Scammers- anyone coming through your neighborhood w/ cards that don’t look like really good business cards and who don’t meet you at an auto shop but in a grocery store parking lot to fix your car- f-ing scammers.
Also, let’s hear from some people who can tell me some secrets businessmen/salesmen use, some bs they (fairly) use to sell me stuff- much of it I probably already know/or will pick up on by being my always cynical and skeptical mofo self ( f-ing proud of it, too), but let’s hear of it- I want this thread to go to five pages, minimum. I want all the info you guys have from life experience.
If a really attractive young man or woman approaches you and talks to you for half an hour about his/her plans to win a contest that will allow world travel or college tuition, he/she is trying to sell you magazines. He/she will deny it until at least the half-hour mark, but that’s what’s up. The idea is that you will feel guilty for using up half an hour of their time without buying. Don’t fall for it.
The salespeople get huge commissions on them, and most products come with warranties that will cover you if the product is a lemon.
The only known exception to this rule is if you buy a house from someone - there are some great, inexpensive warranties that cover the appliances/heaters/air-conditioners, etc. that are worth the money.
I’ve heard both sides with respect to automobiles, but I heartily concur with the typical household appliance warranty; it is really just supplemental income for the salesperson.
Further comments on the magazine advice: I had someone come to the door once, selling magazines. He said that he only needed three more subscriptions to hit some sort of award threshold. I can’t believe that I actually considered it, but that is really a powerful motivation; convincing the mark that a little effort on their part will make a lot of difference. And, no, I didn’t fall for it, but I did admire it.
I also admire what I call the “Monty Hall” sales approach. The salesperson will offer you a choice of what is behind Door #1 or Door #2 (automobile extended warranty vs. an options upgrade, for example). It focuses you on one or the other so that you ignore that Door #3 is just walking away from the deal.
Beware of telephone scammers posing as charitable organizations for police, firefighters or veterans. They’re almost all bogus. Don’t give out any money over the phone. Ask them to send you some literature and you’ll look it over. A legit organization would have no problem with that. The scammers will say they can’t do it. You can also find data bases online listing which charities are real and which ones aren’t, but if they’re calling you on the phone it’s probably bullshit. I keep getting hounded by these fake charities. I think I must be on call lists because I actually have given fairly regularly to legit veterans organizations over the years.
Auto Mechanics–never ever sign a blank work order. If you do, they can dissasemble your motor, & refuse to re-assemble it without a huge payment. Even if you came in for an oil change. You will have no legal recourse, due to a quirk in the law called a “Mechanic’s Lien”.
If they ask you to sign a blank work order–LEAVE! ASAP!
Absolutely. I’ve definitely done this. I think that it has to do with mail fraud; if they scam you through the mail, the Post Office will go after them. That’s also why they say they’ll send a car to pick up your payment. My cousin is a Sheriff, and he said that police-based organizations never solicit by telephone. They may mail, or more likely will go door to door so that you will know who you are dealing with.
And of course, although it hardly needs to be said, anyone who calls to tell you you won something, and then asks for a certain “fee to process the payment” doesn’t deserve another moment of your time.
As a variation on this, the scammers will say they will do it, but the packets of information cost so much to send that there’s a minimum donation required if they send one to you.
An old one, but in case there are some folks out there who haven’t heard of it:
Someone calls your place of business, and claims to be the service person for your copier. They then ask for the model number off of the machine. Next thing you know, you will get some “toner” sent to you (usually some bottles of alcohol, with a masking tape label that someone has written “toner” on with a magic marker). You will also get an invoice that they hope will slip through with the other bills.
Call them “toner phoner” or “toner pirate”, and they will hang up on you pretty quickly.
A little beside the point perhaps, but anyone interested in learning how to avoid (or, more to the point perhaps, in the case of the last one, training staff in how to avoid) confidence-trick scams should read (hopefully it’ll be in the library by now) Kevin Mitnick’s book, The Art Of Deception.
I totally concur with this one. A few years ago a guy came to the front door of our apartment asking us to buy magazine subscriptions that would supposedly go towards various charities to “help struggling kids in school” and whatnot. He went on with his shpiel for 15 minutes or so when my roommate finally said “You know what, we’re kind of busy right now, but if you could give us a phone number or address, we’ll get back to you.” His response was something like “I’m not some fancy business man with an office building, you know, I’m just trying to sell magazines.” :rolleyes: My BS meter went from “caution” to “red alert” and we got him to leave at that point.
Also, if you go in for an oil change, just get your damn oil changed. I got a new (used) car recently, and as soon as I could, I had my stepfather (who knows quite a bit about cars) check out the engine to make sure there was nothing wrong with it. The parts were all in good condition, the filter was clean, and it looked like there was some parts that had been recently replaced. So a few hundred miles later, I go in to change my oil for the first time, and the guy there tries to get me to buy the whole kit and kaboodle. First he convinces me I should pay an extra $5 for the special type of oil designed for cars with over 100,000 miles. I say yes, because it sounds like it’s worth it. Then he says my engine should probably be flushed (or whatever) to clean it out and give the engine better performance, and that will cost extra. I say no thanks, maybe next time. Then he says I should pay a little more for something else, and finally he takes out the filter, looks at it for a few seconds and says “You know, your filter is really dirty. You can replace it here for just $20.” Now I know he’s lying to me to make a sale, because when my stepdad checked the filter just a few weeks earlier he said it looked fine. The salesman was counting on the fact that I didn’t know what a dirty filter looked like, and he would’ve gotten away with it if I didn’t already know it was clean. I bet a lot of people threw away perfectly good car filters because they didn’t know any better.
Newsflash: The saleman gets diddly squat on warranties. Extended warranties are sold to the customer by someone who is very good at convincing people they are necessary. Profits go to the company, with a percentage to the guy that sold you the warranty.
It’s more likely that you won’t even see much of it coming, depending on the level of experience of the salesman. There is a large arsenal of sales techniques that are extremely effective (far too much to describe on a message board); the days of “what would it take to put you in this car today”, or the old “If I could, would you…” are long discarded by all but the most unsuccessful salemen. Psychology has taken over the biz, and most serious dealerships send their people to professional trainers that teach everything from the simple “either-or close” to the use of cognitive dissonance. The best defense is to know what you want and how much you are willing to pay, and to stick to your guns.
You’ve probably received charitable solicitations in envelopes that also contain address labels, pocket calendars, perforated stamp-like seals, or similar items. Occasionally you’ll be told that “if you choose not to contribute to our cause, you can send the donor premiums back in the enclosed postage-paid envelope.” Sure, you can, but you’re never under any obligation to either pay for or return unsolicited merchandise. And even if you were, what good would labels already printed with your address do anyone else?
Also, it’s highly unlikely that any legitimate company has ever sent a truck to deliver a huge order of meat to a customer, only to find that said customer has moved out of town or just wasn’t at home, and the driver now (as he tells you when he knocks on your door and you answer) has all kinds of steaks and chops he can sell to you at irresistibly low prices because the food can’t be returned to the warehouse once it leaves the premises…
I just tell them to call back and ask for 'Mr. Meoff. First name Jack." Sometimes they actually do it, and penis ensues.
There was a post about these people where some Doper told them something like “we have a machine that copies in 9,742 colors and our toner comes in six gallon containers. The last guy delivering it is suing us because he got a hernia.”
In the UK, when buying cans of tuna, make sure you always buy the supermarket branded value version. My job during the summer holidays involved taking tins of tuna (supplied by a company that everyone will have heard of) which had been passed through their labelling machine and not had their labels stuck on correctly, and passing it through a well known supermarket’s labelling machine.
The tuna is identical in both, only the labels change.
The only tactic that I can say I wasn’t expecting when I went new car shopping was when the car dealer tried to convince me I was stupid for doing the math to see what the monthly payments would come out to be, like if I was afraid he would think less of me I wouldn’t sit down and do the math. He offered me a new car for $14,000 and when I didn’t want that one he offered me a used car for $19,000. When I told him I wouldn’t pay 5000 dollars more for a used car, he told me he hates it when ignorant people try to total up their monthly payments to see what they are being charged. He explained that buying a car is like buying a house, it is something that builds up value over time. Yeah, he actually said that. Needless to say, I didn’t buy a car from him.
Here’s another one, kind of a generic. I was re-financing my home from the original 8.5%, and the new deal sounded OK, and the Good Faith Estimate calculated out OK, but when I went in to sign the papers, somehow it wasn’t the deal I thought I had.
So: “This isn’t the deal I thought it was” is a deal-stopper. Go no further.
This principle cost me a lot of money at that time, but since then it has saved me and my family from a disastrous deal involving the family farm, because during the period of realization following the re-fi I got it very clear in my mind what not to do.
(After that re-fi, eventually I did another one with a Credit Union that saved me many thousands of dollars. So I’m OK now, but too bad I had to pay for that education.)
f-ing proud of it, too), but let’s hear of it- I want this thread to go to five pages, minimum. I want all the info you guys have from life experience.