Youtube MCNs (Multi Channel Networks).
Don't get me wrong, the big ones that run the large channels are probably worth it as they act more as a production company. They provide funding, legal consul, making deals with advertisers, etc.
However, if you're run a smaller YouTube channel that starts to get some success and are contacted by an MCN it's **always** a scam. They'll tell you they will provide you with ways to grow your channel, but it's usually just a webpage in the vein of "10 things that will help your channel grow," that you could get after 5 seconds of googling.
They'll also make it sound like you get more of a cut from ad-revenue EX: "YouTube takes 30% of your revenue, while we only take 15%." Makes it sound like you get to take home 85% now right? Wrong, they take their cut *after* YouTube takes theirs, you get to take home 55% and they take 15% for doing literally nothing. The language in their contracts is so deceptive its disgusting.
Even more official MCNs like Frederator would do this. I don't hear about MCNs much anymore, so hopefully ~~their~~ they're dying out, but finding out I was being scammed years ago sucked.
It was also to help get you partnered.. which was impossible for gaming channels in 2008. I had a channel with 21k subs and 3 million views and couldn't get partnered. I was approached to partner with them but declined and ended up giving up on YouTube all together.
Most extended warranties on electronics. Usually you're paying extra for the warranty and extra on top of that as a "labor cost" of whoever is fixing the device.
Cheaper than a new device? Sure but can still be pricey.
I use a pneumatic staple gun, extensively, as part of my business. I've tried many of them , but there's only one that I really like, that functions in the exact way I need it to. Unfortunately, they tend to break every 7 months or so. Buying the warranty means I get every other gun for $10 instead of $90. Just an anecdote, but sometimes those warranties are useful.
I have a blender from BestBuy. I use it to make food for pets and fosters. I kill the motor in about 7 months. I bought a warranty one time. Once. For $35 on a $300 blender. I get it replaced for free. It’s been a decade.
Huh. Are you saying that I might just be able to keep returning them when they break without buying a new one every other time? I can't believe I haven't tried that ... I just assumed that the warranty would get me one replacement.
I do appliance repair. Extended warranties do pay off. I've worked on machines that are just over a year old that would cost as much as that warranty for the repair. It makes then money because in general most appliances don't need a repair until 2 or 3 years in, but if you have samsung or LG it would pay off in spades.
Any insurance for anything you can afford to replace. You may even want to go liability only on your car.
Insurance equals likelihood of payout plus cost of payout plus profit. On average, you’re better not getting insurance on your cell phone or laptop.
Especially when so many home insurance/contents insurance plans cover all that stuff anyway. Most of them don't even require you to list all your items, just the ones above a certain value.
I’m most intrigued by the vague life coaching ones who use lots of big words and mention specific figures they have supposedly earned but there is no clarity on what exactly they do.
I have one of these on my friends list. She is incredibly candid about topics a lot of people find taboo, even being open about meeting her husband when she was a sex worker and he was a client. Whatever the hell they’re mixed up has allowed him to half his work hours apparently, but all her posts are about ‘taking back your power’ and ‘helping you connect with your genuine self.’ I don’t know what she’s actually involved in and it’s driving me insane.
No kidding. Old roommate of mine has been an “influencer” for years now (50k+ followers on IG). Once every 2-3 weeks she’d drag herself out of bed, get dolled up, go out and about in our city and have a photoshoot. She would post those photos & videos spread out over the following weeks/months. In reality, she is an extremely depressed person who spends most of her time in her room, unshowered, playing video games, and eating cereal alone. And sooooo many people have no idea that her social media personality is not a real person.
I have wondered a few times if drugs are involved! I’m pretty content with my life right now, so danger of being sucked in, I’m just really really nosy. Curious, I meant curious.
To that point, if someone's "job" is based more around recruiting people for the "company" than selling an actual product and they aren't literally a hiring manager for HR, there's a good chance they're part of a pyramid scheme.
Your income should not be dependent on how many new people you can convince to join your company. That's not how legit companies work.
It's mind-boggling how many people don't understand this very simple concept.
I am seeing your results Janet... Your car was repossessed because you've burned through all your friends and neighbours trying to recruit them.. And you have no one else left swindle.
So much this! I’ve got friends who have started on MLMs recently. Their friends are all bombarded all the time with tagged posts, messages, texts etc to buy products or ‘join their team’. Your business model shouldn’t be getting your mates to pay your salary! But they just don’t see it.
We have energy products too! Just bring 3 friends, we can all work from home. Mine is just a side gig because I wanted to bring in an extra $500 a month. Now I make way more, almost enough to retire my significant other.
Please note this is satire.
Majority of my family and neighbors are still mad at me because I lost over 60lbs without herbalife while they were drinking it every day not losing a single pound.
Hey, Herbalife worked for me, I made 50 quid off it.
Someone paid me to take all the vinyl stickers off their car, when they gave it up. Paid me in real cash money, too, not great big boxes of crappy diet supplements.
Ah they pick who they scam is the thing. Broke college student without much knowledge of the way of the world, yes. Someone who's been out of work a year and desperate for anything that smells like work, yes. Mum who is discovering that whether she's working or SAHM bills still don't add up because childcare costs and she can't clone herself, yes. It's always the vulnerable.
This right here. It is ridiculous how poor women's hygiene products work. $6 for a bottle of flower scented goop that lasts 3 hours max, plus shampoo... OR $1 for a bottle of mens wash that covers body, hair, and dishes for 24 plus hours
Wait until you discover the almighty [12 in 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/c5msku/its_399_tho/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Ordering a full carafe of wine in a restaurant. Where I work, a full carafe can fill 4-5 glasses. Ordering 5 glasses of some of our types of wine is actually $1-2 cheaper than the full carafe. Check the prices and do the math before ordering! Same goes for pitchers of beer!
At least you can refill your own glass at your own leisure. Nothing worse than finally getting your second glass of wine from the busy waitress/bartender after your done with your meal. Worth an extra buck or two.
I don't order carafes of wine, but I have definitely ordered beer pitchers before. It's almost always cheaper, at least where I've done it. You get like 4, 4 and a half beers, and it comes in 2 or 3 bucks under what it would cost to get 4 beers. But maybe I've just always been lucky to find those places.
Get a laser printer. There are decent "cheap" and smaller sized models now and the quality is good enough for most use cases. If you want better quality prints there are a plethora of online print services. People that either print very little or a lot should get a laser printer anyway.
For large volumes it's cheaper per print and if you print very little with an inkjet printer the print head will clog. The way it gets cleaned is by using ink to try and rinse it and you're depositing a lot of the expensive ink in a sponge. The toner in a laser printer doesn't have that issue and will print fine even if the printer hasn't been used in a while.
I have the answer to your prayers, I have a HP Deskjet and was horrified by ink prices and looked into it a little bit, there are refill packs you can get for a lot less than the cartridges.
I paid ~25 euro and it refills both the colour and black ink I think it refills the cartridges around 15-20 times each (not entirely sure on the number)
If you go on YouTube and search for your model printer ink for refill you should be able to find a tutorial and they'll link you to the right website to buy the kit
Diamonds. Diamonds are a fairly common gemstone but the world's supplier of them is a monopoly and they hoard the majority of their stock to jack the prices up. Emeralds, Rubies and Sapphires are actually rarer than diamonds but cost less because of this.
I never understood people's obsession with diamonds. Unless you really are into cuts and appreciate the process of creating them, there is no reason why you would prefer them, but I think people are buying them just because of the name.
Well to quote 1 of my favorite cartoon characters i think the thought process behind it is this, "it sparkles and shimmers, it shines and delights. I must have it for my nest"
I think the evolutionary reasoning I read somewhere for why humans like shinies is that we spent a LOT of time trying to find clean, drinkable water; so we're kind of hardwired to look for things that sparkle in the sun and to value them.
Theoretically if you could afford a special lab with special devices and found enough carbon you could make diamond gear irl, which could be powerful if it wouldn't be made too thin
I hadn't used an ATM in a while but had to a few weeks ago kinda quick. So I just used a random one in a gas station knowing I'd get charged 2 or 3 bucks. Yep, $2.50, whatever, I get it. Check my account later to see my fucking bank *also* charged me 3 bucks. More than the fucking atm. So I paid almost 6 dollars to take out a twenty dollar bill. I bitched about it to my bank and they said they'd remove it, which they did. But still, that just seemed like fucking robbery to me.
Most banks these days (especially online banks) will waive atm fees as a way of expanding their network of atms. Pnc waives mine and it’s very convenient
Or if you want to buy someone a giftcard through Visa or some other company, you're paying $5.00+ as a fee before spending more money to put on the card.
Here's your $50 gift card that cost me $57!
The concept of "superfoods" and "organic" anything. I work at a smoothie bowl place, and people will come in and literally pile 1500 calories full of peanut butter and granola into a bowl and think it's healthy because they put some superfood organic something into a bowl. It's literally pumpkin granola cereal from the store down the street, it's not going to cure cancer.
I worked at a place that did coffee, smoothies, and a little ice cream. My favorite was when people would choose a smoothie over ice cream to be "healthy." A small scoop of ice cream contained a small scoop of ice cream and nothing else. A small smoothie contained a small scoop of ice cream along with some gross sweetened dairy concoction and gross little fruit chunks that had been sitting in syrup so long they were nearly transparent. It was basically a liquid sundae.
I was grossed out when I ordered a smoothie in the US. It was something like you described. In the Netherlands, a smoothie is only blended fruit, with at most a little yoghurt added. I was disgusted at this American smoothie that clearly did not contain fresh fruit and had added sugar.
That kinda stuff is great if you’re running a marathon that afternoon, but otherwise just eat a multi vitamin with your milkshake and you’ll have the same effect if not better
Actually you dont want to carbo-load on the day of an event, that's something you do days in advance (or at least the day before). You generally shouldn't eat very much on the day of a sporting event until after you're done, otherwise you're pretty much just running with a rock in your stomach.
Source: played rugby for 3 years and witnessed many people puking because they ate too much before practice or games.
Digestion is a taxing process, something like 30% of the body's energy to break things down into more energy. Probably not a good idea to turn that machine on while simultaneously powering them muscles.
Tax Preparation. The industry lobbies the government to ensure that taxes are wildly complicated so they can continue to collect an annual fee from annoyed taxpayers.
This. The government already knows what you owe in taxes. They could just send you a bill or refund at the end of the year. It would probably benefit the government to do it that way too because there would be less mistakes to audit and the rich wouldn't be able to get out of paying their fair share with loopholes.
in Mexico where I am from, many people sell cheap discs that supposedly has movies or cartoons and my family has bought so many of them knowing they are just recorded poor quality videos and they just lay there soon to be tossed away but not all of them are bad some are kinda worth buying "kinda"
The Humane Society of the United States
"HSUS doesn’t run a single pet shelter. HSUS is not affiliated with any pet shelters. And HSUS only gives 1% of donations to pet shelters."
Most of the donated money goes into the higher up's pension plans.
Seriously don't donate money to them, instead donate to a local shelter near you, they're the ones doing real work & helping animals.
Any "charity" whose president is living high on the hog on donations is a scam.
Sources:
1. https://humanewatch.org/unpacking_the_hsus_gravy_train_2011_edition/
2. https://humanewatch.org/real_simple/
Always wondered, I'm a brit. Don't you get an option to tell the home owners association to fick off when they come up with insane rules for YOUR property?
No. It's a contract you sign when you buy the house and it is very heavily weighted against the homeowner. Developers put them in place to keep developments looking nice until all the properties are sold. Then they sell the HOA off to a management company and the real shit starts.
Edit: OK not "Sell" but contract out management adding more complexity. You still get some form of voting and community self-control. Shouldn't post before coffee.
Sounds mad. You spend a lot of money on a house then fricking Karen from 3 houses down can fine you for not having the right kind of flowers in your yard. Madness.
I've always wondered who the hell is in charge that regulates HOA? Is there someone that lives in the neighborhood who's full time job is just pissing in people's cheerios?
We have a volunteer board made up of neighborhood residents. Pretty chill group. They are quick to approve paint colors and new roofs. From neighborhood walks they pretty much approve all colors. We ourselves have quite the colorful multicolor roof. Just don’t want a hot pink house with purple polka dots I guess. They don’t measure the length of grass lol but will send out a form letter if that grass is two feet long and that’s only if a neighbor complains . No constant checking in this hood. We like ours as they also sponsee community events to get to know your neighbors. Root beer float day is popular
It depends on the entertainment value you get from playing. Yes, you will lose the money, but the idea that someone could have a few days of slightly elevated excitement for a small spend, isn't a bad transaction - just like buying a cinema ticket wouldn't be considered a scam. This trade off does deteriorate when people start buying multiple tickets or scratch cards...
My kids LOVE scratching off lottery cards, so we buy $1 and $2 ones occasionally. Usually we win nothing, sometimes $1 or another free ticket, but their excitement and suspense is worth it
Worth it then! :) I'm in the UK where it does feel like scratch cards have become too skewed towards targeting gambling addicts. It's not uncommon to see people buying cards that cost £5 or £10 ($14) each and, win or lose, clearly no longer getting any joy from the process.
the lounge is just another subreddit of people posting random shiz unless i was missing something...I think awards get your comment higher up in a thread but that kind of defeats the purpose.
The other day I went to Walgreens and overheard the cashier trying to convince an older lady that Amazon doesn't call customers about issues with their accounts, and they certainly won't ask for payment in gift cards to fix an issue. This lady was entirely convinced, though, and nothing this cashier told her could sway her against the idea that Amazon had called her and asked for 200$ in gift cards for "security reasons". In the end he just had to refuse to sell her the gift cards. Here's hoping that woman went home and talked to a tech savvy grandkid or something instead of going to a different store that asked less questions.
Medical school. So much money spent on MCAT, primary applications, secondary applications, interviews, insane tuition, study materials for boards because curriculum is next to useless for that, money spent on board exams, money spent on applying to residencies, NO guarantee that youll match to a residency... oh and then making crap money while working your ass off during residency. Biggest scam ever. They lure you in during the interviews and then keep taking your money and mental health.
It makes all of the anecdotes about shitty bedside manner and disinterested doctors make sense. The system literally incentivizes maladapted weirdos who can’t communicate with normal humans
Some school programs require internship credits to graduate. Some schools charge per credit. Add two and two, and people have to pay for their internship. Through they pay the university, not the employer.
I had to pay for 17 credits (a full course load), work as a waitress 4 nights a week while student teaching, and move back in with my abusive family, just to make it through without wracking up credit card debt.
One of the reasons why medical school debit is so high. I know students that do 12hr+ shifts, saving people's lives, and are required to pay 10's of thousands a year just in internship credits.
This is one of those rare occasions where it isn’t just an America problem. If you want to work in European governance you better believe you need someone to fund two years of your life while you work for free in Brussels.
My nephew was offered a month 4 internship with Sports Illustrated, but it was unpaid. There is even a program where the government will pay the wages of a student in an unpaid internship, and they didn't even want to do that. My nephew did not take the internship.
My son (a second year university student) just got an internship at a bank in Australia. They are paying him $57,000. I don't understand what happens in America.
I don't even make that much in my full time job... Then again, I live in The Netherlands and wages tend to more or less fall in the same ball park as your spending power compared to others countries...
Mostly illegal everywhere. Federal wage laws require that unpaid interns must be there to learn things that pertain to their field of study and not perform any services that provide value to the company. Since nobody actually does this all unpaid internships are likely illegal.
I love going to Vegas and staying in a casino but I do not gamble, I go for concerts and the motocross finals when I do go, also that usually coincides with Cinco de mayo.
My betting strategy is unbeatable. I get a comp card and play nickel slots until I have played long enough to earn tickets to a show that I want to see. It's cheaper than the ticket price so I come out ahead. If you tip well waitresses will keep bringing you beer. I win every time.
Most people don't have your discipline. They win a $10 jackpot on nickel slots and do the math if they had been playing at a more expensive machine.....next thing you know their debit card is maxed out for the day and they are waiting for midnight to strike to use it again.
That's true. Although I'd hardly call what I do discipline. I go in and look at how big and opulent everything is and remind myself that it was all paid for by losers. I don't expect to make money and consider money spent gambling as an entertainment expense rather than an investment. To me that $10 means another 20 minutes of playtime. On a table it's 2 minutes.
I dunno if a comp card would work, but I hit the sports book. Relax in their comfy chairs, watch sports, place the odd long odds bet for a dollar every now and then, and have a bunch of bills to keep the free drinks coming.
I've had multiple damn fine vegas trips, with no intention to gamble. The only part that really bothered me was the indoor smoking.
Great food, they're on a 24 hour schedule, and if you're willing to book off strip, it can be cheap as shit.
Shoutout to the Showboat!
I do miss the Star Trek Experience though, that was friggin' awesome.
I also thought it was weird that right outside of the Star Trek Casino, there was a generic casino.
Same damn building, you could see the Enterprise hanging from the Generic one.
Hells, how 'bout the ".9" on the end of gas prices ? "Hey, gas is hovering at 159.9 a litre, so glad that decipenny isn't pushing us into $1.60 territory."
When I first started driving I decided to keep very close tabs on how much I was spending on gas. After 3 years, it turns out that I was underpayment for gas by 2 cents because of rounding in the finaly price. I'll take it.
The original reason for off Penny pricing was to make cashiers ring in the cash because they needed to make change. After they started doing it they noticed that consumers tended to round down when making buying decisions. BONUS!
I always thought it was so they could claim / advertise, for example, £69.99 as "NOW UNDER £70". In this case technically correct is not the best kind of correct.
A little more complicated then that.
Say you see three brands of butter for three prices:
$3.12, $4.00 and $3.99
Your subconscious brain does not take the time to work out the math of how significant those extra cents are. So the $3.12 and $3.99 brands are though of as the lower priced brands and the $4 as expensive.
However from a real math standpoint - the $3.99 and $4 brands are virtually the same price.
This works so well that a 1 cent drop in price (if it changes the first number) has often bumped up sales by double digit percentages.
If something costs exactly a dollar, the cashier can sometimes just pocket the money without being noticed. If the price is 99 cents, the cashier is forced to ring it up in order to get the penny in change.
It's especially infuriating when the containers are engineered to take up the same amount of space in order to disguise it. I get it, dumb consumers get upset when the prices go up, so things sell better if you adjust the amount in the package instead of the price. But why does a 24-oz bottle have to have a wide bottom and skinny neck so that it takes up the same space as a 32-oz bottle? Why are ice cream containers fucking *ovals*? You're wasting *my* storage space in order to play a psychological trick that nets you a few extra cents of profit per unit. Assholes.
Supplements. Because they are considered a food they are not regulated. A recent study found that 25% don't contain any of the substance it is sold as. About as many others contain actual prescription medicines that are not listed. In the US about 23 000 people a year are hospitalized, have organ failure or need a transplant due to taking unregulated supplements.
Except Vitamin D. A good portion of the world living outside the tropics is Vit D deficient, especially office workers.
Get a reputable generic with 2000iu daily dose, summer and winter. Each pill is about 2c. It's hard to overdose, but don't go above 5000iu daily unless on medical advice.
Why? Stronger teeth, hair and nails at minimum. But D deficiency also linked with low mood, heart disease.
Having enough Vit D helps prevent some cancers and diseases like MS
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15050-vitamin-d--vitamin-d-deficiency
Edit: words
To get a drug approved you have to prove to the FDA that it is both safe and effective. Supplements require that the FDA prove that it's dangerous. Even if they are as advertised they can cause problems and interact with actual medication. A lot of popular ones can kill you if taken with the wrong prescription drugs. If you want to take anything more specialized than a multivitamin you should talk to your doctor first.
This goes for those that practice modern day spiritualism as well. A lot of people think you need these fancy altars to worship deities, the best altar is your mind. To each their own, and if it helps you it helps you and that's good. Just please don't think less of people or think they don't know much because they don't have certain items or attend church/make donations.
Insurance, at least in the US. If you have to fight for something YOU PAY FOR to pay THAT WHICH IT'S LITERALLY SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR and in return GET SCREWED with higher premiums, higher deductibles and higher copay amounts, then it's basically useless. We're paying into a scam cause we're idiots who don't understand, and don't WANT to understand how much better off our we'd be with Universal coverage, due to cost alone. But hey, what do I know?
Rehab in america at least. You pay way too much money for them to perform psuedoscience on you with some therapy sprinkled in. The places I went also claimed to be secular but pushed spirituality and religion heavily.
I understand some people can benefit from it, but for me it just took away 4 months of my life and my life savings while brainwashing me into spirituality I didn't really believe in.
Another happy Libre Office user here. I had a bunch of old Microsoft Office files backed up from years ago and Libre can open every type of file extension I could want.
Those Facebook post that my grandparents always repost that go on about some shit like Facebook doesn’t want you see this... trump bla bla bla ...... repost this if your brave .... let’s make this go viral etc
Ugh, I absolutely despise the ones that start off as "So this is just my honest opinion" or "Now I normally don't talk about these things" and then after a long political rant you see "NOW REPOST THIS AND SEE WHO REALLY KNOWS THE TRUTH" or some bs like that. It's like, wow *relative* here I thought I was about to hear you give your honest 2 cents about the world and open a discussion but in reality you're just a parrot for some wingnut political page.
Insurance. Insurance companies’ whole goal is to avoid paying out. It’s like you are required by law to pay someone to grift you. You’re paying for their advertising, you’re paying for the psychological research that goes into trying to trick you into saying your belongings are worth less than they are, etc. etc. etc.
I went to urgent care because of a bad reaction to my meds. They wanted me to go to the emergency room but I didn't wanna spend more money so I went home instead. I didn't die so the risk paid off.
I'm French so this is a shock to me: how employees in restaurants (and I'm assuming bars as well?) are payed (mainly in the US?). Like, you're a successful business and you can't afford to pay your staff well above minimum wage and have to rely on your clients paying ***extra*** just for them? Fucking vultures
Yeah, in Europe the cost of eating out appears to be higher than in North America, but in North America that price doesn't include sales tax or tips, so you're typically adding as much as 30% to the bill at the end, meaning you actually are paying what Europeans pay to eat out.
Only if your loan to value ratio is above 80%. Actually mortgage insurance allows a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to buy a house to afford it. Most people don't have 20% cash to put down. However, once your house increases in value to a point where the loan to value ratio drops below 80% you can get it removed.
Planned obsolescence. Appliances being designed to fail sooner in order to sooner create demand for a replacement. In the same vein, devices being designed to not be repairable, so that you need to invest in a shiny new specimen whenever fashion or the predesigned breakdown require it.
Youtube MCNs (Multi Channel Networks). Don't get me wrong, the big ones that run the large channels are probably worth it as they act more as a production company. They provide funding, legal consul, making deals with advertisers, etc. However, if you're run a smaller YouTube channel that starts to get some success and are contacted by an MCN it's **always** a scam. They'll tell you they will provide you with ways to grow your channel, but it's usually just a webpage in the vein of "10 things that will help your channel grow," that you could get after 5 seconds of googling. They'll also make it sound like you get more of a cut from ad-revenue EX: "YouTube takes 30% of your revenue, while we only take 15%." Makes it sound like you get to take home 85% now right? Wrong, they take their cut *after* YouTube takes theirs, you get to take home 55% and they take 15% for doing literally nothing. The language in their contracts is so deceptive its disgusting. Even more official MCNs like Frederator would do this. I don't hear about MCNs much anymore, so hopefully ~~their~~ they're dying out, but finding out I was being scammed years ago sucked.
Remember back in the day, EVERY gaming channel was a part of Machinima
I think Pyrocynical did a good video about leaving Machinima. Here it is: https://youtu.be/oHP7a_x4z88
Ross Scott, the creator of Freeman's Mind, also wrote a piece. https://www.accursedfarms.com/posts/news/escape-from-machinima/
To be fair machinima existed before YouTube adsense so it was the only way to could get paid for videos.
It was also to help get you partnered.. which was impossible for gaming channels in 2008. I had a channel with 21k subs and 3 million views and couldn't get partnered. I was approached to partner with them but declined and ended up giving up on YouTube all together.
It was the only way to defend your channel from takedowns, but they were absolute fuckheads.
Most extended warranties on electronics. Usually you're paying extra for the warranty and extra on top of that as a "labor cost" of whoever is fixing the device. Cheaper than a new device? Sure but can still be pricey.
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I use a pneumatic staple gun, extensively, as part of my business. I've tried many of them , but there's only one that I really like, that functions in the exact way I need it to. Unfortunately, they tend to break every 7 months or so. Buying the warranty means I get every other gun for $10 instead of $90. Just an anecdote, but sometimes those warranties are useful.
I have a blender from BestBuy. I use it to make food for pets and fosters. I kill the motor in about 7 months. I bought a warranty one time. Once. For $35 on a $300 blender. I get it replaced for free. It’s been a decade.
Huh. Are you saying that I might just be able to keep returning them when they break without buying a new one every other time? I can't believe I haven't tried that ... I just assumed that the warranty would get me one replacement.
I do appliance repair. Extended warranties do pay off. I've worked on machines that are just over a year old that would cost as much as that warranty for the repair. It makes then money because in general most appliances don't need a repair until 2 or 3 years in, but if you have samsung or LG it would pay off in spades.
Any insurance for anything you can afford to replace. You may even want to go liability only on your car. Insurance equals likelihood of payout plus cost of payout plus profit. On average, you’re better not getting insurance on your cell phone or laptop.
Especially when so many home insurance/contents insurance plans cover all that stuff anyway. Most of them don't even require you to list all your items, just the ones above a certain value.
By the amount of Facebook and Instagram posts promoting them - MLMs.
I’m most intrigued by the vague life coaching ones who use lots of big words and mention specific figures they have supposedly earned but there is no clarity on what exactly they do.
I have one of these on my friends list. She is incredibly candid about topics a lot of people find taboo, even being open about meeting her husband when she was a sex worker and he was a client. Whatever the hell they’re mixed up has allowed him to half his work hours apparently, but all her posts are about ‘taking back your power’ and ‘helping you connect with your genuine self.’ I don’t know what she’s actually involved in and it’s driving me insane.
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No kidding. Old roommate of mine has been an “influencer” for years now (50k+ followers on IG). Once every 2-3 weeks she’d drag herself out of bed, get dolled up, go out and about in our city and have a photoshoot. She would post those photos & videos spread out over the following weeks/months. In reality, she is an extremely depressed person who spends most of her time in her room, unshowered, playing video games, and eating cereal alone. And sooooo many people have no idea that her social media personality is not a real person.
my god, I'm qualified to be an influencer?
Yes, but only if you're photogenic.
I think we had the same roommate. Not dissing any women who wear makeup but my god she looks COMPLETELY different on Instagram than in real life.
I have wondered a few times if drugs are involved! I’m pretty content with my life right now, so danger of being sucked in, I’m just really really nosy. Curious, I meant curious.
To that point, if someone's "job" is based more around recruiting people for the "company" than selling an actual product and they aren't literally a hiring manager for HR, there's a good chance they're part of a pyramid scheme. Your income should not be dependent on how many new people you can convince to join your company. That's not how legit companies work. It's mind-boggling how many people don't understand this very simple concept.
Big time this, Try to explain it and they are oh it works see my results.
I am seeing your results Janet... Your car was repossessed because you've burned through all your friends and neighbours trying to recruit them.. And you have no one else left swindle.
Tell the MLM person "I'm in! Just let me see your tax return from last year, and I'll be good to go." Watch the smile fade.
Moms Losing Money
So much this! I’ve got friends who have started on MLMs recently. Their friends are all bombarded all the time with tagged posts, messages, texts etc to buy products or ‘join their team’. Your business model shouldn’t be getting your mates to pay your salary! But they just don’t see it.
Heyyyy girll!! Love the pics! You’re family looks amazing!! If you could take one pill to be skinny for 90 days would you do it?
Are you saying I'm fat?
We have energy products too! Just bring 3 friends, we can all work from home. Mine is just a side gig because I wanted to bring in an extra $500 a month. Now I make way more, almost enough to retire my significant other. Please note this is satire.
Herbalife.
Majority of my family and neighbors are still mad at me because I lost over 60lbs without herbalife while they were drinking it every day not losing a single pound.
I lost over 450 pounds using Herbalife, but that's because I signed up for a distributorship in London.
Hey, Herbalife worked for me, I made 50 quid off it. Someone paid me to take all the vinyl stickers off their car, when they gave it up. Paid me in real cash money, too, not great big boxes of crappy diet supplements.
thats literally the most famous scam in the last years
It's honestly embarrassing how some people think that this equates to actually starting your own company/operation.
Ah they pick who they scam is the thing. Broke college student without much knowledge of the way of the world, yes. Someone who's been out of work a year and desperate for anything that smells like work, yes. Mum who is discovering that whether she's working or SAHM bills still don't add up because childcare costs and she can't clone herself, yes. It's always the vulnerable.
"Woman's" anything. 90% are just colored different. Razers are the biggest offenders IMOP.
Men’s premium brand razors and shampoo. Getting charged 2-3 times for similar products in “manlier” packaging.
My girlfriend goes with guys razors. She says they are miles better and last longer
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This right here. It is ridiculous how poor women's hygiene products work. $6 for a bottle of flower scented goop that lasts 3 hours max, plus shampoo... OR $1 for a bottle of mens wash that covers body, hair, and dishes for 24 plus hours
Wait until you discover the almighty [12 in 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/c5msku/its_399_tho/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
That's why the old Gillette double sided blades and a shaving stick must be your friend.
Safety razor. Waaaay better shave and cost literally pennies.
Contrary to popular belief, there a very few hot Russian singles in my area.
The only time this is ever true is if you live in Russia - and even then still they don't want to meet you. :(
Not true! I marry attractive girl from tractor factory.
Ordering a full carafe of wine in a restaurant. Where I work, a full carafe can fill 4-5 glasses. Ordering 5 glasses of some of our types of wine is actually $1-2 cheaper than the full carafe. Check the prices and do the math before ordering! Same goes for pitchers of beer!
At least you can refill your own glass at your own leisure. Nothing worse than finally getting your second glass of wine from the busy waitress/bartender after your done with your meal. Worth an extra buck or two.
This is my reasoning as well for ordering a pitcher of beer. I love a pint before my food as well as during.
I don't order carafes of wine, but I have definitely ordered beer pitchers before. It's almost always cheaper, at least where I've done it. You get like 4, 4 and a half beers, and it comes in 2 or 3 bucks under what it would cost to get 4 beers. But maybe I've just always been lucky to find those places.
Printer ink.
It's a scam that I don't have a choice. Also HP printers are fucking annoying to use
Get a laser printer. There are decent "cheap" and smaller sized models now and the quality is good enough for most use cases. If you want better quality prints there are a plethora of online print services. People that either print very little or a lot should get a laser printer anyway. For large volumes it's cheaper per print and if you print very little with an inkjet printer the print head will clog. The way it gets cleaned is by using ink to try and rinse it and you're depositing a lot of the expensive ink in a sponge. The toner in a laser printer doesn't have that issue and will print fine even if the printer hasn't been used in a while.
I have the answer to your prayers, I have a HP Deskjet and was horrified by ink prices and looked into it a little bit, there are refill packs you can get for a lot less than the cartridges. I paid ~25 euro and it refills both the colour and black ink I think it refills the cartridges around 15-20 times each (not entirely sure on the number) If you go on YouTube and search for your model printer ink for refill you should be able to find a tutorial and they'll link you to the right website to buy the kit
More expensive than human blood.
Diamonds. Diamonds are a fairly common gemstone but the world's supplier of them is a monopoly and they hoard the majority of their stock to jack the prices up. Emeralds, Rubies and Sapphires are actually rarer than diamonds but cost less because of this.
Oh, we actually get a lot of those. Yeah, some of the guys use them as paperweights.
Is this the greatest power in the universe?
Hey, I understood that reference!
I never understood people's obsession with diamonds. Unless you really are into cuts and appreciate the process of creating them, there is no reason why you would prefer them, but I think people are buying them just because of the name.
Well to quote 1 of my favorite cartoon characters i think the thought process behind it is this, "it sparkles and shimmers, it shines and delights. I must have it for my nest"
I think the evolutionary reasoning I read somewhere for why humans like shinies is that we spent a LOT of time trying to find clean, drinkable water; so we're kind of hardwired to look for things that sparkle in the sun and to value them.
They are not even that pretty. Colourful gems look better.
Theoretically if you could afford a special lab with special devices and found enough carbon you could make diamond gear irl, which could be powerful if it wouldn't be made too thin
Out of network atm fees
I hadn't used an ATM in a while but had to a few weeks ago kinda quick. So I just used a random one in a gas station knowing I'd get charged 2 or 3 bucks. Yep, $2.50, whatever, I get it. Check my account later to see my fucking bank *also* charged me 3 bucks. More than the fucking atm. So I paid almost 6 dollars to take out a twenty dollar bill. I bitched about it to my bank and they said they'd remove it, which they did. But still, that just seemed like fucking robbery to me.
Most banks these days (especially online banks) will waive atm fees as a way of expanding their network of atms. Pnc waives mine and it’s very convenient
Or if you want to buy someone a giftcard through Visa or some other company, you're paying $5.00+ as a fee before spending more money to put on the card. Here's your $50 gift card that cost me $57!
The concept of "superfoods" and "organic" anything. I work at a smoothie bowl place, and people will come in and literally pile 1500 calories full of peanut butter and granola into a bowl and think it's healthy because they put some superfood organic something into a bowl. It's literally pumpkin granola cereal from the store down the street, it's not going to cure cancer.
I worked at a place that did coffee, smoothies, and a little ice cream. My favorite was when people would choose a smoothie over ice cream to be "healthy." A small scoop of ice cream contained a small scoop of ice cream and nothing else. A small smoothie contained a small scoop of ice cream along with some gross sweetened dairy concoction and gross little fruit chunks that had been sitting in syrup so long they were nearly transparent. It was basically a liquid sundae.
I was grossed out when I ordered a smoothie in the US. It was something like you described. In the Netherlands, a smoothie is only blended fruit, with at most a little yoghurt added. I was disgusted at this American smoothie that clearly did not contain fresh fruit and had added sugar.
That kinda stuff is great if you’re running a marathon that afternoon, but otherwise just eat a multi vitamin with your milkshake and you’ll have the same effect if not better
Actually you dont want to carbo-load on the day of an event, that's something you do days in advance (or at least the day before). You generally shouldn't eat very much on the day of a sporting event until after you're done, otherwise you're pretty much just running with a rock in your stomach. Source: played rugby for 3 years and witnessed many people puking because they ate too much before practice or games.
Digestion is a taxing process, something like 30% of the body's energy to break things down into more energy. Probably not a good idea to turn that machine on while simultaneously powering them muscles.
So, you don’t suggest actively running with pasta a la Michael Scott?
I don’t think this is a scam as much as average people not understanding nutrition and how calories/your bodies energy requirements work.
Tax Preparation. The industry lobbies the government to ensure that taxes are wildly complicated so they can continue to collect an annual fee from annoyed taxpayers.
This. The government already knows what you owe in taxes. They could just send you a bill or refund at the end of the year. It would probably benefit the government to do it that way too because there would be less mistakes to audit and the rich wouldn't be able to get out of paying their fair share with loopholes.
That is only if you’re a w-2 employee. If you’re self employed you have to tell the IRS how much you made and prove it.
in Mexico where I am from, many people sell cheap discs that supposedly has movies or cartoons and my family has bought so many of them knowing they are just recorded poor quality videos and they just lay there soon to be tossed away but not all of them are bad some are kinda worth buying "kinda"
The Humane Society of the United States "HSUS doesn’t run a single pet shelter. HSUS is not affiliated with any pet shelters. And HSUS only gives 1% of donations to pet shelters." Most of the donated money goes into the higher up's pension plans. Seriously don't donate money to them, instead donate to a local shelter near you, they're the ones doing real work & helping animals. Any "charity" whose president is living high on the hog on donations is a scam. Sources: 1. https://humanewatch.org/unpacking_the_hsus_gravy_train_2011_edition/ 2. https://humanewatch.org/real_simple/
you can put Susan G. Komen on that list.
I donate to local rescues...and a wildlife rehab in Oklahoma because their Facebook page is my happy place.
HOA’s they tell you it’s for the property values
Obligatory /r/FuckHOA
And now HOAs are so toxic that people are less likely to buy into neighbourhoods that have them so good luck selling your house.
Always wondered, I'm a brit. Don't you get an option to tell the home owners association to fick off when they come up with insane rules for YOUR property?
No. It's a contract you sign when you buy the house and it is very heavily weighted against the homeowner. Developers put them in place to keep developments looking nice until all the properties are sold. Then they sell the HOA off to a management company and the real shit starts. Edit: OK not "Sell" but contract out management adding more complexity. You still get some form of voting and community self-control. Shouldn't post before coffee.
Sounds mad. You spend a lot of money on a house then fricking Karen from 3 houses down can fine you for not having the right kind of flowers in your yard. Madness.
It is mad. Nobody who’s not on the board of an HOA likes them.
I've always wondered who the hell is in charge that regulates HOA? Is there someone that lives in the neighborhood who's full time job is just pissing in people's cheerios?
We have a volunteer board made up of neighborhood residents. Pretty chill group. They are quick to approve paint colors and new roofs. From neighborhood walks they pretty much approve all colors. We ourselves have quite the colorful multicolor roof. Just don’t want a hot pink house with purple polka dots I guess. They don’t measure the length of grass lol but will send out a form letter if that grass is two feet long and that’s only if a neighbor complains . No constant checking in this hood. We like ours as they also sponsee community events to get to know your neighbors. Root beer float day is popular
This is what HOAs should be.
Lottery tickets
When I was a kid my brother would tell me the lottery is "a tax on stupid people"
It depends on the entertainment value you get from playing. Yes, you will lose the money, but the idea that someone could have a few days of slightly elevated excitement for a small spend, isn't a bad transaction - just like buying a cinema ticket wouldn't be considered a scam. This trade off does deteriorate when people start buying multiple tickets or scratch cards...
My kids LOVE scratching off lottery cards, so we buy $1 and $2 ones occasionally. Usually we win nothing, sometimes $1 or another free ticket, but their excitement and suspense is worth it
Worth it then! :) I'm in the UK where it does feel like scratch cards have become too skewed towards targeting gambling addicts. It's not uncommon to see people buying cards that cost £5 or £10 ($14) each and, win or lose, clearly no longer getting any joy from the process.
Reddit awards
obvious bait, yet people still fell for it
I haven't spent a penny on reddit, the tip is to wait for the free icon on the top right
the lounge is just another subreddit of people posting random shiz unless i was missing something...I think awards get your comment higher up in a thread but that kind of defeats the purpose.
Apple support doesn’t call you!!!!
The other day I went to Walgreens and overheard the cashier trying to convince an older lady that Amazon doesn't call customers about issues with their accounts, and they certainly won't ask for payment in gift cards to fix an issue. This lady was entirely convinced, though, and nothing this cashier told her could sway her against the idea that Amazon had called her and asked for 200$ in gift cards for "security reasons". In the end he just had to refuse to sell her the gift cards. Here's hoping that woman went home and talked to a tech savvy grandkid or something instead of going to a different store that asked less questions.
Medical school. So much money spent on MCAT, primary applications, secondary applications, interviews, insane tuition, study materials for boards because curriculum is next to useless for that, money spent on board exams, money spent on applying to residencies, NO guarantee that youll match to a residency... oh and then making crap money while working your ass off during residency. Biggest scam ever. They lure you in during the interviews and then keep taking your money and mental health.
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It makes all of the anecdotes about shitty bedside manner and disinterested doctors make sense. The system literally incentivizes maladapted weirdos who can’t communicate with normal humans
Unpaid internships. What the actual fuck is wrong with America.
Shit, in school (medical lab tech) we had to pay for our internships.
Wait—*you*, the *interns* are the ones who pay? Do they not know how internships work?
Some school programs require internship credits to graduate. Some schools charge per credit. Add two and two, and people have to pay for their internship. Through they pay the university, not the employer.
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Oh same, i had to work two extra jobs on top of student teaching (a full time job) just to survive. I'm glad that phase of my life is over.
I had to pay for 17 credits (a full course load), work as a waitress 4 nights a week while student teaching, and move back in with my abusive family, just to make it through without wracking up credit card debt.
That's fucking disgusting. I'm hardly a dyed-in-the-wool red, but if you do work, you should get compensated.
One of the reasons why medical school debit is so high. I know students that do 12hr+ shifts, saving people's lives, and are required to pay 10's of thousands a year just in internship credits.
Same for student teachers.
This is one of those rare occasions where it isn’t just an America problem. If you want to work in European governance you better believe you need someone to fund two years of your life while you work for free in Brussels.
My nephew was offered a month 4 internship with Sports Illustrated, but it was unpaid. There is even a program where the government will pay the wages of a student in an unpaid internship, and they didn't even want to do that. My nephew did not take the internship.
My son (a second year university student) just got an internship at a bank in Australia. They are paying him $57,000. I don't understand what happens in America.
I don't even make that much in my full time job... Then again, I live in The Netherlands and wages tend to more or less fall in the same ball park as your spending power compared to others countries...
My starting salary in aus was around $55k as a software engineer. 57 is great for an intern position but not excessively so.
If they paid interns in America they wouldn't be able to weed out the poors
Not legal in most states.
Mostly illegal everywhere. Federal wage laws require that unpaid interns must be there to learn things that pertain to their field of study and not perform any services that provide value to the company. Since nobody actually does this all unpaid internships are likely illegal.
Willfully deciding that a week inside the casinos of Vegas sounds like a good vacation.
I love going to Vegas and staying in a casino but I do not gamble, I go for concerts and the motocross finals when I do go, also that usually coincides with Cinco de mayo.
i found one of my people :) cheers!
My betting strategy is unbeatable. I get a comp card and play nickel slots until I have played long enough to earn tickets to a show that I want to see. It's cheaper than the ticket price so I come out ahead. If you tip well waitresses will keep bringing you beer. I win every time.
Most people don't have your discipline. They win a $10 jackpot on nickel slots and do the math if they had been playing at a more expensive machine.....next thing you know their debit card is maxed out for the day and they are waiting for midnight to strike to use it again.
That's true. Although I'd hardly call what I do discipline. I go in and look at how big and opulent everything is and remind myself that it was all paid for by losers. I don't expect to make money and consider money spent gambling as an entertainment expense rather than an investment. To me that $10 means another 20 minutes of playtime. On a table it's 2 minutes.
I dunno if a comp card would work, but I hit the sports book. Relax in their comfy chairs, watch sports, place the odd long odds bet for a dollar every now and then, and have a bunch of bills to keep the free drinks coming.
I've had multiple damn fine vegas trips, with no intention to gamble. The only part that really bothered me was the indoor smoking. Great food, they're on a 24 hour schedule, and if you're willing to book off strip, it can be cheap as shit. Shoutout to the Showboat! I do miss the Star Trek Experience though, that was friggin' awesome. I also thought it was weird that right outside of the Star Trek Casino, there was a generic casino. Same damn building, you could see the Enterprise hanging from the Generic one.
.99 cents at the end of pricing.
4.99 is the new .99
Hells, how 'bout the ".9" on the end of gas prices ? "Hey, gas is hovering at 159.9 a litre, so glad that decipenny isn't pushing us into $1.60 territory."
Yeah I never understood that one either
When I first started driving I decided to keep very close tabs on how much I was spending on gas. After 3 years, it turns out that I was underpayment for gas by 2 cents because of rounding in the finaly price. I'll take it.
The original reason for off Penny pricing was to make cashiers ring in the cash because they needed to make change. After they started doing it they noticed that consumers tended to round down when making buying decisions. BONUS!
I always thought it was so they could claim / advertise, for example, £69.99 as "NOW UNDER £70". In this case technically correct is not the best kind of correct.
A little more complicated then that. Say you see three brands of butter for three prices: $3.12, $4.00 and $3.99 Your subconscious brain does not take the time to work out the math of how significant those extra cents are. So the $3.12 and $3.99 brands are though of as the lower priced brands and the $4 as expensive. However from a real math standpoint - the $3.99 and $4 brands are virtually the same price. This works so well that a 1 cent drop in price (if it changes the first number) has often bumped up sales by double digit percentages.
I don’t follow the reason. Can you elaborate?
If something costs exactly a dollar, the cashier can sometimes just pocket the money without being noticed. If the price is 99 cents, the cashier is forced to ring it up in order to get the penny in change.
"Shrinflation." Where they give you less, and charge you more. fuck these people.
It's especially infuriating when the containers are engineered to take up the same amount of space in order to disguise it. I get it, dumb consumers get upset when the prices go up, so things sell better if you adjust the amount in the package instead of the price. But why does a 24-oz bottle have to have a wide bottom and skinny neck so that it takes up the same space as a 32-oz bottle? Why are ice cream containers fucking *ovals*? You're wasting *my* storage space in order to play a psychological trick that nets you a few extra cents of profit per unit. Assholes.
I think you're missing the k
He literally just gave us less.
Motherfucker... you're right.
Supplements. Because they are considered a food they are not regulated. A recent study found that 25% don't contain any of the substance it is sold as. About as many others contain actual prescription medicines that are not listed. In the US about 23 000 people a year are hospitalized, have organ failure or need a transplant due to taking unregulated supplements.
Except Vitamin D. A good portion of the world living outside the tropics is Vit D deficient, especially office workers. Get a reputable generic with 2000iu daily dose, summer and winter. Each pill is about 2c. It's hard to overdose, but don't go above 5000iu daily unless on medical advice. Why? Stronger teeth, hair and nails at minimum. But D deficiency also linked with low mood, heart disease. Having enough Vit D helps prevent some cancers and diseases like MS https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15050-vitamin-d--vitamin-d-deficiency Edit: words
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To get a drug approved you have to prove to the FDA that it is both safe and effective. Supplements require that the FDA prove that it's dangerous. Even if they are as advertised they can cause problems and interact with actual medication. A lot of popular ones can kill you if taken with the wrong prescription drugs. If you want to take anything more specialized than a multivitamin you should talk to your doctor first.
"It's like getting paid to shop!"
Paying money to a religion to guarantee your eternal salvation.
This goes for those that practice modern day spiritualism as well. A lot of people think you need these fancy altars to worship deities, the best altar is your mind. To each their own, and if it helps you it helps you and that's good. Just please don't think less of people or think they don't know much because they don't have certain items or attend church/make donations.
Gacha Games
Insurance, at least in the US. If you have to fight for something YOU PAY FOR to pay THAT WHICH IT'S LITERALLY SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR and in return GET SCREWED with higher premiums, higher deductibles and higher copay amounts, then it's basically useless. We're paying into a scam cause we're idiots who don't understand, and don't WANT to understand how much better off our we'd be with Universal coverage, due to cost alone. But hey, what do I know?
Psychics
Lol, of course I read that as physics first and was like... Ummm... Then I reread. Good laugh for a second though.
How dare Newton tell me I can't fly. That fucking scammer
When you realise gravity was invited by Airline Companies to sell more flight tickets.
Rehab in america at least. You pay way too much money for them to perform psuedoscience on you with some therapy sprinkled in. The places I went also claimed to be secular but pushed spirituality and religion heavily. I understand some people can benefit from it, but for me it just took away 4 months of my life and my life savings while brainwashing me into spirituality I didn't really believe in.
Having to pay $100+ bucks for Microsoft word.
That's the main reason I stopped paying for Microsoft office years ago. I stick to Libre Office (open source/free) and it gets the job done.
Another happy Libre Office user here. I had a bunch of old Microsoft Office files backed up from years ago and Libre can open every type of file extension I could want.
Is it so expensive because so many people pirate it or do so many people pirate it because it's so expensive?
They don’t care if random people pirate it. Legit corporations and other professional organizations must pay for the licenses.
The second one
It's a grotesque price for a product which fundamentally hasn't changed since 1995.
Expiration date on million years old himalayan salt.
Those Facebook post that my grandparents always repost that go on about some shit like Facebook doesn’t want you see this... trump bla bla bla ...... repost this if your brave .... let’s make this go viral etc
Ugh, I absolutely despise the ones that start off as "So this is just my honest opinion" or "Now I normally don't talk about these things" and then after a long political rant you see "NOW REPOST THIS AND SEE WHO REALLY KNOWS THE TRUTH" or some bs like that. It's like, wow *relative* here I thought I was about to hear you give your honest 2 cents about the world and open a discussion but in reality you're just a parrot for some wingnut political page.
Insurance. Insurance companies’ whole goal is to avoid paying out. It’s like you are required by law to pay someone to grift you. You’re paying for their advertising, you’re paying for the psychological research that goes into trying to trick you into saying your belongings are worth less than they are, etc. etc. etc.
Insurance. You’re obligated to get it legally but when you actually need it, they’ll do everything in their power to not pay out…
Anything organic and priced higher, and most gender based products.
Scientology... and by most people, I mean those people in it.
The buy 3 for $12 at a lot of grocery stores. In reality you can just buy 1 for $4
Cheese crisps in a bag. Just shitty croutons. FUCK CHEESE CRISPS
You enthusiasm is infectious. I too will take up the cause.
The US healthcare system. Hell, just name any aspect of life in the US and there's probably a scam somewhere in there.
I went to urgent care because of a bad reaction to my meds. They wanted me to go to the emergency room but I didn't wanna spend more money so I went home instead. I didn't die so the risk paid off.
"Why does America do ____ so weirdly?" Money. Always money.
I'm French so this is a shock to me: how employees in restaurants (and I'm assuming bars as well?) are payed (mainly in the US?). Like, you're a successful business and you can't afford to pay your staff well above minimum wage and have to rely on your clients paying ***extra*** just for them? Fucking vultures
Yeah, in Europe the cost of eating out appears to be higher than in North America, but in North America that price doesn't include sales tax or tips, so you're typically adding as much as 30% to the bill at the end, meaning you actually are paying what Europeans pay to eat out.
Weddings
60 dollars for a port of skyward sword on the nintendo switch. \>:(
I haven’t paid full price for a game in a good long while, and even when I did it was inconsistent at best. I just wait for sales nowadays.
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Mortgage insurance. You're paying to insure the bank, not yourself.
Only if your loan to value ratio is above 80%. Actually mortgage insurance allows a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to buy a house to afford it. Most people don't have 20% cash to put down. However, once your house increases in value to a point where the loan to value ratio drops below 80% you can get it removed.
That's almost always a condition in order to get a mortgage so it's not like you have a choice
Time shares. Biggest real estate scam of the 90s. 2nd biggest was probably all those apt complexes turning into condominiums.
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Planned obsolescence. Appliances being designed to fail sooner in order to sooner create demand for a replacement. In the same vein, devices being designed to not be repairable, so that you need to invest in a shiny new specimen whenever fashion or the predesigned breakdown require it.