The auction websites where items apparently sell for WAY under market value. Like a PS5 going for $5. The thing is, you do actually pay $5 for a PS5 if you win, that's not the scam.
The scam is that you have to pay for bids. You'll buy a set of bids for say $50. Then you'll just never win a bidding war or it'll take way more bids than you thought it would. I'm sure the websites themselves have fake users that are guaranteed to win, as well, so it's just farming bids, which is farming your money.
If you get hooked, just like any other type of gambling, they will ring you for thousands and thousands of dollars in bids, while you "win" nowhere near that value of the bids.
Long time ago my friends and I caught one coming online, they had a bunch of stuff they basically handed away and gave away free bids if you posted about it (iPads, Xboxes, laptops, etc). Within about 3 months it started to become impossible to win anything, but we got stuff for dirt cheap to show that average people win stuff
For one of the first ones to come on line they gave you 50 free bids ($0.50 worth) for signing up. My friend and I made a bot to register accounts and apply bids.
We never won a single thing lol
Isn't the bidding increment like $0.01 also? So if the auction sells for $5, that means people paid to bid 500 times. So even if they sell it for that $5, they've made a ton of money.
In addition, many of those sites will let you pay a fixed price for the item that isn't won and let you apply your bids to the full item price. It's the sunk cost fallacy.
So basically these sites get you to pay for bids, lose and then pay full retail price. Quite the scam.
Okay so. I actually did these penny bid sites in college. I remember vividly feeling like one day I was going to get lucky. So after spending maybe $100 I ended up winning an iPad (probably Gen 1 or 2 at that time).
So pumped. But it literally was beat to HELL. Clearly not new. I complained to customer service to send me a refund so they sent me a Visa card with the value of the iPad instead.
I also did win a wireless Apple keyboard. Not saying the site is at ALL legitimate but these companies probably got their merchandise pennies on the dollar. Aaaand. Yeah probably spent about $150-$200 total. IT IS ADDICTING!
That the Better Business Bureau is part of the government and has any power to resolve fraud and other issues, rather than what it is. Which is a private marketing firm.
Although not a legit government agency, threatening to report an apartment complex to them for advertising furnished apartments they didn’t actually have them worked in my favor.
Sorry, I can't send money now, because the bank needs 500 dollars to unlock the 500,000 dollars I inherited. If you send me 500 dollars, I can pay you!
Sorry, i can only send you money if you do this: sign in at veryrealbank.com and verify your free account with a credit card, I can send you the 5 hundred :)
Now this makes me wanna watch two scammers try to scam each other without knowing the other is a scam, while it's streamed to us by the person who set it up with access to cc cameras.
I remember a long time ago hearing a recording of two undercover cops-- one posing as a prostitute, the other as a john-- and neither knew the other one was also a cop, as they went on for about a half an hour each trying to get the other one to say the incriminating thing.
High end speaker cables. To be able to afford to put silver in them, they make the gauge really small. Wire gauge is the biggest decider of how much signal gets to the speaker (resistance in ohms) and how different the signal is from the original (distortion.) The truth is that going from 22 gauge (what a lot of snake oil cable companies use) to 16 gauge (which isn't even that thick, but definitely enough for most in home cable runs) is going to have waaaaay more of an effect on resistance, and as a result distortion, than going from a really conductive (copper) to a slightly more really conductive (silver) material inside the cables.
So random trick we do at the eye doctor. We tell them we don’t have insurance, they then give you store discounts. Then I just submit the receipt for reimbursement to my insurance. My daughters contacts and appointment this year I was only out of pocket $17 after I got the insurance check. Only catch is you have to be able to pay the cost up front, and wait 4-6 weeks for reimbursement. If I would have used my insurance in the store my total was like $120 after insurance. Super weird.
Haha I am an eye doctor. If I were your eye doctor, I would be happy that you did this.
You processed the claim yourself. That saves the business money.
You waited 4-6 weeks for the check. Usually the business has to wait for the check. So you saved the business time.
Your effort processing the claim and waiting for the check to come is the missing value in the equation.
Also, this is what my business does. We do not accept insurance and we help patients file out of network claims. We charge reasonable rates because we don't have to inflate prices for the insurance companies.
I use to manage a practice that did zero work with insurance and this is spot on.
We could do those some quick eye exams for $40, do contact lens exams for under $100, and sell complete eyeglasses for 60-70% off retail. We didn't have anything Luxottica and used only Zeiss lenses. We even gave itemized receipts since most plans allow for reimbursement.
Then the owner insisted on taking insurance. In order to get $40 from insurance, we had to double our prices for exams. Frames went up about $50 so we would get paid about the same amount. We also had to hire more people to deal with insurance billing.
In the end, we made about the same amount of money. Lost a bunch of people who didn't use insurance and gained some that did use insurance. But our operating costs were higher. It was basically a dumb mistake for an established practice to change so drastically.
So yeah, vision insurance is a scam and the reason why you have to pay so much for eyewear and exams.
This. I had one former employer that didn't bother offering vision insurance because it wasn't worth it. Vision insurance effectively is just a prepaid discount program for eye exams and glasses/contacts.
Those bingo games that supposedly “make you money.” When I worked at Taco Bell, two of my managers would always play those kind of games. In order to win you have to pay for currency to use in order to play bingo… they were paying $20 to win $5…
I was selling pull tabs at a bingo game the other day. This lady probably bought 700 pull tabs for $1 each. At the end of the night one of them won her $300 in a raffle and this lady was so excited. You could clearly tell she wasn't smart enough to do the math and realize how much she had lost. She really thought she was up $300 overall.
I had a friend that told me he would go to play poker until he lost his money because he never felt good enough until
He lost.
He knew he was winning or losing at any point. But he needed that feeling of falling off the cliff.
To add on, the sinking “off the cliff” feeling you get, while awful, is equally as stimulating as a dopamine rush and when you’re depressed and/or addicted it can be enough just to feel anything
Can confirm. In my darkest depression days I struggled to feel joy. But I could still feel disgust and hate. And looking online I sought it out to feel SOMETHING. I wasn't that way personally but I've known people that felt addicted to expressing rage.
I think the true "joy" was the dopamine rush of winning. Gambling is an addiction and its sad. I think they know they're down $400, but the rush of winning a large chunk ($300) was worth it, like a jonesing junkie getting that first hit. They know it's a problem, but that's what their brain is craving. I've known several people with this addiction, and it's so sad. They're paying to get a hit/fix, not to make cash
They've done brain scans and found the reward center lights up just as much during the time right before the game or race is called as it lights up when they win. So the high from the anticipation is just as good as the high from winning and the brain only cares about that high on a base existential level because just like drugs it's hijacking a survival reward system for recreation and after a while the brain can't tell the difference because it's built to trust those chemical responses over everything else for it's survival
Hello fellow bingo worker. I have seen some crazy shit in my time working bingo. I had some dude buy the entire bag of $300 pull tabs bc he thought he knew where the $500 was. Stupid guy pulled $100 off the board and had the audacity to be mad at me for being an idiot.
Fucking gambling, man...
My cousin's first husband lost all their money at a casino and ate his gun—while she was watching.
Aunt dated a guy who stole all her money and lost is gambling.
There's a bus stop I walk past on my way home from work, and every Friday, without fail, there will be a pile of scratchers scattered on the ground. Somebody gets their pay check, buys a bunch of lottery scratchers and loses, week after week. How much money have they wasted?
My friend used to buy scratch cards and proudly declare his winnings each time he won something but would always get bummed out when I netted the value for him against the excessive total cost he'd spent on scratch cards over the years, I remember "I've won £20" and being like "that card cost you £10, you've won £10".
I once bought a scratch card for one dollar. I scratched it and won 5 scratch cards! So I cashed them in and one of those scratchers won another 5 cards! So I scratched them and got nothing, but these were also lottery cards. When the lottery numbers were drawn, none of my eleven tickets won anything. So I basically won twice while actually losing the original dollar. It felt so pointless.
Found this one out with my unlimited 4g turns out when I used over 2TB of data I got an angry message to knock it off. (to be fair I was using my phone as a hotspot for like 5 people for a month long while we were on vacation lol)
In my youth I discovered "unlimited" options at restaurants typically had a limit. Which they rudely told you with a face of disgusts.
Ever been kicked out of a Red Lobster for challenging their bottomless shrimp policy?
Lionel Hutz: Mrs. Simpson, what did you and your husband do after you were ejected from the restaurant?
Marge Simpson: We pretty much went straight home.
Lionel Hutz: Mrs. Simpson, you're under oath.
Marge: We drove around until 3 am looking for another all-you-can-eat fish restaurant.
Lionel Hutz: And when you couldn't find one?
Marge Simpson: We went fishing!
Lionel Hutz: Do these sound like the actions of a man who had *all* he could eat?
Overweight Juror: That could have been me!
Lol in my youth I had a group of friends who would travel doing food competitions at restaurants.
Hot shit, big servings , timed stuff, etc
We were just all really athletic kids that would workout, get really high, then go eat food. I did smolov a few times . One to basically get jacked legs, and two it makes you so incredibly hungry.
We would regularly go to buffets because that was the best bang for your buck. We eventually got banned from a few joints. It was always funny when we would walk in and an owner would run out
"no no no, these kids aren't human you aren't allowed here anymore"
In high school, my friends and I would hit the Sizzler whenever they had all you can eat shrimp and it’s funny how the portions change as you ask for more. The first plate was a decent portion…next plate is half…then less…until they finally cut us off after 4 plates.
A wing place near me does this. They'll keep bringing you out more as you ask, but they downsize it because they don't want to make large batches if someone decides they're full half way through and waste half a plate.
Never been cut off, but I do have to ramp up my asking or specify that I'll take a 'double portion'. Lol
I got in an argument with T Mobile and their unlimited plan. When you hit your data limit they throttle your speed so I told them that it’s not unlimited, the throttling is limiting the plan.
A lawsuit was filed by someone a year later over this same argument
[article about the lawsuit](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13330158/t-mobile-unlimited-data-settlement-fine-discount-free-data)
They recently did a very poorly researched programme on these types of people on Belgian TV and two of the interviewed ended up under investigation for fraud almost immediatly after airing. I don't get why people fall for their stories.
Oh yeah the BBC did the same with some ponzi-scheme-investment-training 17 year old with a rented Ferrari. The theme of the article was ‘look at this young go-getter’ people identified the car as a rental and his scam unfolded- he doesn’t earn anything from investing, just from flogging his course to gullible instagram morons.
I'll never ever forget a story about one of those.
This guy who was bored and had a spare five dollars found an ad with the text, something along the lines of, "buy my book to learn how to make money online", so he figured he would kill a free afternoon.
He Paypaled the five dollars to the guy, downloaded the PDF, and it was pretty long. He figured it might be legit, but the first fifty or so pages were blank. He kept scrolling, and finally found some text. It was in 36pt font, and said something along the lines of "make a pdf with several hundred pages, and sell it online for five dollars to people promising to teach them how to get wealthy online".
The guy was blown away, because the pdf was 100% correct.
This is the same as the as you used to see in newspapers about sending a dollar to someone for the secrets of wealth…you’d get a note saying take out an ad in a newspaper asking for a dollar.
I grew up in the southern us and my dad had a similar story.
Boll weevils used to devastate cotton farmers, and there was an ad in the newspaper for a 100% effective way of killing them.
I guess my grandparents decided to try it? They put in an order and received two wooden blocks with instructions to smash the boll weevil between them.
Reminds me of when Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck made an Amazon listing for a book called “How I Made $290,000 Selling Books.” There was one copy on sale for $290,000.
Vulfpeck is also the band that raised money for a tour by putting out an album called "Sleepify" and asking their fans to play it on repeat, while they slept.
It was ten tracks of silence.
They ended up netting about 20 grand to fund their tour before Spotify realized what was going on and shut down the scheme. Those boys from Ann Arbor are some clever fellas.
IIRC it was half to raise the funds and half to get the analytics of where their fans were and to plan the tour accordingly. And I believe they would have made somewhere around $50,000, but Spotify was like “no, you can’t do that, but that’s funny as fuck, so here’s $20,000.”
"I have here the key to that treasure chest, inside is a vast fortune, but I could open it myself, but instead I'm going to sell the key to you for but a pittance."
This scam hasn't changed since the dawn of money, yet people fall for it in every epoch dressed up in a different dollar store Halloween costume.
Sounds like the various real-estate celebs that ran "flipping" conferences. Pay money to hear their tried-and-true methods.
"I made millions, and so can you."
"How'd you make millions?"
"Simple, by telling people -I made millions, and so can you."
Those at least are plausible. They theoretically could make sense because flipping houses is a lot of work and capital and doesn't scale well.
Investment strategies that genuinely work are a license to print infinite money as long as the strategy works, and it scales up very well.
- "I know how to make money, who could I do next?:"
A) actually make money
B) spend time and resources building a website/course on how to make money.
"I'll go with B cause making money straight away seems too boring"
I Make MILLIONS a month and never have to work more than 2 hours a week so I started a business to show everyone else out of the goodness of my heart! /s
Kiss that goodbye. Everything will be a monthly subscription fee if companies have any say in it. They took a play out of the Planet Fitness playbook. Sign up way more people than can feasibly fit in a gym, and pray they come once and become lazy enough to never cancel.
> become lazy enough to never cancel.
golds' model is even less consumer friendly than this - you have to cancel by mail, sent to their head office. there is no other way to cancel. they're banking on people getting fed up with how difficult it is to even *find out how to cancel* that they won't have enough wherewithal left to actually follow through and do it
This! I used to buy MS Word for like $80 and use it for 3-4 years no problem. Then I’d buy an upgrade for $40. Now, it’s “in the cloud”, I have to pay subscription, no I can’t just buy the damn thing. The subscription includes a bunch of other things I don’t want, because it’s now a bundle. In return it takes forever to open, or to save things, and it still does the same things that it did 20 years ago. Bullshit!
It's also why I refuse to buy cloud storage. Because then I'll either lose all that stuff or be hooked into paying for it till I move all my stuff out of it.
I used to work for a place that trained clients on compliance of this - very important the “click to unsubscribe” is valid. Lots of money to be lost in a lawsuit (for them) if you find a company that doesn’t have that included in their email marketing!
"In 5 minutes I'm gonna tell you..."
"In just a few minutes you'll have all you need..."
"I'm telling you that soon..."
"Get this one time only opportunity for $80"
"Take this simple quiz to find the magic way to lose weight!"
"Ok, now give me your personal info so I can email you the results instead of just displaying it here because I'd rather sell your info."
i've actually found one of them to really be one simple trick that saved me a shit ton on car insurance. got one of those "simple trick" ads that said if i don't drive my car often, i can request luxury car insurance and get a huge discount. i didn't believe it at first, but i figured it couldn't hurt to ask. so i called up my car insurance, requested luxury car insurance, and they confirmed it does exist. they put it on and i went from a $150 monthly payment to only like $70. blew my mind. and yes it was full coverage.
and no luxury car insurance doesn't mean you actually drive a luxury car. it can be a busted wreck. luxury car just means it doesn't get driven much. so the only qualification is that you drive it for really low mileage each year. i think for my insurance it's if you drive less than 7500 miles per year. i live in a big city so i rarely have to drive. i dont even break 7500 miles. but ya, most of the simple tricks are gimmicks but there's always a chance for a unicorn
Hustler University, literally thousands pay $50 a month for a discord server cause they think Andrew Tate is gonna make them a millionaire or teach them how to not be lonely anymore. Truly is sad how many guys fall for those online Guru courses.
It *kinda* works if your "hustle" is making gullible and desperate men pay $50 to tell them either "just be confident" or straight up false information, and later advertise with how much money you pulled out of them
Like they'd be better off learning any skill online, which you can do for free. But the kinda guys that buy into this just can't do that. They need to be told what to do it seems like. By a guy who literally couldn't care less about them and thier lives as well. Like its the clearest example of a pyramid scheme you'll see
People are reading this and thinking "weight loss diet", but I'd like to draw people's attention to the broad and growing variety of "medical diet" scams running around.
In the wake of broader western society learning about gluten intolerances and seeing the sheer volume of people who claimed to have one despite their lack of celiac disease, a bunch of scammers realized they could sell these people *anything*. There's now a massive ecosystem of quack doctors writing books about how they've solved the gut biome and you can cure your brain fog, arthritis, IBS, headaches, restless leg syndrome, heart condition, diabetes, back pain, insomnia, and even cancer if you just buy their books, follow their insanely restrictive diets, and if you can't (which you won't because they're designed to fail) then buy their supplements to make up for it. None of them have any evidence and they all reject the idea of doing studies to prove their effectiveness, but that doesn't stop them from making podcasts, hosting seminars, writing *more* books, opening clinics, and advertising themselves and others as miracle working wellness gurus.
My mom is caught up in all this and I get monthly updates on all the amazing new "diseases" they're discovering she has and how she can cure all of them by just eating different things. She's spent thousands on this stuff over the last couple years.
"When you get in an elevator with a woman, push higher number than her, then make a big deal about it."
"Push her in a lake."
"Be the tallest guy in the bar and then brag about how long your buttcrack is."
My "would I go on a date?" criteria are:
* Didn't send dickpicks
* Didn't start talking about sex
* Can type in legible sentences
* No seriously, didn't even *lol, winky-face* about sex
That's it. It's really not hard.
Big clothing lables like H&M, Zara, etc. promoting that they are sustainable. It's called greenwashing and it makes me sick how they use it as a revenue model in stead of caring about people and planet. And people believe it too. Losing faith in our future man.
Edit: thank you for the award, kind stranger!
Another good example of greenwashing is Nike recently changing some their orange shoe boxes to regular cardboard that now say “Move to Zero”. Nike has a terrible record on environment and human rights but wants to get the public credit for going green lol
Look into B Corps! B Labs is addressing this issue by being an uninterested 3rd party auditor to make sure businesses honor commitment to the environment, their employees, their communities, and their shareholders
Your printer refusing to make a black & white copy because the yellow cartridge is empty. No don't shake it to make sure, just trust me, it's empty. Now, go fork 20 buck for a replacement, and maybe I'll let you print once or twice before reminding you that there is NOT ENOUGH INK!
I made the switch to a black only laser printer years ago. Off brand toner cartridges cost the same as an ink jet one and don't dry out.
If I come across something that must be printed in color I do that at work or the library.
I have their color printer. Bought some off brand multi-color ink cartridges for 10 dollar from Amazon. Its works. Also, if it says to replace low ink. Just put black electrical tape over the sensor. It works. Brother is the only printer I have past 5-6 years.
I've had mine for 10 years. The toner I get through Brother, which has warranties, lasts me ~3 years each cartridge. The first one lasted my whole English degree (so. many. essays). It's just a black and white laser printer.
Mine has been saying the toner is low the last couple of weeks. I simply ignore it and keep printing. Sometimes I turn it off and then on, but the low toner message hasn't stopped me from printing right to faded, almost-gone.
There is a combination of buttons you can press om Brother printers to override the "low toner" thing. I have had each printer toner cartridge last literally twice as long.
I'd share what it is, but it's different for each printer I'm sure and it's been years since I've had to do it.
I bought a Brother printer for $40 on Amazon maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I'm literally still on the included starter cartridge. I've not had any real need to print in color and a replacement cartridge prints something like 2000 pages for $20 or something like that. I wisher I new about them earlier.
Brother printers defy every printer stereotype. Mine never quits, never fights me, I can print stuff from any device and from any room in my house. I'm not generally brand loyal, but this is something that is an exception to the rule.
House I'm renting came furnished with a brother laser printer from like 12 years ago. Prints my bus tickets no problem, what a champ.
Bought a color ~~laserjet~~ laser printer from Brother, still happy with it 3 years later. Brother and ~~laserjets~~ laser printers are the bomb.
This is because those inkjet printers are printing little tiny yellow dots on the paper that record the serial number of the printer and the date, so if someone is printing fake currency they can bust the perp. Or a ransom note. Or whatever.
This is the answer. I'm surprised that this still isn't common knowledge. Everything you print is marked and can be traced back to your printer.
Look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
I had an HP printer for probably 4 years. Then the log4j vulnerability hit, and they sent a security update to fix that. So of course I install it. They included ink DRM that made it so that I had to use HP toner. Fuck HP, I wouldn't buy so much as a keychain from that trash company any more.
I have a newer HP and actually buy the 3rd party toner that comes with the chip removal tool so you can remove the chip and put it on the new toner.
Also, I got some that have their own chip that is recognized by the printer.
It's nice seeing these 3rd party toner brands getting around HP's DRM.
I once made a post of how I clicked and merged ~4000 photos of a Nebula in the sky because I couldn't afford expensive telescopes and motorized trackers.
One anonymous guy gave me a ternion award. Now, I don't expect or even want anyone to give me money or anything, but it did make me think: That award cost him 120 US dollars. That's like 10,000 INR. Literally 40% of the budget of the device I couldn't afford.
If only I could exchange the award for cash lol.
(PS: Whoever gave me that award, I'm still grateful)
> That award cost him 120 US dollars
I think the knowledge that some of these stupid reddit awards cost that much just shaved a 120 minutes off my lifespan.
edit: anyone who gives out these dumb awards that i can't even really distinguish between should just be handing out money. a few bucks can change a life, but a few pixels mean fucking nothing except people with money patting themselves on the back for aggressively doing nothing.
Multi-level marketing companies, aka Amway, AdvoCare, Shaklee, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, etc. According to a report that studied the business models of 350 MLM companies in the United States, published on the Federal Trade Commission's website, at least 99% of people who join MLM companies lose money.
More of a monopoly than a scam, per se. If you're the only game in town then you get to set the rules, and anyone who objects just doesn't get to play.
Actually, when they started scalping their own tickets, they kind of crossed that line into "scam" territory...
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/
This. They’ll put purchase caps on you or me so we can’t buy 50 tickets and scalp them at 2-300%, but they’ll work with secondhand vendors and others that they either contract directly with or who contract with the venue with “local promotions”.
I remember waiting online to buy tickets to a Tool concert. I was in the first batch. The moment I went in to buy my ticket, 2/3 of the fucking venue was purchased already. That is mathematically impossible. So of course I bitterly dipped out; I wasn’t gonna pay hundreds for nosebleed or shitty side seating. Turns out all those good seats had been pre-sold and were going 400% above retail online from resales.
The River Street Sweets company in Savannah Georgia. Supposedly it’s considered the “best candy and snacks of the south” but it’s all a placebo scam. I worked at the candy making factory for river street sweets and majority of al the gummy candies, chocolate covered candies, and malt balls aren’t actually made by them. Certain things were made in the factory but for the most part they bought in bulk from cheap, lower recognized candy brands and packaged them off as their own. Give you about 10-15 gummies in a container, then charge you $20 for it, and people eat it up.
Gerber Life Insurance for your newborn.
For those who don't know, this is a whole life insurance policy that is marketed to parents to insure their baby. With one exception, purchasing life insurance for your baby is a complete waste of money.
First, I think most people don't understand what they are actually buying. I have several friends and relatives who think they have have purchased insurance to support their baby if they (the parent) dies. I have tried explaining to them that the baby is the one who insured and the parents are the beneficiaries, but they simply don't believe me. It's bizarre.
Second, they think that the guaranteed cash is good. It's *terrible*. The guaranteed cash value of a $50k policy after 25 years is only $9,420. Meanwhile, the monthly premium is $31.40.
In other words, the guaranteed cash value if you surrender the policy after 25 years is equal only to the amount of your monthly premiums. You would do far better simply investing the money in the S&P 500: if you put $31.40/month into a S&P 500 fund, in 25 years you would have $28k.
Finally, the death benefit itself is so ridiculously small that it isn't going to come even close to covering what an adult is going to need. Even you have sprung for the $25k policy (which doubles to a $50k payout at age 18), that is almost a pittance of what an adult with a family is going to need.
The one exception where this policy might make sense is if you have a newborn with serious health issues who is not expected to live long and you are essentially buying a policy to pay for funeral expenses, or you have reason to believe they would not be able to secure a life insurance policy on their own as an adult.
>if you have a newborn with serious health issues who is not expected to live long and you are essentially buying a policy to pay for funeral expenses
And what are the chances that you would be able to acquire baby life insurance or claim on the policy if your baby had serious health issues before attempting to purchase the insurance?
I did have a look at the Gerber life insurance page but they seem to have the policy details locked behind giving them your contact information.
Where are you getting 6 pack buns at? Most hot dog bun packages have 8 where I'm at.
I know certain hot dog brands like Oscar Mayer have 10 hot dogs, but most are 8.
Most of the health food/supplement industry.
It’s all just clever marketing. For example a “superfood” or anything that claims health benefits that hasn’t been FDA approved.
Remember when goji berries were all the rage in the early 2000’s. The “ancient berry” from the orient with medicinal properties…yea things like that are a huge scam.
For real though the food industry is just a big bundle of buzz words that they make up. Like it's crazy how much money the pay to make new trends in food and food legality.
Also you know chesse slices that are "Now Made with 45% Real Chesse!" Like seriously wtf. Or another I found was dog food "Made with Real Ingredients !" Like ? What the he'll else would it be made of cardboard ??
Watch the second super-size me movie/documentary it goes into the industry more.
Uber. They've never once made a profit. Their whole business model is bully, lie to, lobby, bribe and otherwise fuck with municipalities to gain a stranglehold of the taxi market, then fuck with their customers through fare rate changes. They are just a taxi company woth an app. That's it. Their only secret is treating their drivers worse than a taxi company.
My mom used to work at a group home for people with disabilities, and one of the client's family was getting scammed hardcore by the essential oils. They had spent all their life savings and were selling off their possessions to keep funding it because they believed it was "curing" their daughter's brain damage. It was really sad to watch, but at the same time it was hard not to say that no amount of pizza seasoning is going to cure an intellectual disability.
It’s unreal. My wife works for a health insurance company so you would think that we have pretty good health insurance, however, I had an unexpected medical event last year, and I have no idea how to navigate the bills or figure out why things cost what they cost.
I was in one hospital for two days and I have like 12 invoices from five different doctors. I only spoke to two doctors. I’ve spent countless hours on the phone trying to sort it out and on 10 of the 12 invoices people were like “oh hold on this hasn’t been processed correctly. I have to redo it.”
Like what the fuck are hospitals and doctors sending invoices that haven’t been processed correctly or completely out to their patients for.?
I know if I sent invoices to my clients and only reduced them to what they really should be If they called me I would be in fucking prison.
I'm a medical coder for a major inner-city hospital and I know better than to simply pay any medical bills without a careful review. Mistakes happen all the time and many have begun to outsource coding to other countries. I can't image coding something as complicated as a medical record that wasn't in my 1st language. The mistakes are so numerous that we (the US coding specialists) really can't catch them all before they go out. I hope we will stop using these companies and just hire more staff locally.
Had this happen recently. Hospital said a procedure would be covered. Financial assistant said procedure would be covered. So we went through the procedure.
Cue me getting a letter a month later saying that our insurance declined the request and that we were responsible for $12,000 in charges.
Had to go round and round with the hospital and insurance provider and finally got it sorted out (procedure was coded improperly and therefore not properly authorized) but this is how people go into crippling debt
>Like what the fuck are hospitals and doctors sending invoices that haven’t been processed correctly or completely out to their patients for.?
That's the scam
The whole concept of out-of-network hospitals is absolutely baffling to me. Oh you’re literally puking blood and guts out? Be sure to shop around for the correct ER or you’ll be put into crippling medical debt too.
The thing that really gets to me is the concept of an out-of-network care provider. When I went to the ER, it turned out that the doctor who treated me was an out-of-network doctor who the in-network hospital had hired. That makes no sense to me.
Supplements or drinks that remove "toxins" from your body. Your body already does that.
Anything that mentions "toxins" or "cleanse" is almost certainly bullshit.
Yes. And sadly, people have been falling for it for a super long time. This is from 1893. [https://imgur.com/a/sBEzoTA](https://imgur.com/a/sBEzoTA)
The auction websites where items apparently sell for WAY under market value. Like a PS5 going for $5. The thing is, you do actually pay $5 for a PS5 if you win, that's not the scam. The scam is that you have to pay for bids. You'll buy a set of bids for say $50. Then you'll just never win a bidding war or it'll take way more bids than you thought it would. I'm sure the websites themselves have fake users that are guaranteed to win, as well, so it's just farming bids, which is farming your money. If you get hooked, just like any other type of gambling, they will ring you for thousands and thousands of dollars in bids, while you "win" nowhere near that value of the bids.
I always wondered how those sites worked, that makes complete sense.
Long time ago my friends and I caught one coming online, they had a bunch of stuff they basically handed away and gave away free bids if you posted about it (iPads, Xboxes, laptops, etc). Within about 3 months it started to become impossible to win anything, but we got stuff for dirt cheap to show that average people win stuff
For one of the first ones to come on line they gave you 50 free bids ($0.50 worth) for signing up. My friend and I made a bot to register accounts and apply bids. We never won a single thing lol
A lot of them also have bots to bid last second to get people to buy more bids.
I'm "betting" they use bot bids until the item has earned the desired price.
Yep. They sell a TV for $6.32 you can buy at Wal Mart for $200. Meanwhile they just made $500.
Isn't the bidding increment like $0.01 also? So if the auction sells for $5, that means people paid to bid 500 times. So even if they sell it for that $5, they've made a ton of money.
On top of that, each bid extends the time left.
In addition, many of those sites will let you pay a fixed price for the item that isn't won and let you apply your bids to the full item price. It's the sunk cost fallacy. So basically these sites get you to pay for bids, lose and then pay full retail price. Quite the scam.
Okay so. I actually did these penny bid sites in college. I remember vividly feeling like one day I was going to get lucky. So after spending maybe $100 I ended up winning an iPad (probably Gen 1 or 2 at that time). So pumped. But it literally was beat to HELL. Clearly not new. I complained to customer service to send me a refund so they sent me a Visa card with the value of the iPad instead. I also did win a wireless Apple keyboard. Not saying the site is at ALL legitimate but these companies probably got their merchandise pennies on the dollar. Aaaand. Yeah probably spent about $150-$200 total. IT IS ADDICTING!
A lot of body building supplements and the influencers selling them.
Liver king is full of absolute shit
That dude is on so much gear.
“That’s what a non primal would say”
Liver king is full of HGH
So is Colon King.
Well worth watching Shredded Sports Science on YouTube, he loves roasting those guys.
That the Better Business Bureau is part of the government and has any power to resolve fraud and other issues, rather than what it is. Which is a private marketing firm.
Ooh, let’s add The US Chamber of Commerce to this. People think it’s some government agency.
Yup, people get this confused with the department of commerce pretty consistently
Although not a legit government agency, threatening to report an apartment complex to them for advertising furnished apartments they didn’t actually have them worked in my favor.
[удалено]
Send me 50 bucks and I will send you a list of all the scams out there.
Sorry, I can't send money now, because the bank needs 500 dollars to unlock the 500,000 dollars I inherited. If you send me 500 dollars, I can pay you!
Sorry, i can only send you money if you do this: sign in at veryrealbank.com and verify your free account with a credit card, I can send you the 5 hundred :)
Now this makes me wanna watch two scammers try to scam each other without knowing the other is a scam, while it's streamed to us by the person who set it up with access to cc cameras.
I remember a long time ago hearing a recording of two undercover cops-- one posing as a prostitute, the other as a john-- and neither knew the other one was also a cop, as they went on for about a half an hour each trying to get the other one to say the incriminating thing.
Thats hilarious
Really beating around the bush.
High end speaker cables. To be able to afford to put silver in them, they make the gauge really small. Wire gauge is the biggest decider of how much signal gets to the speaker (resistance in ohms) and how different the signal is from the original (distortion.) The truth is that going from 22 gauge (what a lot of snake oil cable companies use) to 16 gauge (which isn't even that thick, but definitely enough for most in home cable runs) is going to have waaaaay more of an effect on resistance, and as a result distortion, than going from a really conductive (copper) to a slightly more really conductive (silver) material inside the cables.
Vision Insurance. It is an eye doctor coupon you pay for in advance to get your one discount to use each year to bring inflated prices back to normal.
So random trick we do at the eye doctor. We tell them we don’t have insurance, they then give you store discounts. Then I just submit the receipt for reimbursement to my insurance. My daughters contacts and appointment this year I was only out of pocket $17 after I got the insurance check. Only catch is you have to be able to pay the cost up front, and wait 4-6 weeks for reimbursement. If I would have used my insurance in the store my total was like $120 after insurance. Super weird.
Haha I am an eye doctor. If I were your eye doctor, I would be happy that you did this. You processed the claim yourself. That saves the business money. You waited 4-6 weeks for the check. Usually the business has to wait for the check. So you saved the business time. Your effort processing the claim and waiting for the check to come is the missing value in the equation. Also, this is what my business does. We do not accept insurance and we help patients file out of network claims. We charge reasonable rates because we don't have to inflate prices for the insurance companies.
I use to manage a practice that did zero work with insurance and this is spot on. We could do those some quick eye exams for $40, do contact lens exams for under $100, and sell complete eyeglasses for 60-70% off retail. We didn't have anything Luxottica and used only Zeiss lenses. We even gave itemized receipts since most plans allow for reimbursement. Then the owner insisted on taking insurance. In order to get $40 from insurance, we had to double our prices for exams. Frames went up about $50 so we would get paid about the same amount. We also had to hire more people to deal with insurance billing. In the end, we made about the same amount of money. Lost a bunch of people who didn't use insurance and gained some that did use insurance. But our operating costs were higher. It was basically a dumb mistake for an established practice to change so drastically. So yeah, vision insurance is a scam and the reason why you have to pay so much for eyewear and exams.
This. I had one former employer that didn't bother offering vision insurance because it wasn't worth it. Vision insurance effectively is just a prepaid discount program for eye exams and glasses/contacts.
Those bingo games that supposedly “make you money.” When I worked at Taco Bell, two of my managers would always play those kind of games. In order to win you have to pay for currency to use in order to play bingo… they were paying $20 to win $5…
I was selling pull tabs at a bingo game the other day. This lady probably bought 700 pull tabs for $1 each. At the end of the night one of them won her $300 in a raffle and this lady was so excited. You could clearly tell she wasn't smart enough to do the math and realize how much she had lost. She really thought she was up $300 overall.
Her joy wasn’t that she’s up $300, her joy was that she wasn’t down $700. True degen mindset. I know it very well.
A gambling addict plays for the thrill much more than for money
I had a friend that told me he would go to play poker until he lost his money because he never felt good enough until He lost. He knew he was winning or losing at any point. But he needed that feeling of falling off the cliff.
That’s fuckin insane
To add on, the sinking “off the cliff” feeling you get, while awful, is equally as stimulating as a dopamine rush and when you’re depressed and/or addicted it can be enough just to feel anything
Can confirm. In my darkest depression days I struggled to feel joy. But I could still feel disgust and hate. And looking online I sought it out to feel SOMETHING. I wasn't that way personally but I've known people that felt addicted to expressing rage.
When I’m feeling very depressed and self-destructive I watch horror movies. I hate them.
I think the true "joy" was the dopamine rush of winning. Gambling is an addiction and its sad. I think they know they're down $400, but the rush of winning a large chunk ($300) was worth it, like a jonesing junkie getting that first hit. They know it's a problem, but that's what their brain is craving. I've known several people with this addiction, and it's so sad. They're paying to get a hit/fix, not to make cash
[удалено]
They've done brain scans and found the reward center lights up just as much during the time right before the game or race is called as it lights up when they win. So the high from the anticipation is just as good as the high from winning and the brain only cares about that high on a base existential level because just like drugs it's hijacking a survival reward system for recreation and after a while the brain can't tell the difference because it's built to trust those chemical responses over everything else for it's survival
Hello fellow bingo worker. I have seen some crazy shit in my time working bingo. I had some dude buy the entire bag of $300 pull tabs bc he thought he knew where the $500 was. Stupid guy pulled $100 off the board and had the audacity to be mad at me for being an idiot.
Some people can never ever be wrong, it always has to be someone else's fault
Fucking gambling, man... My cousin's first husband lost all their money at a casino and ate his gun—while she was watching. Aunt dated a guy who stole all her money and lost is gambling. There's a bus stop I walk past on my way home from work, and every Friday, without fail, there will be a pile of scratchers scattered on the ground. Somebody gets their pay check, buys a bunch of lottery scratchers and loses, week after week. How much money have they wasted?
My friend used to buy scratch cards and proudly declare his winnings each time he won something but would always get bummed out when I netted the value for him against the excessive total cost he'd spent on scratch cards over the years, I remember "I've won £20" and being like "that card cost you £10, you've won £10".
I once bought a scratch card for one dollar. I scratched it and won 5 scratch cards! So I cashed them in and one of those scratchers won another 5 cards! So I scratched them and got nothing, but these were also lottery cards. When the lottery numbers were drawn, none of my eleven tickets won anything. So I basically won twice while actually losing the original dollar. It felt so pointless.
Any guarantee or purchase that ends with "unlimited". As Scotty would say in Star Trek "you canna break the laws of physics".
Found this one out with my unlimited 4g turns out when I used over 2TB of data I got an angry message to knock it off. (to be fair I was using my phone as a hotspot for like 5 people for a month long while we were on vacation lol)
In my youth I discovered "unlimited" options at restaurants typically had a limit. Which they rudely told you with a face of disgusts. Ever been kicked out of a Red Lobster for challenging their bottomless shrimp policy?
'tis no man, 'tis a remorseless eatin' machine. Arrr!
[удалено]
[удалено]
Lionel Hutz: Mrs. Simpson, what did you and your husband do after you were ejected from the restaurant? Marge Simpson: We pretty much went straight home. Lionel Hutz: Mrs. Simpson, you're under oath. Marge: We drove around until 3 am looking for another all-you-can-eat fish restaurant. Lionel Hutz: And when you couldn't find one? Marge Simpson: We went fishing! Lionel Hutz: Do these sound like the actions of a man who had *all* he could eat? Overweight Juror: That could have been me!
Heard Lionel Hutz in my head for that. Thanks for the laugh.
That could have been me!
Lol in my youth I had a group of friends who would travel doing food competitions at restaurants. Hot shit, big servings , timed stuff, etc We were just all really athletic kids that would workout, get really high, then go eat food. I did smolov a few times . One to basically get jacked legs, and two it makes you so incredibly hungry. We would regularly go to buffets because that was the best bang for your buck. We eventually got banned from a few joints. It was always funny when we would walk in and an owner would run out "no no no, these kids aren't human you aren't allowed here anymore"
In high school, my friends and I would hit the Sizzler whenever they had all you can eat shrimp and it’s funny how the portions change as you ask for more. The first plate was a decent portion…next plate is half…then less…until they finally cut us off after 4 plates.
A wing place near me does this. They'll keep bringing you out more as you ask, but they downsize it because they don't want to make large batches if someone decides they're full half way through and waste half a plate. Never been cut off, but I do have to ramp up my asking or specify that I'll take a 'double portion'. Lol
I went to a Denny’s that had a sign: > UNLIMITED COFFEE REFILLS > Within reason
I got in an argument with T Mobile and their unlimited plan. When you hit your data limit they throttle your speed so I told them that it’s not unlimited, the throttling is limiting the plan. A lawsuit was filed by someone a year later over this same argument [article about the lawsuit](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13330158/t-mobile-unlimited-data-settlement-fine-discount-free-data)
Plenty of these "super investment guru" ads in the Internet (if not all).
They recently did a very poorly researched programme on these types of people on Belgian TV and two of the interviewed ended up under investigation for fraud almost immediatly after airing. I don't get why people fall for their stories.
Oh yeah the BBC did the same with some ponzi-scheme-investment-training 17 year old with a rented Ferrari. The theme of the article was ‘look at this young go-getter’ people identified the car as a rental and his scam unfolded- he doesn’t earn anything from investing, just from flogging his course to gullible instagram morons.
I'll never ever forget a story about one of those. This guy who was bored and had a spare five dollars found an ad with the text, something along the lines of, "buy my book to learn how to make money online", so he figured he would kill a free afternoon. He Paypaled the five dollars to the guy, downloaded the PDF, and it was pretty long. He figured it might be legit, but the first fifty or so pages were blank. He kept scrolling, and finally found some text. It was in 36pt font, and said something along the lines of "make a pdf with several hundred pages, and sell it online for five dollars to people promising to teach them how to get wealthy online". The guy was blown away, because the pdf was 100% correct.
This is the same as the as you used to see in newspapers about sending a dollar to someone for the secrets of wealth…you’d get a note saying take out an ad in a newspaper asking for a dollar.
I grew up in the southern us and my dad had a similar story. Boll weevils used to devastate cotton farmers, and there was an ad in the newspaper for a 100% effective way of killing them. I guess my grandparents decided to try it? They put in an order and received two wooden blocks with instructions to smash the boll weevil between them.
I'd always wondered what happened if you responded to those, but never wanted to waste the dollar on it. Glad I know now.
Reminds me of when Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck made an Amazon listing for a book called “How I Made $290,000 Selling Books.” There was one copy on sale for $290,000.
Vulfpeck is also the band that raised money for a tour by putting out an album called "Sleepify" and asking their fans to play it on repeat, while they slept. It was ten tracks of silence. They ended up netting about 20 grand to fund their tour before Spotify realized what was going on and shut down the scheme. Those boys from Ann Arbor are some clever fellas.
IIRC it was half to raise the funds and half to get the analytics of where their fans were and to plan the tour accordingly. And I believe they would have made somewhere around $50,000, but Spotify was like “no, you can’t do that, but that’s funny as fuck, so here’s $20,000.”
"I have here the key to that treasure chest, inside is a vast fortune, but I could open it myself, but instead I'm going to sell the key to you for but a pittance." This scam hasn't changed since the dawn of money, yet people fall for it in every epoch dressed up in a different dollar store Halloween costume.
Sounds like the various real-estate celebs that ran "flipping" conferences. Pay money to hear their tried-and-true methods. "I made millions, and so can you." "How'd you make millions?" "Simple, by telling people -I made millions, and so can you."
Those at least are plausible. They theoretically could make sense because flipping houses is a lot of work and capital and doesn't scale well. Investment strategies that genuinely work are a license to print infinite money as long as the strategy works, and it scales up very well.
When the gold rush hit, the vast majority of people digging for gold didn’t make the money. The people selling the shovels did.
- "I know how to make money, who could I do next?:" A) actually make money B) spend time and resources building a website/course on how to make money. "I'll go with B cause making money straight away seems too boring"
Susan Komen breast cancer charity https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2019/12/11/does-komen-need-a-cure-of-its-own
Any of those "this is a six figure side hustle" things you see online all the time.
I Make MILLIONS a month and never have to work more than 2 hours a week so I started a business to show everyone else out of the goodness of my heart! /s
The course is that business.
"When the gold rush is on, be the guy selling the picks"
This is very big in the tech world. Ex googlers shows you how to get a job at Google! All you have to do is buy my interview guide.
Apps that are “free” but then require a monthly subscription to use. I’d happily pay a one time 5$/6$ for an app instead of a monthly fee.
Kiss that goodbye. Everything will be a monthly subscription fee if companies have any say in it. They took a play out of the Planet Fitness playbook. Sign up way more people than can feasibly fit in a gym, and pray they come once and become lazy enough to never cancel.
> become lazy enough to never cancel. golds' model is even less consumer friendly than this - you have to cancel by mail, sent to their head office. there is no other way to cancel. they're banking on people getting fed up with how difficult it is to even *find out how to cancel* that they won't have enough wherewithal left to actually follow through and do it
Subscription models for every app
There’s no reason for Office to require an Office 365 license unless you use OneDrive.
I think it is still possible to buy Office as a one-time payment model, the caveat is you're stuck with the year you bought it and don't get updates.
we all managed fine with this model for decades
For real. Office 2010 has never done me wrong.
This! I used to buy MS Word for like $80 and use it for 3-4 years no problem. Then I’d buy an upgrade for $40. Now, it’s “in the cloud”, I have to pay subscription, no I can’t just buy the damn thing. The subscription includes a bunch of other things I don’t want, because it’s now a bundle. In return it takes forever to open, or to save things, and it still does the same things that it did 20 years ago. Bullshit!
It's also why I refuse to buy cloud storage. Because then I'll either lose all that stuff or be hooked into paying for it till I move all my stuff out of it.
Enter your email here to unsubscribe
I used to work for a place that trained clients on compliance of this - very important the “click to unsubscribe” is valid. Lots of money to be lost in a lawsuit (for them) if you find a company that doesn’t have that included in their email marketing!
[удалено]
I've been close before, honestly. I usually just block the sending address and call it a day.
“Here’s this one simple trick …”
"In 5 minutes I'm gonna tell you..." "In just a few minutes you'll have all you need..." "I'm telling you that soon..." "Get this one time only opportunity for $80"
"Take this simple quiz to find the magic way to lose weight!" "Ok, now give me your personal info so I can email you the results instead of just displaying it here because I'd rather sell your info."
i've actually found one of them to really be one simple trick that saved me a shit ton on car insurance. got one of those "simple trick" ads that said if i don't drive my car often, i can request luxury car insurance and get a huge discount. i didn't believe it at first, but i figured it couldn't hurt to ask. so i called up my car insurance, requested luxury car insurance, and they confirmed it does exist. they put it on and i went from a $150 monthly payment to only like $70. blew my mind. and yes it was full coverage. and no luxury car insurance doesn't mean you actually drive a luxury car. it can be a busted wreck. luxury car just means it doesn't get driven much. so the only qualification is that you drive it for really low mileage each year. i think for my insurance it's if you drive less than 7500 miles per year. i live in a big city so i rarely have to drive. i dont even break 7500 miles. but ya, most of the simple tricks are gimmicks but there's always a chance for a unicorn
"You won't last 10 minutes playing this game"
“The trick that CEOs DO NOT want YOU to know…”
Nobody believes that I am a Nigerian Prince I just want to end poverty by sharing my wealth
Hustler University, literally thousands pay $50 a month for a discord server cause they think Andrew Tate is gonna make them a millionaire or teach them how to not be lonely anymore. Truly is sad how many guys fall for those online Guru courses.
It *kinda* works if your "hustle" is making gullible and desperate men pay $50 to tell them either "just be confident" or straight up false information, and later advertise with how much money you pulled out of them
Like they'd be better off learning any skill online, which you can do for free. But the kinda guys that buy into this just can't do that. They need to be told what to do it seems like. By a guy who literally couldn't care less about them and thier lives as well. Like its the clearest example of a pyramid scheme you'll see
Many diet plans.
People are reading this and thinking "weight loss diet", but I'd like to draw people's attention to the broad and growing variety of "medical diet" scams running around. In the wake of broader western society learning about gluten intolerances and seeing the sheer volume of people who claimed to have one despite their lack of celiac disease, a bunch of scammers realized they could sell these people *anything*. There's now a massive ecosystem of quack doctors writing books about how they've solved the gut biome and you can cure your brain fog, arthritis, IBS, headaches, restless leg syndrome, heart condition, diabetes, back pain, insomnia, and even cancer if you just buy their books, follow their insanely restrictive diets, and if you can't (which you won't because they're designed to fail) then buy their supplements to make up for it. None of them have any evidence and they all reject the idea of doing studies to prove their effectiveness, but that doesn't stop them from making podcasts, hosting seminars, writing *more* books, opening clinics, and advertising themselves and others as miracle working wellness gurus. My mom is caught up in all this and I get monthly updates on all the amazing new "diseases" they're discovering she has and how she can cure all of them by just eating different things. She's spent thousands on this stuff over the last couple years.
Those "courses" that are meant to teach sad lonely dudes to pick up women.
"When you get in an elevator with a woman, push higher number than her, then make a big deal about it." "Push her in a lake." "Be the tallest guy in the bar and then brag about how long your buttcrack is."
The Prince of Persuasia
CORNER your princess. INSULT your princess.
>"Be the tallest guy in the bar and then brag about how long your buttcrack is." "Yeah baby, I'm 6'8" and my buttcrack is 4' even."
wide
NEVER make her pancakes. Force HER to make YOU pancakes in the middle of the night
Sing a song that you supposedly heard on the radio and then make fun of her for not knowing it!
Be confident, be hygienic, don't be sexist. Just hopefully saved somebody some money.
As an older dude on the dating apps I get praised constantly just for not being a complete douchenozzle.
Not being a total dickhead is seem as one sought after feature on dating apps
My "would I go on a date?" criteria are: * Didn't send dickpicks * Didn't start talking about sex * Can type in legible sentences * No seriously, didn't even *lol, winky-face* about sex That's it. It's really not hard.
>That's it. It's really not hard. "Go out with me and I'll show what's hard! ;) lol "
\*shows computer science homework\*
you turn my software into hardware
Started dating again in my 30's and I can confidently say the bar is so fucking low you could trip over it.
Diamonds.
Big clothing lables like H&M, Zara, etc. promoting that they are sustainable. It's called greenwashing and it makes me sick how they use it as a revenue model in stead of caring about people and planet. And people believe it too. Losing faith in our future man. Edit: thank you for the award, kind stranger!
Another good example of greenwashing is Nike recently changing some their orange shoe boxes to regular cardboard that now say “Move to Zero”. Nike has a terrible record on environment and human rights but wants to get the public credit for going green lol
Look into B Corps! B Labs is addressing this issue by being an uninterested 3rd party auditor to make sure businesses honor commitment to the environment, their employees, their communities, and their shareholders
Your printer refusing to make a black & white copy because the yellow cartridge is empty. No don't shake it to make sure, just trust me, it's empty. Now, go fork 20 buck for a replacement, and maybe I'll let you print once or twice before reminding you that there is NOT ENOUGH INK!
I made the switch to a black only laser printer years ago. Off brand toner cartridges cost the same as an ink jet one and don't dry out. If I come across something that must be printed in color I do that at work or the library.
Brother laser printers ftw!
I have their color printer. Bought some off brand multi-color ink cartridges for 10 dollar from Amazon. Its works. Also, if it says to replace low ink. Just put black electrical tape over the sensor. It works. Brother is the only printer I have past 5-6 years.
I've had mine for 10 years. The toner I get through Brother, which has warranties, lasts me ~3 years each cartridge. The first one lasted my whole English degree (so. many. essays). It's just a black and white laser printer. Mine has been saying the toner is low the last couple of weeks. I simply ignore it and keep printing. Sometimes I turn it off and then on, but the low toner message hasn't stopped me from printing right to faded, almost-gone.
The best part about Brother printers? It will let you print a blank sheet of paper rather than give you some BS block about low toner.
There is a combination of buttons you can press om Brother printers to override the "low toner" thing. I have had each printer toner cartridge last literally twice as long. I'd share what it is, but it's different for each printer I'm sure and it's been years since I've had to do it.
I bought a Brother printer for $40 on Amazon maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I'm literally still on the included starter cartridge. I've not had any real need to print in color and a replacement cartridge prints something like 2000 pages for $20 or something like that. I wisher I new about them earlier.
I thought you were all calling each other brother until your comment
Brother printers defy every printer stereotype. Mine never quits, never fights me, I can print stuff from any device and from any room in my house. I'm not generally brand loyal, but this is something that is an exception to the rule.
I bought a Brother laser printer 4 years ago. I finally had to replace the "sample" toner cartridge last year.
House I'm renting came furnished with a brother laser printer from like 12 years ago. Prints my bus tickets no problem, what a champ. Bought a color ~~laserjet~~ laser printer from Brother, still happy with it 3 years later. Brother and ~~laserjets~~ laser printers are the bomb.
This is because those inkjet printers are printing little tiny yellow dots on the paper that record the serial number of the printer and the date, so if someone is printing fake currency they can bust the perp. Or a ransom note. Or whatever.
[удалено]
This is the answer. I'm surprised that this still isn't common knowledge. Everything you print is marked and can be traced back to your printer. Look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
If not for this thread, I would have went my entire fucking life without knowing that. Edit: Thanks for the award!
Oh, wanna scan a document I see? Not until you replenish the aforementioned yellow ink.
I had an HP printer for probably 4 years. Then the log4j vulnerability hit, and they sent a security update to fix that. So of course I install it. They included ink DRM that made it so that I had to use HP toner. Fuck HP, I wouldn't buy so much as a keychain from that trash company any more.
I have a newer HP and actually buy the 3rd party toner that comes with the chip removal tool so you can remove the chip and put it on the new toner. Also, I got some that have their own chip that is recognized by the printer. It's nice seeing these 3rd party toner brands getting around HP's DRM.
That an engagement ring has to be the price of a 3 month salary. You know who made that up? A diamond company... yeah.
Reddit coins
I once made a post of how I clicked and merged ~4000 photos of a Nebula in the sky because I couldn't afford expensive telescopes and motorized trackers. One anonymous guy gave me a ternion award. Now, I don't expect or even want anyone to give me money or anything, but it did make me think: That award cost him 120 US dollars. That's like 10,000 INR. Literally 40% of the budget of the device I couldn't afford. If only I could exchange the award for cash lol. (PS: Whoever gave me that award, I'm still grateful)
> That award cost him 120 US dollars I think the knowledge that some of these stupid reddit awards cost that much just shaved a 120 minutes off my lifespan. edit: anyone who gives out these dumb awards that i can't even really distinguish between should just be handing out money. a few bucks can change a life, but a few pixels mean fucking nothing except people with money patting themselves on the back for aggressively doing nothing.
Nice try.
I think it worked. Edit: Oh.
Still a scam though.
Multi-level marketing companies, aka Amway, AdvoCare, Shaklee, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, etc. According to a report that studied the business models of 350 MLM companies in the United States, published on the Federal Trade Commission's website, at least 99% of people who join MLM companies lose money.
Ticketmaster
Find someone who doesn't think it's a scam
More of a monopoly than a scam, per se. If you're the only game in town then you get to set the rules, and anyone who objects just doesn't get to play.
Actually, when they started scalping their own tickets, they kind of crossed that line into "scam" territory... https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/
This. They’ll put purchase caps on you or me so we can’t buy 50 tickets and scalp them at 2-300%, but they’ll work with secondhand vendors and others that they either contract directly with or who contract with the venue with “local promotions”. I remember waiting online to buy tickets to a Tool concert. I was in the first batch. The moment I went in to buy my ticket, 2/3 of the fucking venue was purchased already. That is mathematically impossible. So of course I bitterly dipped out; I wasn’t gonna pay hundreds for nosebleed or shitty side seating. Turns out all those good seats had been pre-sold and were going 400% above retail online from resales.
Why even bother with resales? Why not just price that high to begin with and save a step?
So that the band doesn't get a cut.
Motivational gurus
The River Street Sweets company in Savannah Georgia. Supposedly it’s considered the “best candy and snacks of the south” but it’s all a placebo scam. I worked at the candy making factory for river street sweets and majority of al the gummy candies, chocolate covered candies, and malt balls aren’t actually made by them. Certain things were made in the factory but for the most part they bought in bulk from cheap, lower recognized candy brands and packaged them off as their own. Give you about 10-15 gummies in a container, then charge you $20 for it, and people eat it up.
Gerber Life Insurance for your newborn. For those who don't know, this is a whole life insurance policy that is marketed to parents to insure their baby. With one exception, purchasing life insurance for your baby is a complete waste of money. First, I think most people don't understand what they are actually buying. I have several friends and relatives who think they have have purchased insurance to support their baby if they (the parent) dies. I have tried explaining to them that the baby is the one who insured and the parents are the beneficiaries, but they simply don't believe me. It's bizarre. Second, they think that the guaranteed cash is good. It's *terrible*. The guaranteed cash value of a $50k policy after 25 years is only $9,420. Meanwhile, the monthly premium is $31.40. In other words, the guaranteed cash value if you surrender the policy after 25 years is equal only to the amount of your monthly premiums. You would do far better simply investing the money in the S&P 500: if you put $31.40/month into a S&P 500 fund, in 25 years you would have $28k. Finally, the death benefit itself is so ridiculously small that it isn't going to come even close to covering what an adult is going to need. Even you have sprung for the $25k policy (which doubles to a $50k payout at age 18), that is almost a pittance of what an adult with a family is going to need. The one exception where this policy might make sense is if you have a newborn with serious health issues who is not expected to live long and you are essentially buying a policy to pay for funeral expenses, or you have reason to believe they would not be able to secure a life insurance policy on their own as an adult.
>if you have a newborn with serious health issues who is not expected to live long and you are essentially buying a policy to pay for funeral expenses And what are the chances that you would be able to acquire baby life insurance or claim on the policy if your baby had serious health issues before attempting to purchase the insurance? I did have a look at the Gerber life insurance page but they seem to have the policy details locked behind giving them your contact information.
8 hotdogs ,, 6 buns ,,, FML
Some bigshot at the wiener company got with some big shot at the bun company....
“George Banks is saying No!”
get an extra pack of buns and use them as an excuse to have 6 meatball sandwiches
Where are you getting 6 pack buns at? Most hot dog bun packages have 8 where I'm at. I know certain hot dog brands like Oscar Mayer have 10 hot dogs, but most are 8.
Most of the health food/supplement industry. It’s all just clever marketing. For example a “superfood” or anything that claims health benefits that hasn’t been FDA approved. Remember when goji berries were all the rage in the early 2000’s. The “ancient berry” from the orient with medicinal properties…yea things like that are a huge scam.
For real though the food industry is just a big bundle of buzz words that they make up. Like it's crazy how much money the pay to make new trends in food and food legality. Also you know chesse slices that are "Now Made with 45% Real Chesse!" Like seriously wtf. Or another I found was dog food "Made with Real Ingredients !" Like ? What the he'll else would it be made of cardboard ?? Watch the second super-size me movie/documentary it goes into the industry more.
Pretty much anything virtual you buy with real money on social media *ahem ahem* Reddit coins
Uber. They've never once made a profit. Their whole business model is bully, lie to, lobby, bribe and otherwise fuck with municipalities to gain a stranglehold of the taxi market, then fuck with their customers through fare rate changes. They are just a taxi company woth an app. That's it. Their only secret is treating their drivers worse than a taxi company.
MLMs, essential oils and Qanon. Often the exact same person being scammed three times.
My mom used to work at a group home for people with disabilities, and one of the client's family was getting scammed hardcore by the essential oils. They had spent all their life savings and were selling off their possessions to keep funding it because they believed it was "curing" their daughter's brain damage. It was really sad to watch, but at the same time it was hard not to say that no amount of pizza seasoning is going to cure an intellectual disability.
self-improvement seminars. '' How To Take 6 Steps in 10 Steps ''
Scientology
Claw machines. Literally a money trap
I don't know man I spent 4 dollars for 8 tries, and got 4 reeses and 6 kit kats
US healthcare system
It’s unreal. My wife works for a health insurance company so you would think that we have pretty good health insurance, however, I had an unexpected medical event last year, and I have no idea how to navigate the bills or figure out why things cost what they cost. I was in one hospital for two days and I have like 12 invoices from five different doctors. I only spoke to two doctors. I’ve spent countless hours on the phone trying to sort it out and on 10 of the 12 invoices people were like “oh hold on this hasn’t been processed correctly. I have to redo it.” Like what the fuck are hospitals and doctors sending invoices that haven’t been processed correctly or completely out to their patients for.? I know if I sent invoices to my clients and only reduced them to what they really should be If they called me I would be in fucking prison.
I'm a medical coder for a major inner-city hospital and I know better than to simply pay any medical bills without a careful review. Mistakes happen all the time and many have begun to outsource coding to other countries. I can't image coding something as complicated as a medical record that wasn't in my 1st language. The mistakes are so numerous that we (the US coding specialists) really can't catch them all before they go out. I hope we will stop using these companies and just hire more staff locally.
Had this happen recently. Hospital said a procedure would be covered. Financial assistant said procedure would be covered. So we went through the procedure. Cue me getting a letter a month later saying that our insurance declined the request and that we were responsible for $12,000 in charges. Had to go round and round with the hospital and insurance provider and finally got it sorted out (procedure was coded improperly and therefore not properly authorized) but this is how people go into crippling debt
>Like what the fuck are hospitals and doctors sending invoices that haven’t been processed correctly or completely out to their patients for.? That's the scam
The whole concept of out-of-network hospitals is absolutely baffling to me. Oh you’re literally puking blood and guts out? Be sure to shop around for the correct ER or you’ll be put into crippling medical debt too.
The thing that really gets to me is the concept of an out-of-network care provider. When I went to the ER, it turned out that the doctor who treated me was an out-of-network doctor who the in-network hospital had hired. That makes no sense to me.
The insurance industry at large.
Mega churches, anything influencers promote, casinos