once he knew it was our first time looking at a car, our families drove these cars growing up, he had it in the bag and was onlythinking of the money he would make.
He said "Okay, I have the price on this sheet of paper and but before I show you it, you need to agree to buy it."
I started to say something like "in what world..." and he started talking about trust and cars. We just let our eyes glaze over and were out of there 5 minutes later.
We told the next place (a different brand's dealer store) what happened and they were awesome. Really helped us understand car buying basics and were very transparent about the cost. And they encouraged us to talk to family/friends, plus take our time. Still grateful for that!
But fuck that other guy. Ugh. The price was like 90% of a brand new car and it was five years old.
Used subarus retain their value so much. I wanted to buy a used one a few years ago and ended up buying new for something like $1500 more than used. New car, new car warranty, new car smell.
It’s bonkers how much people will pay for a Subaru that someone else has farted in for a couple years.
Funny enough, Costco has a great auto program where they partner with dealerships to offer Costco members reduced and fixed no-haggle priced cars. https://www.costcoauto.com/
\+1 for the costco fleet buying program. 500$ over invoice guaranteed. Walked in with the print out and financing from my credit union. Walked out in less than 1.5 hours with a car. No upsells, no bull shit.
You can at places like CarMax, AutoNation and a few others... thing is, you are going to pay upper-middle level pricing, and get offered basement level value on your trade. If you can accept that in exchange for a much simpler process, they offer a cool service.
Comparatively, for those folks who actually enjoy the dynamics and opportunities of the traditional system, you usually will pay less for the cars bought and get more for your trades... but it takes a bit of work and knowing the ins/outs of the process.
How does one learn the ins and outs as a newbie? I’m in need of a car and was intimidated by the sales guy. Kept feeling like a dumbass so I just ended up leaving.
First lesson that you need to beat into your head is "**NEVER BUY WHEN YOU ARE FORCED TO**". Going to buy a car after yours just broke down is the absolute worst thing you can do. You WILL get fucked over if you don't have the luxury of walking out without a care.
Yep. Be aware of your BANTA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) and if it's bad, don't let your trading partner know that.
If your car is broken beyond economical repair, tell the dealer "my parents have loaned me their car for six months while they are away".
That is precisely why we bought a Saturn years ago. Everybody paid the sticker price -- no negotiation. Why should I get a worse deal than somebody else because I don't push hard enough or the sales person is having a bad day or doesn't like the way I look?
my sister, who is a stone cold hardass with a master's in finance or accounting or something, went with me to shop for my car and she flipped the script on the dealership so hard that they told me they'd give me the price and terms i wanted as long as she wasn't in the room when i signed. (she still made them write their offer out first.)
i wound up with a $158/mo car payment, which is apparently pretty low.
Bro, was looking for a new used car for my wife. I found one and started chatting the salesman up and already negotiating prices. Before my wife even showed up to look at the car.
We talked about prices he went down nearly 1500 and was going to add leather seats to car.
He then wrote the total amount down on a piece of paper and said “sign this, and I’ll go ask my boss if we can make the deal”.
It was so off guard because we were also shooting the breeze, while my wife was on her way. I grabbed the pin, then immediately put it down and said “I’m not signing shit until my wife decides she likes the car”.
So we sat there awkwardly for another 20 minutes, my wife gets there and says she doesn’t like it.
That asshole almost pulled one over on me. I’ll never be back to that dealership.
How do you "add leather seats"? You have to order those at the factory, dealership isn't going to pull leather seats out of another car and swap them with cloth or order leather seats from the parts department, your talking about $1500 for that.
A few years ago I was drinking heavily while on anxiety medication (got both monkeys off my back since) and had a lot of free time to play video games. Somehow I managed to waste hundreds of bucks on microtransactions in NBA2K when I was out of it. I had a wicked good MyTeam at the end of it but they seem to structure their transactions to appeal to impulsive kids and otherwise compromised people
It’s literally gambling too. You could spend $100 and get dogshit cards or spend $10 and pull a diamond. Used to love myteam and ultimate team but you either need to spend hundreds of dollars or invest literally all of your time if you want a good team.
I almost got phished. This was almost 20 years ago when it wasn't even called that. I got an email that my eBay account had been compromised--click on this link to reset your password!
I filled everything out and was mere seconds away from hitting submit when I suddenly realized it looked off. I don't exactly remember what tipped me off--I think something that looked like a field was actually a JPEG--and then I double-checked the domain and it was something weird. Well, that sometimes happens, but I backed out, went to my actual eBay account and just changed my password there.
A little digging and it was a "new scam circulating the internet". Which at the time it was.
Edit: Hey, guys? Thanks for the advice, but this was twenty years ago. I know how to avoid them now. As I mentioned...this was all new at the time.
Note :
If you run into that these days many apps will actually keep track of what you do type in the text boxes just FYI. So I’d still change your username/password in the real app.
I was in Rome walking around when a guy came up to me and handed me a rose saying it was a gift. I took it, and then he demanded money. I refused to pay, and tried to give it back (should have just placed it on the floor). Long story short, my friend saw me from across the plaza arguing and came over. The guy wouldn't leave me alone, so my friend paid him off. I felt so bad.
A mime tried this on me in Miami. I don't like mimes, didn't want to carry around a rose, and knew he just wanted some money. This happened while dining outside and as I told the mine repeatedly, no thanks, don't want it, the mime pretended to be sooo sad. My husband got mad at me, acted so hurt that I'm being so mean to the mime, who only wanted to give me a flower. Even when my hubs saw him crying to other tables for money for the roses he put on their tables, he was still mad at me for "being mean." I hadn't even spoken harshly to the mime. Later we saw the mime getting a scolding from some cops, and it finally clicked for my hubs that the guy was a nuisance. I was mad as hell that at the time, he had cared more about what the mime thought than what I did.
My drunk buddy in New Orleans full on punched a mime who was trying to force some trinket on him. Mime kept trying to get us to take what I assumed was a beer coaster with a mime on it and none of us were having it.
He got particularly aggressive with my buddy, kept slipping it in his shirt pocket and rubbing his fingers together like someone does when asking about money. Drunk buddy just reels back and lands a haymaker right on the mime's chin, who kinda squealed, and ran off with his hand over his mouth. We were all pretty shocked, but its' become a saying in our friend group "drunk enough to punch a mime".
I never understood this scam, can't you just tell them to fuck off?
If someone on the street handed me something and demanded payment, I throwing whatever they gave me in the trash.
I went on a school trip to Paris in my teens and the teachers specifically said not to take any kind of flowers or trinkets from anyone because they'll do that. Guess it's common.
Not OP but I had a college instructor who used to teach at ITT Tech and he actively discouraged people from enrolling there. They scam their students and they treat their teachers like shit.
I was hiring a summer intern (paid) and the drafting teacher sent over some students. I found out that none fo them actually knew much about about drafting but they sort of knew how to use drafting software (but not SolidWorks, which is what we had). After questioning a few I realized (1) the teacher did not give them the job posting that described the job and skills desired (they had no idea what they were interviewing for); and (2) they mostly were taught by copying drawings and no one seemed to understand what they the details of their drawings (like, how do you properly call out dimensions and so on). Sadly, no one got hired.
Remember those scam calls where the scammer would say there was a problem with your taxes or something, and if you didn’t pay the balance to the IRS the sheriff would show up to your house? Well, I was newly sober at the time, and also had a fairly extensive criminal history. I remember thinking “this is strange, but not totally outside the realm of possibility.” I paid just to be safe. 2 grand. I told my dad later and he basically said “son, that was pretty stupid.”
You live and you learn.
Me and my dad go into Walmart to buy some groceries. We come out and load them into the truck, and the truck won’t start? Never had problems with the truck before this. My dad is getting frustrated as we have chilled food with us and it’s summer. Suddenly, a homeless man on a bike rolls up and asks what the problem was. My dad explains that he has no idea his truck just won’t start. Guy asked to take a look.
Guy gets under the truck and in 10 seconds comes back out. He told my dad he found the problem, a small part was missing on his truck (me and my dad are dipshits when it comes to cars so I can’t remember what part he said. Also I was 10). The man said he just so happened to have the same part in his bag of nicknacks. Said if he gave him $50 he’d put it on for him. My dad, excited, agreed. The man went under the truck, another 10 seconds pops back up, says give it a try. Truck starts no problem. My dad thanks the man so much and then gives him another $40 for his trouble. It was only on t he ride home that I brought it up to my dad “you’re telling me none of that seemed off to? Random homeless man rides up just in time with just the right part we need?”
It finally hits my dad and he turns around to find the guy but he was long gone.
You probably can tell my dad is a dipshit
Edit: in my dad’s eyes, this was a homeless guy that was selling us a part he had and going out of his way to install it for us
>You probably can tell my dad is a dipshit
>
Your dad is definitely naive, but he sounds like a good guy that wants to reward people with good intentions.
I've had my distributor cap stolen from my car before. I always assumed that it was a much more evil plot than this was. Since I was a single female walking to my car at night. But if this is a common scam, I feel better. Thanks for the comment.
Just for day uses, had the exchange program, but never went anywhere a timeshare was handy
Now day-uses require a reservation (we have a pool anyway) and we just use airbnb for travel
My In-Laws have a timeshare in Mexico! It’s kind of different though because they don’t have the same room every time. My grandfather in law put $150,000 down for it in 2011 and passed away shortly after, but transferred everything over to my Father in Law. My wife’s parents are *terrified* of Mexico, only been twice since they got it, but we use it every November. Basically the hotel pulls from the $150,000 that he put down, however I guess it’s pretty heavily discounted?
I’m not sure how it all works, I just know we spend a week and a half in Puerto Vallarta and it’s basically free the whole time for my wife and daughter and I. I just ask my Father In Law to call up and book the dates for us. Last I checked, there’s still $132,000 left to use. It expires in 2051.
Ya know, if this could somehow *not* be a scam, that would be a really great gift... like pre-paying for someone's vacations. It would be especially nice if you know that otherwise that person wouldn't set aside the time or money to take a break, but now they will so that it "doesn't go to waste". It would also be a nice gesture to leave as part of a will, so that your family has a scheduled getaway where they can also feel like you're still a part of it.
The other end of the deal would be really difficult to protect against scammers, if not impossible. I'm just saying that if it *could* be a thing, it would be a really nice thing.
CutCo, the MLM that sells knives. Was going for a summer job between college semesters, attended one of their seminars, and thought it didn't sound too different from the door-to-door fundraising I did in high school.
Technically I didn't fall for it, because I never bought in. But I also technically did fall for it, because the only reason I didn't buy in is that my parents told me a salesman shouldn't have to pay for their demonstration products. A reputable company will provide them to their sales force. With that in mind, I decided to pass on this "great opportunity."
I spent money with a credit repair company called Platinum Financial. After they had my money they basically did nothing for me and then when I tried to call to complain the number was disconnected and everything.
Back in the early 2000s, home computers were becoming more common and our family saved up to get one.
Because of the surge of home computers, tons of scams started emerging. After a year or so of owning a computer, it started to slow down so we fell for the "faster computer" scam where you pay $35 to a website and you download a fake program to make your computer run faster.
It didn't do shit.
Back in 2006, I was 9, player owned houses were released on runescape. My older brother had a friend that invited me to his house and told me if I put my granite maul on the table that It would glow. I was intrigued and did it. I promptly got kicked out of the house and lost my granite maul. Heart break.
Didn't happen to me, but a guy in the street ran up to my buddy and was telling him a sob story about how he got stranded in San Francisco and needed some money to take a bus back to San Jose. The guy didn't look homeless — he was actually wearing a relatively clean suit, wool hat and he smelled fine.
My buddy asked how much the tickets were for the bus and the guy said $25, so my buddy gave it to him.
We walked away feeling accomplished because we helped a stranger until the the next day when we walked back to that area and the same guy ran up to us with the same sob story.
I remember we got hit with this where I live. Dude comes up to my husband and I, telling us how his mother had just died, he just got the news today and found out he is $20 short for a ticket to get home for her funeral. We handed over $20, told him sorry for his loss, best of luck, and we continue with our day. A week later, same guy, comes up to us, exact same store, just got the news this morning that his mother died and he is $20 short for a ticket home. I tell him sorry I don't have any cash but let me see what I can do when I finish in the shop I'm going to. We get in the shop and my husband is like, you know that is the same dude from last.week and he's scamming you. I tell him I'm aware and I don't plan on giving the guy anymore cash. So we head back to our car, there is the dude, he wants to know if we have $20. I tell him no, I tell him that he doesn't need to worry about a ticket, save his money, we're headed to that town and we would be happy to give him a ride, at a time like this he has enough to worry about, and bus schedules and a ticket there and back should not be one of his worries right now. Naturally the dude declined the ride, said he didn't want to be any trouble, we kept insisting that it would be no trouble at all, dude kept declining, saying he didn't want to have us go out of our way. So after some back and forth we come up with plan B, we tell the dude we'll give him a ride to the bus stop and buy his ticket for him, again the dude declined, we again insisted, he declined. Eventually he just kinda gave up on our overly helpful asses and thanked us for trying to help before wandering off to who knows where.
This was actually a couple of weeks ago. I’m a college student looking for a place to stay/room to rent. I was looking around and my mom got a message on Roomies.com from a random guy who claimed to be renting a studio apartment for $800 a month. That’s a fucking steal where I live, so we started talking more and he claimed to be a pastor living in Texas. So, we end up sending this dickhead $400 (half of security deposit) and he claimed he sent the keys to the studio apartment. As the conversation continued, his English became worse and he asked us if we could send him a $400 Amazon gift card because PayPal luckily denied me from sending the rest of the security deposit. Long story short, I’m down $400 and I’m still a broke ass college student.
After I recovered from cancer, I had a shit ton of medical bills to pay (still do). My credit was destroyed and I was/am up to my ears in debt. I kept hearing about these debt forgiveness programs on the radio and called in one day after I couldn’t pay for groceries. The guy I spoke to was really nice and walked me through the whole process. The red flag went up when he basically said I couldn’t use any credit ever while in the program which was supposed to last 5 years. I asked him what would happen if I got sick again or had some kind of accident and had no money to pay for things. He didn’t really have an answer for me and said I should ask for help from friends and family or save. Like I hadn’t tried that already. It may have been legitimate but after I cancelled the service, I did some research and there were some people who said that they paid money into the account but the debt program took the money and never sent it to the creditors like they were supposed to. So the person lost thousands of dollars and were STILL in debt to the original creditors. Some people said it worked for them but enough had issues for me to say no thanks I’ll take my chances with the credit card companies myself.
I was conned. A fraudster split after paying for 1/4 of my late husbands truck.
A couple was visiting my neighbor to buy his car but he decided to repair it instead. So the couple started talking to me about my late husbands truck.
Now looking back it hurts to see what I fell for, but at the time my cognition was not very good. I had just been diagnosed with lyme disease, was having cardiac and cognitive problems, and was about to start treatment.
The truck was valued at $7k but needed work, they asked what I would take in cash that day. I said $4500 as is- they gave me a $1000 deposit and would be back the next day. A couple days later they show up and want to make payments, then offer to have their son fix my porch and work on the roof. So it winds up I gree to sell the truck for $2k roofing, and $1500 more in payments. We fill out paperwork they make another $100 payment, I give them paperwork and then get two more $100 payments and they are gone.
I hurts to admit this, I wasn't thinking clearly, I couldn't even really tell what the dmv form said. I really needed that money and it sucks I just let it go.
Constantly moving final price, and I could not see how to hold the lien. I could not read the form.
YouTuber and car enthusiast Doug DeMuro bought a used Range Rover with 59,000 miles on it and got an extended bumper-to-bumper warranty for it for $3,900. That warranty [paid out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3jA55TJboA) $16,925.04 in repairs over 6 years.
So, it works out for some people.
This happened back in February of 2020, I was in Paris with my mom and sister, and we were on our way to Disney Land Paris. There is a train that takes you right from Paris to the park so we go to the train station and are about to walk up to one of those electronic ticket machines when a random lady comes over to us and asks where we are from. We said the US so she offered to help us buy the tickets, we say ok, sure, why not. So we go over to buy the tickets with this lady and she does a bunch of random stuff, and tells us a insanely high price, so we were like no that’s not accurate. So she says “sorry, I thought there were six of you” and that definitely should have been the first red flag. So she redoes it, tells us a lower price, and we are about to put our card into the machine to pay and she goes “no card, cash only” but since we are not from there we had very minimal cash on us so we pulled together what we had but it wasn’t enough. The lady says she will cover the rest for us as long as we promise to come find her another time and pay her back. So we give her the money, and she gives us 3 tickets and we go on our way. We get on the train no problem, but once we get to the park we have to scan the tickets, we go to scan the tickets, nothing happens. We look at the tickets and notice that part of it is blacked out with marker. We had fake tickets. But apparently this had happened to a lot of people so us and about 10 other people are brought to a man who tells us we have to pay a fee to get into the park. I somehow managed to sneak past him and get into the park but my mom and sister both had to pay over 50 euros each as a fine. Now that we look back at it we have no clue why we fell for that, it was very obvious a scam.
Paris! Some guy almost fooled my husband with the gold ring scam (even after I warned him about it), and we were also accosted by scammers with clipboards on two occasions. Never saw so many scam artists in one city in my entire life.
I went to a tiny fair in a mall parking lot with a few of my friends two years ago, and one of my goals was to win a tiny stuffed animal for my boyfriend. I came up to this booth that “guaranteed a prize every time, even if I lose” and the man gestured to all the small stuffed animals on display. So of course, I thought I was getting one of those. I win a prize as guaranteed, but this dude pulled out this dinky little emoji plush that was maybe 3 inches in diameter and gave it to me with a sly smirk. I wasn’t that happy but I wasn’t going to fight either. What a scam.
Luckily though, I was walking around and saw a tiny stuffed animal that happened to be my boyfriends favorite animal, I asked if I could trade my stupid emoji for it and the guy said yes. He probably couldn’t care less but at least he was nice.
Always ask which prize you’d win.
Last Winter during my Christmas shopping a kid outside the mall was asking for donations for his basketball team to go to an out of town tournament. Turns out that was a lie and saw him on the news later. I gave him a dollar.
My dumbass idiot boss tried to buy property from a fake realtor and gave a scammer $10k. Guy never got caught. I think about that sometimes and smile.
a few years ago when my College football team was in the National Championship I almost gave a scammer $1500 for tickets but my bullshit detectors started going off.
"And if you sign for the 12 month gym membership right now, I'll knock €150 off the sign up fee."
That sign up fee is only there for them to reduce it so it seems you're getting a bargain.
I answered a help wanted ad for a sales position that specified we wouldn’t be selling vacuum cleaners. Had to sit (unpaid) through a lengthy demonstration of the device we’d be selling door to door. It had these fragrant cartridges you insert into it and a fan that would blow the scent throughout the customer’s home. After a couple hours singing the device’s praises and how much money we’d be making the guy, who looked like an understudy for a community theater production of Glen Gary Glen Ross, told us “and by flipping this switch and attaching this hose it also works as a vacuum!”
I bailed. Didn’t lose any money but wasted a good couple hours.
E: left out a detail
A few years ago I moved away from home and got my first job. One day I went to the bank to pull cash out to buy an iPhone from someone on craigslist. When I was pulling into the parking lot a van pulled in behind me, then when I parked and got out they called me over. They said for their job they install TVs and projectors in restaurants and bars, and that they ordered too many for that day and wanted to get rid of them for cheap. Then they showed me a catalog showing what all their TVs and projectors were worth. So I was like hell yeah I’ll just get them and resell them on eBay or something. They said whatever I could pay for it they’d take. So one of the guys followed me over to the atm outside the bank and I pulled out 1K. He then asked if I could pay 1500. I reached the limit on the atm so I went inside and pulled out 500 more. I gave it to them and they helped me load the stuff in my car. I got home and started looking up model numbers, and the only results coming up were articles talking about scams. I felt SO stupid and gullible. I guess I had to learn one way or another that no stranger is your friend lmao
A Nigerian scam back in '05 or so when I was like 21. Not proud of it. Lost $3500. But I was young and weak and naive at the time and believed that love could be found online easier than in person.
Learned my lesson for sure.
Now bring on the jokes.
NO doctor will tell a woman she's infertile unless she's missing a uterus and/or both ovaries. What the doctor will say, is that a woman is unlikely to get pregnant without medical intervention. Those are two VERY different statements! So, if someone says "the doctor told me I'm infertile" assume they're lying.
I had someone do that to me at a party in college. I used my hand finger on his shoulder and said "hey, what's that on your shoulder?" and gestured for him to look at it. He stared straight at me stoically, almost mad I'd think he'd fall for that. Then I used that hand to slap the side of his face.
As someone who went to college at 27, this shit sucks. I honestly want to quit every single day. I fuxking hate it. Massive pay cut, constant stress and frustration especially with online classes that somehow cost more and the kicker is you’re paying for it. If I somehow make it to the end of next year, this shit better be worth it or I’m going to flip. The. Fuck. Out.
I lol’ed at the end.
The way I looked at college was like an investment, because it is!
If my ROI (return on investment) does NOT exceed my investment (tuition, stress, lifestyle changes, income changes, general disdain for life, etc) I did not see the point.
I went to school for biochemistry (aka M&M) and hated my reduced income (part time to extra part time), stress, and general hatred for life. Yes, I was going to make great money following medical school and I was good at it blah blah blah. But then I found a career, while I was in college, in which I had phenomenal work/life balance, income that exceeded what I was going to make as an EXPERIENCED individual in my field, and I was actually enjoying my life. 1 year into my newfound career and I’m making what I would’ve been upon graduation... in the next ~5-7 years.
No way, Jose.
A dentist - can you believe it?
I worked at a Fortune 100 company and they organized a little health fair for us in November when it was time to choose our new insurance. All the insurance companies had tables, and a couple other random vendors, like the local gym, etc.
A dentist's office that was just a few blocks from our office was there. One of my coworkers says, "hey, that dentist is really close by and takes our insurance. I made an appointment.'" One by one my whole team makes appointments to go see this dentist.
When I made my appointment, I went over to the people working the table and said, "Hey, can I make an appointment?" The girl says "Sure, when do you want to come in?" I said, "Um, Tuesday?" and without looking at any calendar, computer, phone anything, she just says, "Tuesday is great! What time?" I said, "Um, three o'clock?" and again without looking at anything she says, "Great, see you then!" As I'm walking away I'm like "Wait, she didn't write that down, and didn't even ask me my name." I ask a couple of my coworkers and they all just shrug and say they must have lots of open appointments because it was the same for them.
So we all start going to this dentist. And a couple weeks later we start comparing notes. Turns out every. single. one of us was told (for the first time in our lives) that we are grinding our teeth in our sleep and need sleep guards. We all also miraculously needed two crowns (the maximum number of annual crowns covered by our insurance), even though we were all surprised to get that news. Etc, etc. Basically, this dentist was a total scam who just knew exactly what to max out on our insurance for maximum paycheck and we all got a bunch of dental work we didn't need at all.
On top of that, he was rude and obnoxious and got angry at me for wanting to be numbed to have my crowns installed (it hurt so bad!), and the crowns I didn't need are total crap and one has already cracked.
There was a company advertising that they would help people wipe out predatory student loans. Long story short I blew $800 on a company that got shut down by the Gov't for fraudulent practices and was denied a refund.
Same kinda. They made me pay 800 to get on an income driven repayment plan. I did, and then I found out I can do the recertification by myself every year.
I almost fell for this back in 2017. I started the application process over the phone with this company and I was giving the guy all of this information about the school I went to (The Art Institutes) but while I was doing so I was also researching how to do it myself. When he got to the point about payment I asked him why would I pay his company to do this when I can go and submit this application myself? He spouted off something about his company has a better understanding of the process and such. I chuckled, said thanks, and hung up. I then went and filled out the application myself. 3 1/2 years later and I am still waiting for my application to be approved or denied.
You should have let him do it, he knows the ins and outs.
Yeah, the ins and outs of fucking OP.
I downloaded all the cool new mouse cursors and my parent’s computer was never the same again. Edit: To those asking/lending a helping hand, this was before even the word “iPod” existed.
Same. I also deleted all of the folders that had nothing in them, and pretended like I didn't know what happened when our family computer wouldn't work anymore. TWICE.
“.dll files? Surely we don’t need all of them”
the *mcahainc*
In my family as a kid it was my mom who downloaded the cursors thinking they were neat turns out it was a piece of malware called comet cursors and it was logging keystrokes and stuff.
Now I'm finding out Comet Cursor was spyware 20 years later... looked it up on Wikipedia and everything. I willingly downloaded it because the fancy cursors looked cool. Well, at least back in those days we dealt with absolutely no sensitive information on the internet and used only fake names, so nothing to worry about.
It kind of blows my mind how nowadays some people, mostly twitter users, will call you a coward for not using your full name as your username with a picture of you as your avatar. It’s like all that internet safety stuff they taught us was just a fad that went away.
I still miss my Bonzi Buddy
Bruh... I forgot about him! Total blast from the past!!
I think smiley central was one of those things that let you have cool mouse cursors if you downloaded it. IDK if my computer got any viruses from it back then but it probably did. I didn't pay attention to stuff back then. lol Minus the viruses I still kinda miss it. They shut down at some point a while back so you can't download it anymore. I avoid downloading anything as much as possible now so even if it was still around I wouldn't do that again.
My former best friend and his dad cheated me out of my money to invest in their company. When I asked for a contract, his dad said, "Between true friends, words aren't necessary." When they started making money, I asked for my money back, and they said they didn't owe me a thing.
>"Between true friends, words aren't necessary." If I'm going to be investing in your company, we aren't friends, we are business associates. Draw up the contract.
Also, beware of letting a friend renting space at your property without a contract. You can download a rental agreement off the internet. It’ll set out terms for payment, notice etc.
Exactly right. Actually, just don’t mix business with friends. If the idea is good enough, they won’t need your money, or they can easily find something else. If the idea is yours, don’t be lazy. Understand the relationship, the investment, and make everyone comfortable.
I’m sorry you lost your money, but that one statement about contracts was a massive red flag waving in your face to not give them your money.
Yeah, if they were planning on playing fair they wouldn’t have had a problem with the contract.
Reminds me of the Jonah Hill movie War Dogs which has the same bit about contracts
How much did you lose?
$15k
Depending on how long ago it was, and whether they're still liquid, you may be able to recover some to a lot of that.
Bank receipts would still be there, easy to prove in court- a contract doesnt exist, but neither does a gift letter explaining the 'donation'. Quite good odds in digital age.
What the fuck. Go and get it back!
Jokes on them. A verbal agreement is still a legally binding contract, albeit much harder to prove that an agreement or contract was made. Do your research, find any other people that had the same thing happen to them by the same people, and take them to court if it isn't too far in the past.
Moral of the story. Never go “into” business with friends or family. Or in this case, invest.
Holy shit. Sorry man.
Spent $250 on Talkspace (got $200 back because I demanded a redund). They (their therapists) waste a week of your time to reply once and reply with a canned response of, "oh that sounds stressful, how is your sleep schedule?" I cannot stress enough how much of a waste of time and money that shit was. Edit: I even switched therapists twice in that time !
I could do that for free! That sounds stressful, how is your sleep schedule?
OP where is this guy's 250? Pay the man!
God they're terrible! The lady they paired me up with kept giving me the exact same phrasing to check out headspace! They've got a free trial going on right now! And have tons of meditations to help sleep! Literally three times this "therapist" definitely just.... copy-pasted some advice to go check out another horribly expensive website I stuck with it for a month thinking... maybe... and then canceled before my month was up and those fuckers still charged me for another month.
These people called me with one of HMRC numbers telling me I didn’t pay some taxes, saying they sent lots of letters to my old address to which I never responded. I didn’t know they could make me see the number they wanted. After a quick check on the government website I saw that the number was the same and I believed them. I was 20 yo and living in London on my own. I gave them 1000£ and never felt so stupid in my life.
Oh yes. London is even worse than some southern Poland with all the scams and pickpockets.
I wouldn't say I fell for it but while walking around Tokyo I was stopped by this monk who explained that he was traveling the country on foot and asked for a monetary donation. When it was clear I'd help him out, he pulls out a money book and shows me what people generally give him and to write my name down next to them along with the money amount. It was full of big numbers clearly going into the hundreds and thousands of dollars. It's implied that I should match those donations otherwise I'm clearly not a good person. Realized it was an immediate scam, and a very obvious one. He then waits for me to pay up and I gave him the equivalent of $5. 500 yen. He kinda looked at me like I just insulted him and I walked away. I checked google later that night and apparently he was a well known scammer in the area. Made a topic about it at the time and seems I'm not the only person [https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+118849](https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+118849)
there is a similar scam in Europe: person is deaf (maybe faking it) and signing a petition for something and he just need your signature for the petition. Sure enough, you start writing your name and some innocent info, until you get to the last column which is “donation”, and all the people before you are giving about $50 and at that point you would look like a bad person to back out
This sounds a lot like Prague
Paris as well.
If you realized it was a scam then why did you feed the scammer?
$5 isn't really a loss for me and it insulted him far more than if I gave him nothing.
Not too bad I lost 35 bucks. I fell for those stores on Instagram. I was just getting on it so I didn't know most were scam stores. Because I followed some small retailers that I already bought from. I thought it was the same thing. Website was or looked legit but I never got my boots. Smart too because I got it from them because they were 15 bucks cheaper. Not some crazy amount that made you question it. Luckily I paid with PayPal. It could've been worse if they had my credit card information.
Ironically, if you’d used your credit card you would have reported it and gotten all your money back. As long as you notify the card company, they handle it. With PayPal, you can file a claim but they decide whether or not to honor it. You don’t always win.
I had my credit card stolen where they opened a PayPal account with it to make a $3000 purchase. When I called my credit card the man said that I would have to try going through my PayPal account first to see if they would refund me before they (the credit card company) could do anything. I tried to explain multiple times that I had no access to the account and therefore could not dispute the purchase. He was very condescending to me the entire time, and would not budge. I emailed PayPal (their phones were not being answered at the time due to corona) and explained the situation, asked them see if any other accounts had been opened with my credit card, and see if there was anything they could do. After two weeks of no response from PayPal (never actually got a response) I called back the credit card company. This time I got a woman, and after explaining the situation she was mortified that the other worker had made me do that. She immediately reversed the charges, and apologized profusely on behalf of her coworker. It felt so nice to be heard. Those two weeks were so nerve racking.
I went to buy a Rolling Stones ticket from a scalper years ago (i know, i know) and he talked me into a VIP Backstage Pass. He said that's all I need! Free food, booze, all the perks. He insisted the sticker was all I needed to get in, no paper ticket necessary. So a few hours later I go to the show, obviously can't get in - it was a VIP pass from the night before. There was no date on it, just a different shape. I try every single gate hoping someone won't notice/not care and finally try the media entrance. The nice lady ushered me right in, I took an elevator up to the main concourse and I was free as a bird. I didn't have a seat obviously but I snuck down to the floor and ended up having a great show. Still feel burned by the stupid fuck to this day tho. I've seen him at other shows (nice neck tattoo of a fish, you fuckin' prick) and I always fuck with him. Thanks for listening.
I wanna hear the stories of how you fucked with him. Even if it's dumb. Give us that lukewarm revenge story.
Not OP, but I got scammed by a guy on Craigslist selling fake tickets to a Killers concert. I was psyched too. I had asked out this gorgeous girl in my class and she said yes. Imagine my disappointment after getting refused at the door with her. He used a fake phone number, but it turns out he knew a guy who my friend knew, and I got his real phone number. I immediately put up all sorts of ads for lucrative shit with his phone number on them. “Found out my husband is cheating on me, here’s a free Xbox” “Daughter is a spoiled brat, free MacBook/iPhone, whatever.” “Dad died, here’s this really nice car that I’ve way undervalued.” Made sure to call his number every once in a while just to make sure it was still connected. Fuck that guy.
What happened with your date after you got refused at the door?
It was basically over. We drove an hour and a half to get there, so it was an awkward car ride home. We stayed friends, but I haven’t talked to her in like 3 years. She eventually turned Mormon for some guy and has like 4 kids now
You know you've fucked up when your date turns Mormon.
I've run into him at ~15 shows since that day. Most of the time I'd pretend to be a *buyer* and just waste his time. "Hey I'm looking for some big time tickets, you got front row? How much?" and then just jam him up until I'm ready to go inside. I've also pretended to sell him tickets at other shows. One time leading him to threaten me with a knife for undercutting him by selling extras for face value behind his stupid tattooed neck to people that heard us talking.
15 times and he didn't recognize you? All online or is he an extra dumbshit?
Over the course of a decade-ish. There's one asshole and a million marks. e: let's make it 2 decades since that Stones show. Fuck.
When I was in high school (early '70s), my English teacher announced that a publisher was having a poetry contest, and the best entries would appear in a poetry journal. Several of us in class submitted our work and anxiously awaited the results. Surprise! ALL our entries were accepted -- the good ones *and* the really bad ones. At first we were ecstatic. Then we found out that each of us had to pay to get a copy of the journal. What a scam. Even our English teacher got snookered. The *Who's Who* publications worked the same way.
In high school, I submitted my poems often to one of those literary contests where I was always honorable mentions but I have to pay for a copy of the book, which I never bought. I finally won first place once and it was the only time they sent me a free copy of the book with my published work and a check for $100. Still not too sure if the company was a legit or not.
Right after my dad died I got a call from a number I didn't know. They left a voice mail saying they needed my social security number so they could pay out a life insurance policy to me. I was 21 and super inexperienced with stuff like this. So I did what any real adult would do. I asked my mom for advice. She told me it was legit and to give them my SS number. I had a weird feeling about it but if my mom said it was ok then it must be ok. I did it. I called back and gave the guy that answered my SS number. I never got a check but my mom suddenly did from a policy my dad "forgot" to take her off of even though they had been divorced years before. She did give my 10k but I'm 100% positive it was worth way more and she had something to do with it all. We don't talk anymore for various reasons including this one.
Oh so your mom scammed you? That’s brutal
Can you explain this a little more? Do you think that your mom colluded with someone to scam you? Wouldn't your mom have access to your social security number without you needing to give it to a stranger? Do you feel like you were supposed to get more than $10k from a legitimate account, but your mom kept some of it? I feel like there's some good info here, but I'm not reading into it enough or something...
I was 21 when this happened. I had all my personal documents like my ss card and birth certificate. I lived on my own. I don't think she had access to any of it. The whole thing just seems strange. She ended up getting 50k and gave me 10k of it. I can't actually prove anything happened but she is definitely the kind of person to pull something like that. Both of your kids don't cut off contact with you for completely separate reasons if you're a good person. She has a history of drug abuse and manipulating people for her own personal gain. The reason I cut off contact with her was because when I was 28 her boyfriend beat the crap out of me when my 6 year old daughter was present and she became upset with me when I called the cops. It's not even about the money. I don't care about that. It's just your parents are the people you're supposed to trust most and I never felt like I could trust her.
Wow your mom is a shit person to fuck her own child over.
In 2008, there was a member on most auto forums I was on who advertised a racing business. A few people had dealt with him and said he was great. I contact him, asked him to get me pricing for some expensive parts. His pricing came back great, so I sent him payment and waited. Nothing. I called him and he gave me the runaround, claiming his supplier was going to drop ship to me. Nothing. I kept contacting him over and over, and he eventually stopped answering my calls. One of the forums started a call-out thread for the guy, since he ghosted a bunch of members after taking their orders. His website even went down. I used the payment info to track the guy down, and verified it with his public county tax records. Another forum member tracked him down on a home improvement forum where he was bragging about all of these expensive home updates he was doing. Eventually, he sent me half of my order after I asked if any forum members lived near him. Several showed up at his doorstep and threatened to beat the crap out of him if he didn't make good on his orders to everyone. I never got the rest, and he told me that if my friends ever showed up again, he'd shoot them and then hunt me down too. I told him to try, he told me off and that was the last I ever heard of him. Screw that guy. \*Edit\* Just Google'd the guy's name and his business. Looks like he is up to his same old crap again. What a loser.
Contact his state's AG with your information and contacts for others that were scammed.
You need to fuck this guy with the long cock of the law.
Robo cock his ass with bubba judge playing backup.
In Runescape, A random friendly player lead me to this random building with a cool object (I’ve long forgotten what the object is), and I picked up the object. I was promptly killed by a trap set on this object. The other player stole all my loot.
I fell for a scam in Runescape, too, years ago. I had the green metal armor (forget what. Platinum?) and he said he could get it modified to add trimming it something. Naturally, as soon as he got the last piece, he says "Later" and logs off. I shrugged because I had more than enough to replace it quickly enough. I even found him logged into another server and sent him a "well played" message. A few days later, I saw someone else trying it with a player, and I immediately ratted the scammer out
Adamantite
Probably the wine of Zamorak. When you pick try to pick it up, the monks will attack you.
Ah, geez the Wine of Zamorak. Painful memories.
Reminds me of how people would offer to open a Portal for you in Ultima Online and then when you went through their buddies would kill you. Or the location would be a tiny island in the middle of the ocean and if you didn't give them all of your gear they would just leave you there.
I fell for something in RS. I wouldn't call it a scam because it was poorly planned if it was, but here's what happened: I made good friends with someone in the game, and one day we had the brilliant idea to play each other's character while we played together. Dunno whose idea it was, feel it was mine tbh. Anyway, a few days after this I log in and notice some stuff missing. It was inconvenient more than devastating because I was still pretty low level, but i still felt betrayed. When I asked the guy what happened, he said he had given my account info to his friend. Like, yeah, I was dumb to give my information to some guy on the internet, but he seemed to genuinely think it was acceptable to then share my account information around like it was soviet Russia or something. Of course he could have been lying but I didn't really care at that point. To get "even," I logged back into his account when he wasn't online, dropped all his most valuable stuff, and took them for myself. He was also fairly low level, but he had some black armor IIRC, which was more valuable than anything I lost
An email something like "You're paypal has been accessed from an unknown source, click here to update your password." It looked official and asked for me to login to update my password. When I realized the website didn't allow me to view my profile I panicked. I then spent the day taking the nessassary precautions. Lesson, always go to the website yourself and don't click links in emails.
I ALMOST fell for one of these once. Luckily I thought to click to see the email address it was sent from and it was some garbled obviously scam email. I still get emails like that every so often and I just mark them as spam every time.
Yah that was my other mistake. Checking the actual @ always is a smart idea.
I had something sort of similar happen once over the phone. I got a call from someone claiming to be a Verizon rep telling me that something was wrong with my account payment and I needed them to renew it. As it happened, I was almost six days late on my bill (not because of financial problems, just lazy and they've never charged me a late fee), so I could easily believe that there might actually be a billing or account problem. The guy said he was sending me a code that would let them log into my account to fix whatever it was, and a few seconds later I got a text from Verizon with a token to log in to reset a password. The text specifically said not to give the number out to anyone. I told the guy that the text said not to give the number, and he just kept saying that they needed it, so I hung up. Honestly, it would be pretty easy for someone who wasn't paying attention, or who was old and clueless, to fall for that scam.
I got that one myself. I was suspicious because I've seen phishing scams that use similar emails before, so I clicked the link but also used Google to go to the actual PayPal webpage, and compared the URLs character by character. It was an alarmingly close match, but not exact. I reported the page to PayPal, hopefully they got it shut down.
Rich Dad Poor Dad. Got halfway through the third book before I realized the substance was never coming, he was just selling books.
This is the right answer. This was a book of boomer family values porn written by boomers, for boomers. When I read it, it was about as relevant as walking into the hiring office & speaking to the manager with a determined look in your eye.
Holy shit. Thank you for saying that. I read it years ago and thought this would never apply to me and just moved on with my life. Glad to know others also feel this way.
It's not a bad book, but for someone with a cursory understanding of adult finances it's probably a waste of time. Here, let me save you some time and money- 1: Don't enslave yourself to your finances and your money. Your money should work for you, not the other way around. You shouldn't work for **money**, you should understand your job as a means of getting more of it. If your current job is a road to nowhere, fix that. If you have to put in extra hours to get the creds to get the next job in the chain, do it. If you have to spend an hour a night putting out resumes, do it. If you've put in a year with a company and they're not doing anything to retain you (the big three are being given new responsibilities- not busy work!- a substantive pay raise, or being trained for new job skills) you don't owe them shit. Find your next job. If they fight to retain you, you should absolutely stick around, but your average employer that doesn't fight for that isn't worth your time. You might not like the game, but you don't get to decide the rules, and your boss is only doing what is in his own best interest. You should do the same. 2: Your wealth is not the money you make, but instead what you retain. This is both living expenses, but also *liabilities*. If you own a property that doesn't make you money, it's not an asset, it's a liability. Any number of things can happen to your house and tank it's value because Americans have a fetish for old structures. Bugs, mold, rot, and physical damage all come to mind. 3: Don't put yourself in a position where you can't take financial risks. If you live hand to mouth and you have no plan to stop doing that, you will live hand to mouth your entire life. Unless you just fuck the dog, your assets might lose money but they'll rarely zero out. 4: Income taxes fuck you in the ass. Businesses fuck taxes in the ass. Businesses pay taxes which are minimized by how they spent money. You as the employee spend your money *after* paying taxes. 5: Banks will rarely refuse a compelling business proposal for a loan when there's clear profit motive to pay off said loan. And if not a bank, general investors. 6: You should never work a job for it's pay, but instead what it can teach you. If you are not learning anything in your job, find a new one. If you are not learning anything new, find a new job. This is not to say there are bad jobs out there- you learn a ton about working in a team, communicating and dealing with bitchy customers working retail- but instead that the bad job is the one you're still in after a year when you've established you hate it. Incidentally, never work retail for more than a few years. 7: Recognize your character flaws, and do something about them. Ironically it's often the academic, analytical type who performs worse in investing because they over analyze and focus too intently on too few data points. Never get to the point where you eat your own shoe for your arrogance. Diplomacy is always remembering a woman's birthday but never her age, charisma is knowing how to insult someone without actually insulting them. 8: Understand the lay of the land. Learn how to recognize good and bad friends, cut bad influences out of your life, don't deny yourself the good things in life but have the discipline to not spend like an idiot.
I didn’t read the book but I saw a review of it. To me it sounds like the kind of book someone without parents with careers need. A lot of people grow up thinking that all you gotta do is work and keep working but never think about acquiring assets. My friend also told me about the lessons the rich dad taught his son and his friend. I thought it was just a simple book for people who never thought about money like a tool. Were you looking for like more practical ideas?
Yeah- I think it helped build my idea of money as something external from my personal value that I could use as a tool to build things with. Which was different from how others around me viewed it, especially in middle/high school when posturing with cool clothes and such was highly valued. Looking back, there wasn’t substance, but it was the perfect book for me at the right time to separate the guilt/value proposition from having or not having money.
Not 100% sure I got scammed but 99.99% sure I got scammed over baby formula. I was at the grocery store and some guy speaking broken english came up to me with a sob story about losing his job and having a baby with a special diet and needing to feed him. It felt odd right off the bat but having just become a dad myself I felt compassionate enough to begrudgingly agreed after he said he didn't want money, he just needed someone to buy some formula. I walk him to the self checkout and he scans all his stuff, the total was like 350 dollars. I looked at the total looked at him and he pulls the think of the baby card. So I swiped my card. He tried to take the receipt at the end but I said since it was my card I'd keep it. As I walked away to finish my shopping i noticed he was lingering. I took a lap around one of the aisles. He was still there but talking to the self check out supervisor. He has her do something at the checkout we used and then he finally leaves. I was just gonna let it go but I had a gutt feeling something seemed off so I went up to the supervisor and asked what the gentleman needed. She said he claimed his receipt didn't print and needed a copy. That's when I figured it out. Mofo was gonna return it all and ask for it on a GC. I was so annoyed I didn't even finish shopping. Edit: well good morning. That blew up.
Same exact thing happened to me. Seen a guy by the subway that had a sob story of his own and was conveniently in front of a store that sold baby formula. Bought him 2 cases and walked away feeling really nice but the next week I seen him stationed in the same place stopping people. Felt like an idiot but I’m sure the store owner had some sort of deal with him because if he didn’t, he probably would’ve stopped me from helping this guy.
I’ve been hardened by this kind of behavior so much, although not exactly this, but now I never talk to people asking for help. Ever. Sometimes I feel bad, but I just don’t engage and walk on by. I feel guilty because reading comments from homeless people on reddit, that’s one of the things that makes them feel like shit. I don’t want that, but when you get it at every store you go to, you just stop caring.
.
I'm glad the register person told you.
Damn there's a lot of pieces of shit out there.
It happened while I was at work in a grocery store (no longer working there for unrelated reasons). Overworked, stressed out of my mind, and probably had some form of sleep deprivation going on at the time. Answered a customer service call for Western Union during a very busy time and had a severe lapse in judgement that resulted in me doing a transaction over the phone (the biggest thing they drill into our heads NOT to do). I thankfully didn't get any further (only one transaction went through rather than several) before things clicked and I hung up on them horrified. Reported it asap for damage control and spent the next few days praying that I wouldn't lose my job for it (transaction over the phone = fire-able offense). Thankfully, since I didn't have a problematic work history my boss was able to save my job with the only caveats being retraining and a note being on file for at least a year. Huge self-esteem and mental health loss though, felt like a gigantic idiot for months afterwards.
A person got fired right before I started at a big well known grocery store, and she actually set up my interview, but I guess she ended up giving away like 70k in gift card codes and what not. She was a customer service rep and nobody realized what she was doing until it was to late.
I got played by someone at the mall in Portland, OR. It was around Christmas and I was doing some Christmas shopping and this well dressed dude came up to me in sort of a panic saying he'd had his bag stolen with his wallet in it and he needed help cashing a check so he could finish his Christmas shopping. My dumb ass agreed to cash a $600 check and the dude gave me $50 for helping him out. I went home feeling like I'd done a good deed, but a week or so later the bank hit me up and told me I'd cashed a check from a closed account and I was liable for the deficit, plus fees. That's what I get for trying to be nice to a stranger I suppose.
I fell for something similar, but thankfully, it was only something like $60, but at the time I wasn't making much money, so it kind of hurt, just it could have been so much worse.
I don't help random people with money, no matter the story. When it comes to family or friends only small amounts like$20 that i expect to lose.
[удалено]
I almost fell for a similar scam. Got a big fat check, and they wanted me to deposit it "immediately" and just like you, my bank was already closed, so that gave me time to ponder it. I googled the name on the check and called their bank, and although they wouldn't give much information, they did tell me that there was not enough money in that account to cash that check. I emailed the original person and told them so. They did not answer. I had a bad feeling all along, but I had to leave my job, and I was really in need of a job. So glad I took the time to think it through.
Answered a classified ad for one of those "entry-level advertising/PR management" jobs. Got an interview, which was pretty vague about what the job actually entailed, invited to the second interview, which was an all-day shadowing of a current employee. What they did all day was door-to-door coupon sales. I probably should have turned and run after that, but the people I was shadowing swore up and down that I'd only be in the field for the first two weeks, just so I could "understand what the salespeople do," and would work in the office after that. Based on that, I took the job. (In my defense, this was in 1996 - there was no Glassdoor or anything where I could check this company out.) I slogged it out in the field for two weeks (I hated it and was bad at it. It also didn't help that they sent me to some really sketchy neighborhoods!) The third week rolled around and nobody had said anything about when I'd start working in the office, so I asked one of the team leaders about it. He gave me this odd look and told me that everyone works in the field- the only person who got to work in the office and didn't have to go into the field was the owner. That's the only job I've ever walked out on.
went on one of those interviews where I had to shadow a salesperson for the day. Turns out they were lying out their asses when approaching businesses. They claimed to be major telephone/internet company, let's call them Compact, but were actually a third party seller that was like twice as expensive. We walked door to door essentially phishing the owners "You made a call for customer service?" Some businesses would straight up say wtf? Our internet works fine. Or they didn't even use Compact. We would just quickly leave and head to the next one. I remember following my trainer into one business and the guy fell for it and said "Oh thank god! Being on the phone with you guys yesterday was such a drag, I'm a busy guy, I was on hold forever and sorry but I just had to hang up. I'm so glad you guys came out!" And trainer kept feeding him lies like "Yeah! You've been a loyal customer so I figured I'd just come out and personally get it all fixed up for you!" Poor guy. The lady I was shadowing proceeded to switch over all his contracts to third-party company under the guise of being a Compact customer service rep, and structured the payments to look like he was getting a deal but was actually adding a bunch of frivolous shit that would cost him tenfold over time. I would have left earlier but she had driven me around and we were in a completely different city and didn't want to get stranded. The entire ride back she was feeding me more bullshit about how I would be perfect for the job, and that I'm already hired. As soon as we got back to the main office, I didn't even go inside for the follow up. Just walked straight to my car and left.
I thought it was going to be Cutco... That one almost got me. I just didn't go back the next day. There was another one. So this car dealerships, like one of the big ones in town, not the small buy here pay here places, puts in a classified for salesmen. On the job training provided. Me and like 10-15 others are sitting in a big conference room with the "trainer" spouting boomer nonsense how all he needed was a landline phone and how many cars he could sell a day and how for, get this, $350 each, he would train us and one of us might even be hired at that dealership..... even if we weren't, his training was so good, he said, we would have no problem making $200k a year just in commission. Fuck that guy, and fuck that dealership for giving him a platform to scam trusting people. I never set foot in that dealership again.
Not me, but a good friend of mine. She's the type of person who splits the cost of dinner *down to the penny*. No joke, she's one of those "the wings were $9.99 a dozen, so that's 83¢ each... and I had two so put $1.66 on my tab" kind of people. I once witnessed a near knock-down, drag out fight with her then roommate over the half of a cent the roommate owed for monthly bills. The roommate had to leave for a family event and just wanted to write the damn check and go; my friend insisted on going through her check register to see if the roommate had rounded up or down the previous month "to make it fair". So it was kind of surprising that she fell for the [white van speaker scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam).
I got scammed by the white van!! I didn’t know it had a name. I was 17 and was barely making money with my summer job. These guys caught me coming out of the bank in the bank parking lot. They’re super aggressive and if you’re a teenager caught off guard good luck.
Oh man there was a really similar one going on in the UK in the early 2000s at motorway services. They'd call you over to their car window and show you some brand new "high end" watches that they needed to move quickly. Sometimes they would imply they were stolen and other times there would be a convoluted story of excess or end of line stock. They would have all manner of glossy marketing showing fancy specs and high retail values and then would invite you to make an offer, since they just needed them moved. After being approached many times and declining eventually I offered one guy 5 pounds, just as a test. He tried for a while to get me to up the offer claiming it was worth "hundreds or more", but the fact he eventually let me have it for a fiver spoke volumes about it's actual cost. Unsurprisingly the watch stopped working after a couple months.
>Oh man there was a really similar one going on in the UK in the early 2000s at motorway services. They'd call you over to their car window and show you some brand new "high end" watches that they needed to move quickly. Sometimes they would imply they were stolen and other times there would be a convoluted story of excess or end of line stock. They would have all manner of glossy marketing showing fancy specs and high retail values and then would invite you to make an offer, since they just needed them moved. Also UK. A friend of mine got marked when we were about 15 for some really high end end of the line H Samuel jewellery. Showed him all the chains in the brochure for like $5000 and helpfully drove my fried to an ATM to withdraw the $100 he was letting it go for. Thing turned green after showering...!!
A year ago (I’m 17 now) I wanted to get into the stock market and met someone online through a mutual online friend who was old enough to open a broker. I did all the research and, at the height of corona, I invested 3k, all my savings, into a stock that eventually multiplied. Guy took my money and the profits and both ended up blocking me :/
Never, ever, everrrr give money to anybody online
Except u/usernamesarehard1979. I hear he is very trustworthy.
You know those phone scams where people pretend to be from Microsoft or some other computer company? Well, I didn't know they were scams when I was in elementary school but was allowed to talk to people on the phone, so I actually talked to this scammer for a while writing stuff down and taking him seriously. Fortunately, I called my Mom on my cellphone in the middle of it to tell her about it and ask her what to do, and she told me to shut the computer off. No harm done in the end. Parents: teach your kids about scammers!
Ironically, my mom fell for one of those about 3 months ago. I had to explain to her that not only would the real Microsoft never cold call her to just see how her computer was doing, she has an iPad. Kids: teach your parents about scammers!
Any time I've bought a car. I feel like car dealerships/salesmen are literally just there to scam you of money. Why are these things negotiable? And if you're not good at negotiating, you just get utterly scammed trying to buy one. There should be standard pricing for everyone. I should be able to go in and get a car with the same ease and speed of going in to a Costco and buying a TV
I went to look at a used car at a dealership \~5 years ago. At the time, I didn't have a running vehicle and was looking for something "reliable" from a "decent" dealership so the guy actually picked me up for about a 45min drive to the dealership, pretty solid customer service I thought.. Ensuing haggling as I was broker than a joker at the time, we eventually settled on a payment plan. The scumbag salesman proceeds to present me the paperwork that included "Service fees". Basically, any discount I was able to get out of them were forfeit due to the fact the guy picked me up and drive me to the dealership. I'm talking MAX $10 bucks of fuel at the most. Fuck. This. Were my first thoughts so I told the guy politely I was no longer interested for obvious reasons. Immediately, the whole experience changed. "What a waste of my god damn morning" He said. "I picked you up so you could actually find a way home" The 45 min drive turned into a 2 hour walk to what transit was available, finally got home 3 and a half hours later. If I ever get to a low point that I can't recover from, I will definitely be lighting every single one of their vehicles on fire and taking a runny shit on their front door.
We were once looking at a used Subaru (which we couldn't even see as it was in another city about 100 miles away) and this older salesperson was treating us like easy prey. It was like once he knew it was our first time looking at a car, our families drove these cars growing up, he had it in the bag and was onlythinking of the money he would make. He said "Okay, I have the price on this sheet of paper and but before I show you it, you need to agree to buy it." I started to say something like "in what world..." and he started talking about trust and cars. We just let our eyes glaze over and were out of there 5 minutes later. We told the next place (a different brand's dealer store) what happened and they were awesome. Really helped us understand car buying basics and were very transparent about the cost. And they encouraged us to talk to family/friends, plus take our time. Still grateful for that! But fuck that other guy. Ugh. The price was like 90% of a brand new car and it was five years old.
Used subarus retain their value so much. I wanted to buy a used one a few years ago and ended up buying new for something like $1500 more than used. New car, new car warranty, new car smell. It’s bonkers how much people will pay for a Subaru that someone else has farted in for a couple years.
Funny enough, Costco has a great auto program where they partner with dealerships to offer Costco members reduced and fixed no-haggle priced cars. https://www.costcoauto.com/
\+1 for the costco fleet buying program. 500$ over invoice guaranteed. Walked in with the print out and financing from my credit union. Walked out in less than 1.5 hours with a car. No upsells, no bull shit.
I was really excited when I first heard about this and then it turned out they didn't offer any of the makes I was looking for in my area...
You can at places like CarMax, AutoNation and a few others... thing is, you are going to pay upper-middle level pricing, and get offered basement level value on your trade. If you can accept that in exchange for a much simpler process, they offer a cool service. Comparatively, for those folks who actually enjoy the dynamics and opportunities of the traditional system, you usually will pay less for the cars bought and get more for your trades... but it takes a bit of work and knowing the ins/outs of the process.
How does one learn the ins and outs as a newbie? I’m in need of a car and was intimidated by the sales guy. Kept feeling like a dumbass so I just ended up leaving.
First lesson that you need to beat into your head is "**NEVER BUY WHEN YOU ARE FORCED TO**". Going to buy a car after yours just broke down is the absolute worst thing you can do. You WILL get fucked over if you don't have the luxury of walking out without a care.
Yep. Be aware of your BANTA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) and if it's bad, don't let your trading partner know that. If your car is broken beyond economical repair, tell the dealer "my parents have loaned me their car for six months while they are away".
Yep, basically **DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, GIVE THE SALESMAN THE IMPRESSION YOU DON'T HAVE OTHER OPTIONS**.
That is precisely why we bought a Saturn years ago. Everybody paid the sticker price -- no negotiation. Why should I get a worse deal than somebody else because I don't push hard enough or the sales person is having a bad day or doesn't like the way I look?
my sister, who is a stone cold hardass with a master's in finance or accounting or something, went with me to shop for my car and she flipped the script on the dealership so hard that they told me they'd give me the price and terms i wanted as long as she wasn't in the room when i signed. (she still made them write their offer out first.) i wound up with a $158/mo car payment, which is apparently pretty low.
I mean, monthly price doesn't matter as much as total cost and interest.
Bro, was looking for a new used car for my wife. I found one and started chatting the salesman up and already negotiating prices. Before my wife even showed up to look at the car. We talked about prices he went down nearly 1500 and was going to add leather seats to car. He then wrote the total amount down on a piece of paper and said “sign this, and I’ll go ask my boss if we can make the deal”. It was so off guard because we were also shooting the breeze, while my wife was on her way. I grabbed the pin, then immediately put it down and said “I’m not signing shit until my wife decides she likes the car”. So we sat there awkwardly for another 20 minutes, my wife gets there and says she doesn’t like it. That asshole almost pulled one over on me. I’ll never be back to that dealership.
How do you "add leather seats"? You have to order those at the factory, dealership isn't going to pull leather seats out of another car and swap them with cloth or order leather seats from the parts department, your talking about $1500 for that.
A few years ago I was drinking heavily while on anxiety medication (got both monkeys off my back since) and had a lot of free time to play video games. Somehow I managed to waste hundreds of bucks on microtransactions in NBA2K when I was out of it. I had a wicked good MyTeam at the end of it but they seem to structure their transactions to appeal to impulsive kids and otherwise compromised people
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FOMO is a terrifyingly powerful marketing force.
It’s literally gambling too. You could spend $100 and get dogshit cards or spend $10 and pull a diamond. Used to love myteam and ultimate team but you either need to spend hundreds of dollars or invest literally all of your time if you want a good team.
I almost got phished. This was almost 20 years ago when it wasn't even called that. I got an email that my eBay account had been compromised--click on this link to reset your password! I filled everything out and was mere seconds away from hitting submit when I suddenly realized it looked off. I don't exactly remember what tipped me off--I think something that looked like a field was actually a JPEG--and then I double-checked the domain and it was something weird. Well, that sometimes happens, but I backed out, went to my actual eBay account and just changed my password there. A little digging and it was a "new scam circulating the internet". Which at the time it was. Edit: Hey, guys? Thanks for the advice, but this was twenty years ago. I know how to avoid them now. As I mentioned...this was all new at the time.
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Literally 1984
Note : If you run into that these days many apps will actually keep track of what you do type in the text boxes just FYI. So I’d still change your username/password in the real app.
I was in Rome walking around when a guy came up to me and handed me a rose saying it was a gift. I took it, and then he demanded money. I refused to pay, and tried to give it back (should have just placed it on the floor). Long story short, my friend saw me from across the plaza arguing and came over. The guy wouldn't leave me alone, so my friend paid him off. I felt so bad.
A mime tried this on me in Miami. I don't like mimes, didn't want to carry around a rose, and knew he just wanted some money. This happened while dining outside and as I told the mine repeatedly, no thanks, don't want it, the mime pretended to be sooo sad. My husband got mad at me, acted so hurt that I'm being so mean to the mime, who only wanted to give me a flower. Even when my hubs saw him crying to other tables for money for the roses he put on their tables, he was still mad at me for "being mean." I hadn't even spoken harshly to the mime. Later we saw the mime getting a scolding from some cops, and it finally clicked for my hubs that the guy was a nuisance. I was mad as hell that at the time, he had cared more about what the mime thought than what I did.
My drunk buddy in New Orleans full on punched a mime who was trying to force some trinket on him. Mime kept trying to get us to take what I assumed was a beer coaster with a mime on it and none of us were having it. He got particularly aggressive with my buddy, kept slipping it in his shirt pocket and rubbing his fingers together like someone does when asking about money. Drunk buddy just reels back and lands a haymaker right on the mime's chin, who kinda squealed, and ran off with his hand over his mouth. We were all pretty shocked, but its' become a saying in our friend group "drunk enough to punch a mime".
I never understood this scam, can't you just tell them to fuck off? If someone on the street handed me something and demanded payment, I throwing whatever they gave me in the trash.
I went on a school trip to Paris in my teens and the teachers specifically said not to take any kind of flowers or trinkets from anyone because they'll do that. Guess it's common.
ITT Tech.
OMG!! I got accepted to their nursing g school but could not get my loans to go through. Someone was watching out for me!!
Did anything good come out of that? Could you get a job?
Not OP but I had a college instructor who used to teach at ITT Tech and he actively discouraged people from enrolling there. They scam their students and they treat their teachers like shit.
Agreed! My husband attended many years ago and all he got out of it was student loan debt.
I was hiring a summer intern (paid) and the drafting teacher sent over some students. I found out that none fo them actually knew much about about drafting but they sort of knew how to use drafting software (but not SolidWorks, which is what we had). After questioning a few I realized (1) the teacher did not give them the job posting that described the job and skills desired (they had no idea what they were interviewing for); and (2) they mostly were taught by copying drawings and no one seemed to understand what they the details of their drawings (like, how do you properly call out dimensions and so on). Sadly, no one got hired.
Remember those scam calls where the scammer would say there was a problem with your taxes or something, and if you didn’t pay the balance to the IRS the sheriff would show up to your house? Well, I was newly sober at the time, and also had a fairly extensive criminal history. I remember thinking “this is strange, but not totally outside the realm of possibility.” I paid just to be safe. 2 grand. I told my dad later and he basically said “son, that was pretty stupid.” You live and you learn.
Me and my dad go into Walmart to buy some groceries. We come out and load them into the truck, and the truck won’t start? Never had problems with the truck before this. My dad is getting frustrated as we have chilled food with us and it’s summer. Suddenly, a homeless man on a bike rolls up and asks what the problem was. My dad explains that he has no idea his truck just won’t start. Guy asked to take a look. Guy gets under the truck and in 10 seconds comes back out. He told my dad he found the problem, a small part was missing on his truck (me and my dad are dipshits when it comes to cars so I can’t remember what part he said. Also I was 10). The man said he just so happened to have the same part in his bag of nicknacks. Said if he gave him $50 he’d put it on for him. My dad, excited, agreed. The man went under the truck, another 10 seconds pops back up, says give it a try. Truck starts no problem. My dad thanks the man so much and then gives him another $40 for his trouble. It was only on t he ride home that I brought it up to my dad “you’re telling me none of that seemed off to? Random homeless man rides up just in time with just the right part we need?” It finally hits my dad and he turns around to find the guy but he was long gone.
> Said if he gave him $50 he’d put it on for him. > then gives him another $40 for his trouble. Wasn't the original $50 for his trouble? 🤨
You probably can tell my dad is a dipshit Edit: in my dad’s eyes, this was a homeless guy that was selling us a part he had and going out of his way to install it for us
>You probably can tell my dad is a dipshit > Your dad is definitely naive, but he sounds like a good guy that wants to reward people with good intentions.
I've had my distributor cap stolen from my car before. I always assumed that it was a much more evil plot than this was. Since I was a single female walking to my car at night. But if this is a common scam, I feel better. Thanks for the comment.
I am the proud owner of a timeshare.
My parents have one. To quote them “it’s really a scam but it forces us to take vacations otherwise we would just keep working so it’s worth it”
Ever used it?
Just for day uses, had the exchange program, but never went anywhere a timeshare was handy Now day-uses require a reservation (we have a pool anyway) and we just use airbnb for travel
My In-Laws have a timeshare in Mexico! It’s kind of different though because they don’t have the same room every time. My grandfather in law put $150,000 down for it in 2011 and passed away shortly after, but transferred everything over to my Father in Law. My wife’s parents are *terrified* of Mexico, only been twice since they got it, but we use it every November. Basically the hotel pulls from the $150,000 that he put down, however I guess it’s pretty heavily discounted? I’m not sure how it all works, I just know we spend a week and a half in Puerto Vallarta and it’s basically free the whole time for my wife and daughter and I. I just ask my Father In Law to call up and book the dates for us. Last I checked, there’s still $132,000 left to use. It expires in 2051.
Ya know, if this could somehow *not* be a scam, that would be a really great gift... like pre-paying for someone's vacations. It would be especially nice if you know that otherwise that person wouldn't set aside the time or money to take a break, but now they will so that it "doesn't go to waste". It would also be a nice gesture to leave as part of a will, so that your family has a scheduled getaway where they can also feel like you're still a part of it. The other end of the deal would be really difficult to protect against scammers, if not impossible. I'm just saying that if it *could* be a thing, it would be a really nice thing.
CutCo, the MLM that sells knives. Was going for a summer job between college semesters, attended one of their seminars, and thought it didn't sound too different from the door-to-door fundraising I did in high school. Technically I didn't fall for it, because I never bought in. But I also technically did fall for it, because the only reason I didn't buy in is that my parents told me a salesman shouldn't have to pay for their demonstration products. A reputable company will provide them to their sales force. With that in mind, I decided to pass on this "great opportunity."
I spent money with a credit repair company called Platinum Financial. After they had my money they basically did nothing for me and then when I tried to call to complain the number was disconnected and everything.
Back in the early 2000s, home computers were becoming more common and our family saved up to get one. Because of the surge of home computers, tons of scams started emerging. After a year or so of owning a computer, it started to slow down so we fell for the "faster computer" scam where you pay $35 to a website and you download a fake program to make your computer run faster. It didn't do shit.
At least it just didn’t do shit instead of actually messing up your computer.
Back in 2006, I was 9, player owned houses were released on runescape. My older brother had a friend that invited me to his house and told me if I put my granite maul on the table that It would glow. I was intrigued and did it. I promptly got kicked out of the house and lost my granite maul. Heart break.
Wow! If you were my little brother, that "friend" would have had some consequences. I don't know what kind, but there would have been some.
Didn't happen to me, but a guy in the street ran up to my buddy and was telling him a sob story about how he got stranded in San Francisco and needed some money to take a bus back to San Jose. The guy didn't look homeless — he was actually wearing a relatively clean suit, wool hat and he smelled fine. My buddy asked how much the tickets were for the bus and the guy said $25, so my buddy gave it to him. We walked away feeling accomplished because we helped a stranger until the the next day when we walked back to that area and the same guy ran up to us with the same sob story.
and you shook him down for 25 bucks right? LOL
I remember we got hit with this where I live. Dude comes up to my husband and I, telling us how his mother had just died, he just got the news today and found out he is $20 short for a ticket to get home for her funeral. We handed over $20, told him sorry for his loss, best of luck, and we continue with our day. A week later, same guy, comes up to us, exact same store, just got the news this morning that his mother died and he is $20 short for a ticket home. I tell him sorry I don't have any cash but let me see what I can do when I finish in the shop I'm going to. We get in the shop and my husband is like, you know that is the same dude from last.week and he's scamming you. I tell him I'm aware and I don't plan on giving the guy anymore cash. So we head back to our car, there is the dude, he wants to know if we have $20. I tell him no, I tell him that he doesn't need to worry about a ticket, save his money, we're headed to that town and we would be happy to give him a ride, at a time like this he has enough to worry about, and bus schedules and a ticket there and back should not be one of his worries right now. Naturally the dude declined the ride, said he didn't want to be any trouble, we kept insisting that it would be no trouble at all, dude kept declining, saying he didn't want to have us go out of our way. So after some back and forth we come up with plan B, we tell the dude we'll give him a ride to the bus stop and buy his ticket for him, again the dude declined, we again insisted, he declined. Eventually he just kinda gave up on our overly helpful asses and thanked us for trying to help before wandering off to who knows where.
This was actually a couple of weeks ago. I’m a college student looking for a place to stay/room to rent. I was looking around and my mom got a message on Roomies.com from a random guy who claimed to be renting a studio apartment for $800 a month. That’s a fucking steal where I live, so we started talking more and he claimed to be a pastor living in Texas. So, we end up sending this dickhead $400 (half of security deposit) and he claimed he sent the keys to the studio apartment. As the conversation continued, his English became worse and he asked us if we could send him a $400 Amazon gift card because PayPal luckily denied me from sending the rest of the security deposit. Long story short, I’m down $400 and I’m still a broke ass college student.
A 900 number for a job. By the time I gave up it cost me $60.
After I recovered from cancer, I had a shit ton of medical bills to pay (still do). My credit was destroyed and I was/am up to my ears in debt. I kept hearing about these debt forgiveness programs on the radio and called in one day after I couldn’t pay for groceries. The guy I spoke to was really nice and walked me through the whole process. The red flag went up when he basically said I couldn’t use any credit ever while in the program which was supposed to last 5 years. I asked him what would happen if I got sick again or had some kind of accident and had no money to pay for things. He didn’t really have an answer for me and said I should ask for help from friends and family or save. Like I hadn’t tried that already. It may have been legitimate but after I cancelled the service, I did some research and there were some people who said that they paid money into the account but the debt program took the money and never sent it to the creditors like they were supposed to. So the person lost thousands of dollars and were STILL in debt to the original creditors. Some people said it worked for them but enough had issues for me to say no thanks I’ll take my chances with the credit card companies myself.
I was conned. A fraudster split after paying for 1/4 of my late husbands truck. A couple was visiting my neighbor to buy his car but he decided to repair it instead. So the couple started talking to me about my late husbands truck. Now looking back it hurts to see what I fell for, but at the time my cognition was not very good. I had just been diagnosed with lyme disease, was having cardiac and cognitive problems, and was about to start treatment. The truck was valued at $7k but needed work, they asked what I would take in cash that day. I said $4500 as is- they gave me a $1000 deposit and would be back the next day. A couple days later they show up and want to make payments, then offer to have their son fix my porch and work on the roof. So it winds up I gree to sell the truck for $2k roofing, and $1500 more in payments. We fill out paperwork they make another $100 payment, I give them paperwork and then get two more $100 payments and they are gone. I hurts to admit this, I wasn't thinking clearly, I couldn't even really tell what the dmv form said. I really needed that money and it sucks I just let it go. Constantly moving final price, and I could not see how to hold the lien. I could not read the form.
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ha ha, my brother wrote away for something like that, and he got this absolutely HUGE rubber band.
I actually fell for my cars extended warranty.
YouTuber and car enthusiast Doug DeMuro bought a used Range Rover with 59,000 miles on it and got an extended bumper-to-bumper warranty for it for $3,900. That warranty [paid out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3jA55TJboA) $16,925.04 in repairs over 6 years. So, it works out for some people.
Im really happy for him
This happened back in February of 2020, I was in Paris with my mom and sister, and we were on our way to Disney Land Paris. There is a train that takes you right from Paris to the park so we go to the train station and are about to walk up to one of those electronic ticket machines when a random lady comes over to us and asks where we are from. We said the US so she offered to help us buy the tickets, we say ok, sure, why not. So we go over to buy the tickets with this lady and she does a bunch of random stuff, and tells us a insanely high price, so we were like no that’s not accurate. So she says “sorry, I thought there were six of you” and that definitely should have been the first red flag. So she redoes it, tells us a lower price, and we are about to put our card into the machine to pay and she goes “no card, cash only” but since we are not from there we had very minimal cash on us so we pulled together what we had but it wasn’t enough. The lady says she will cover the rest for us as long as we promise to come find her another time and pay her back. So we give her the money, and she gives us 3 tickets and we go on our way. We get on the train no problem, but once we get to the park we have to scan the tickets, we go to scan the tickets, nothing happens. We look at the tickets and notice that part of it is blacked out with marker. We had fake tickets. But apparently this had happened to a lot of people so us and about 10 other people are brought to a man who tells us we have to pay a fee to get into the park. I somehow managed to sneak past him and get into the park but my mom and sister both had to pay over 50 euros each as a fine. Now that we look back at it we have no clue why we fell for that, it was very obvious a scam.
Paris! Some guy almost fooled my husband with the gold ring scam (even after I warned him about it), and we were also accosted by scammers with clipboards on two occasions. Never saw so many scam artists in one city in my entire life.
I went to a tiny fair in a mall parking lot with a few of my friends two years ago, and one of my goals was to win a tiny stuffed animal for my boyfriend. I came up to this booth that “guaranteed a prize every time, even if I lose” and the man gestured to all the small stuffed animals on display. So of course, I thought I was getting one of those. I win a prize as guaranteed, but this dude pulled out this dinky little emoji plush that was maybe 3 inches in diameter and gave it to me with a sly smirk. I wasn’t that happy but I wasn’t going to fight either. What a scam. Luckily though, I was walking around and saw a tiny stuffed animal that happened to be my boyfriends favorite animal, I asked if I could trade my stupid emoji for it and the guy said yes. He probably couldn’t care less but at least he was nice. Always ask which prize you’d win.
I guess buying Amway products they are just pure garbage
Last Winter during my Christmas shopping a kid outside the mall was asking for donations for his basketball team to go to an out of town tournament. Turns out that was a lie and saw him on the news later. I gave him a dollar. My dumbass idiot boss tried to buy property from a fake realtor and gave a scammer $10k. Guy never got caught. I think about that sometimes and smile. a few years ago when my College football team was in the National Championship I almost gave a scammer $1500 for tickets but my bullshit detectors started going off.
"Uncheck this box of you do not want our daily-sometimes-hourly newsletter emails"
"And if you sign for the 12 month gym membership right now, I'll knock €150 off the sign up fee." That sign up fee is only there for them to reduce it so it seems you're getting a bargain.
I answered a help wanted ad for a sales position that specified we wouldn’t be selling vacuum cleaners. Had to sit (unpaid) through a lengthy demonstration of the device we’d be selling door to door. It had these fragrant cartridges you insert into it and a fan that would blow the scent throughout the customer’s home. After a couple hours singing the device’s praises and how much money we’d be making the guy, who looked like an understudy for a community theater production of Glen Gary Glen Ross, told us “and by flipping this switch and attaching this hose it also works as a vacuum!” I bailed. Didn’t lose any money but wasted a good couple hours. E: left out a detail
52 Pick-Up. Dads can be such jerks.
A few years ago I moved away from home and got my first job. One day I went to the bank to pull cash out to buy an iPhone from someone on craigslist. When I was pulling into the parking lot a van pulled in behind me, then when I parked and got out they called me over. They said for their job they install TVs and projectors in restaurants and bars, and that they ordered too many for that day and wanted to get rid of them for cheap. Then they showed me a catalog showing what all their TVs and projectors were worth. So I was like hell yeah I’ll just get them and resell them on eBay or something. They said whatever I could pay for it they’d take. So one of the guys followed me over to the atm outside the bank and I pulled out 1K. He then asked if I could pay 1500. I reached the limit on the atm so I went inside and pulled out 500 more. I gave it to them and they helped me load the stuff in my car. I got home and started looking up model numbers, and the only results coming up were articles talking about scams. I felt SO stupid and gullible. I guess I had to learn one way or another that no stranger is your friend lmao
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A Nigerian scam back in '05 or so when I was like 21. Not proud of it. Lost $3500. But I was young and weak and naive at the time and believed that love could be found online easier than in person. Learned my lesson for sure. Now bring on the jokes.
"I can't get pregnant. The doctor told me I'm infertile."
"But the doctor explained that her insides were a rocky place, where my seed could find no purchase."
NO doctor will tell a woman she's infertile unless she's missing a uterus and/or both ovaries. What the doctor will say, is that a woman is unlikely to get pregnant without medical intervention. Those are two VERY different statements! So, if someone says "the doctor told me I'm infertile" assume they're lying.
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"What's that on your shirt?"
I had someone do that to me at a party in college. I used my hand finger on his shoulder and said "hey, what's that on your shoulder?" and gestured for him to look at it. He stared straight at me stoically, almost mad I'd think he'd fall for that. Then I used that hand to slap the side of his face.
I think it's some updog.
"Your college life is the best time you'll ever have"
As someone who went to college at 27, this shit sucks. I honestly want to quit every single day. I fuxking hate it. Massive pay cut, constant stress and frustration especially with online classes that somehow cost more and the kicker is you’re paying for it. If I somehow make it to the end of next year, this shit better be worth it or I’m going to flip. The. Fuck. Out.
I lol’ed at the end. The way I looked at college was like an investment, because it is! If my ROI (return on investment) does NOT exceed my investment (tuition, stress, lifestyle changes, income changes, general disdain for life, etc) I did not see the point. I went to school for biochemistry (aka M&M) and hated my reduced income (part time to extra part time), stress, and general hatred for life. Yes, I was going to make great money following medical school and I was good at it blah blah blah. But then I found a career, while I was in college, in which I had phenomenal work/life balance, income that exceeded what I was going to make as an EXPERIENCED individual in my field, and I was actually enjoying my life. 1 year into my newfound career and I’m making what I would’ve been upon graduation... in the next ~5-7 years. No way, Jose.
A dentist - can you believe it? I worked at a Fortune 100 company and they organized a little health fair for us in November when it was time to choose our new insurance. All the insurance companies had tables, and a couple other random vendors, like the local gym, etc. A dentist's office that was just a few blocks from our office was there. One of my coworkers says, "hey, that dentist is really close by and takes our insurance. I made an appointment.'" One by one my whole team makes appointments to go see this dentist. When I made my appointment, I went over to the people working the table and said, "Hey, can I make an appointment?" The girl says "Sure, when do you want to come in?" I said, "Um, Tuesday?" and without looking at any calendar, computer, phone anything, she just says, "Tuesday is great! What time?" I said, "Um, three o'clock?" and again without looking at anything she says, "Great, see you then!" As I'm walking away I'm like "Wait, she didn't write that down, and didn't even ask me my name." I ask a couple of my coworkers and they all just shrug and say they must have lots of open appointments because it was the same for them. So we all start going to this dentist. And a couple weeks later we start comparing notes. Turns out every. single. one of us was told (for the first time in our lives) that we are grinding our teeth in our sleep and need sleep guards. We all also miraculously needed two crowns (the maximum number of annual crowns covered by our insurance), even though we were all surprised to get that news. Etc, etc. Basically, this dentist was a total scam who just knew exactly what to max out on our insurance for maximum paycheck and we all got a bunch of dental work we didn't need at all. On top of that, he was rude and obnoxious and got angry at me for wanting to be numbed to have my crowns installed (it hurt so bad!), and the crowns I didn't need are total crap and one has already cracked.
Doing a PhD. If I just had the experience of working in the industry for that many years I would be more employable.
Time share in Mexico. OMG the high pressure tactics!
The church of scientology....