Here is a description of an experience I had yesterday. Seems to have “scam” written all over it but I’ve never heard of this. Have you?
A guy walks up to my front door and says he is from a local food service, delivering a meat order to one of my neighbors. It’s 3:30 but he says the people won’t be home until 5:00 so he has some time to kill. Would I like to buy from him right now? He starts asking me about my food shopping habits. I declined to get into that conversation and asked him how his company works. He said his company had the highest possible ratings from Better Business Bureau. I asked if he had some kind of brochure he could leave me. He said he would come back.
So then 5:15 he shows up. Said the delivery didn’t go through (whatever that means) so now he has this order he’ll sell me for a good price. I said I’ve never heard of his company (actually he never even told me the name) and don’t buy from door-to-door salesmen but would be happy to look through a brochure. He said he was with his route manager, who was out in the truck in front of my house. It was a white modified pickup that looked like it had some commercial logos/signage painted on but it wasn’t close enough to read it. He went out to the truck and instead of coming back with his manager or a brochure he just drove away.
Heard of it before, never saw it. A quick Google turns up results like it being ok meat but not worth the price, all the way down to one where the purchaser thawed out the meat and found it had surely spoiled (and/or not been the type advertised) and been frozen for sale to a sucker. Some of it might be stolen as well.
Some stories indicated that there are a few legitimate sellers like this, but they would have brochures for you.
I guess there’s a chance it might be legit, but if not, and you get heavy packages that contain rotten meat, improperly labeled, inspected, or, Og forbid, nothing but bricks, what recourse do you have?
I don’t see how buying meat - a foodstuff with a good chance of spoilage that is serious - from an unknown stranger, with no way to track back for complaints, no way to be sure that this meat is safe in any way could even be considered for one minute.
When you buy food from a supermarket, or the local butcher, both are routinely inspected by the Health office to make sure they meet hygiene and cooling standards. You know where the business is if you want to sue them for selling spoiled food or otherwise sub-standard stuff. And still people sell spoiled meat by trucking it around, mixing it or lowering the price (we’ve had several scandals in Bavaria in the past years, due to lack of inspectors).
The description in the OP definitely sounds like a scam.
I have met similar salespeople in situations that I didn’t think was an outright scam. They had business cards and the meat came in a box with a fixed set of different steaks, ground beef, etc. When I did the math, I wasn’t saving much. If I had really wanted the selection of cuts in the box, the price would have been pretty close to the local supermarkets… but at the supermarket I could have bought just the ones I wanted.
We get the door-to-door meat guy coming by once every few years. I’d read something in the distant past (before we even moved to the country) about these guys selling substandard or old meat, so we never even engage them in conversation, just give them the heave-ho.
We also get the “aeriel” photo guy every few years who tries to sell us a framed, laminated picture of our property taken from the hill across the road. It’s only $400, but so far I’ve been able to resist.
I had the exact same situation regarding a “failed delivery to a neighbor.” I listened to his pitch and then passed on it because I had no assurance as to the quality of the meat (e.g., not spoiled or otherwise up to health standards).
Thing is, there is no neighbor who ordered meat and then wasn’t there to pick it up. That’s just a story, because wandering from house to house selling frozen meat would strike people as weird. But that’s exactly what he’s doing, going from house to house trying to sell frozen meat. Except, if he has to lie to you so you won’t slam the door in his face, then why would you be interested in his product? He can’t be a reputable businessman, because his sales pitch is based on lies and he never expects to have a repeat customer. If you really want a truckload of frozen meat you can get on the Google and find someone to deliver it, or just ask your local market.
So it’s not a pure scam, because if you give him money you’ll really get a bunch of frozen meat of whatever quality. But it is a scam because you’re not going to get good quality product at a discount rate. You’re going to get god-knows-what quality product at steep rate.
I had a friend who’s uncle drove a delivery truck for a major grocery chain in Dayton and he had freezers full of meat off of the truck he would sell us at decent prices.
We’re getting a delivery today from Omaha Meats. I’m assuming a Christmas present, but I’m not sure. They called about a week ago to let us know the day they’d be delivering, to be sure someone is home, and to give us time to make room in our freezer.
Fortunately my wife can be home, or else they’d just sell it to the neighbors, apparently.
I worked for one of those companies for a few days and, as others have said, not a scam, but not a great deal either. It looks like a lot of meat, but a lot of it is just burgers, and the steaks aren’t great.
Also, we would go door to door showing the people a box of meat. Eventually the meat would thaw. We would just toss it back in the truck and get a new one. Most of the trucks were not refrigerated. Most were just pickups with an unplugged freezer and a chunk of dry ice. Any meat you bought from us may have been thawed and refrozen many times.
Had this happen to my wife while I was at work one time. She said a guy in a freezer semi truck pulled up and was selling frozen meats of various variety. He gave her a list of the meats/burgers that come in the back, it was a box for like $80 and the total weight was decent, but never mentioned how many of each type or the weight per each. He put an emphasis on that there were tenderloins and ribeyes in the boxes. She said the guy kind of hit on her as well which was kinda creepy. He did not get a sale that day, and we’ve never seen anything like that again.
I have no doubt that the situation described herein is a scam. However, there is a guy with a truck who shows up every few weeks not far from me with seafood from much farther south, and the word is he is most certainly legitimate, at least as far as having safe, reasonably priced food that you can’t get anywhere else. The only difference is this guy has been around at the same place for many years and everyone knows him.
I think he merely loads up his truck at the coastal wholesale market and drives 500-1000 miles to where fresh seafood access is much more difficult. He can compete with the large grocery stores since he has less overhead and faster delivery.
So not every “guy with a truck” is a scam, but I imagine most are.
What the OP describes is quite obviously a scam. FWIW, there are companies that sell frozen goods for home delivery (most notably Schwan’s). They deliver stuff from a refrigerated truck, and if nobody is home they leave goods in a box/or bag kept frozen with gel packs. Their business model is predicated on getting you onto a regular delivery schedule. They’re not going to re-sell your order to someone else.
The meat truck scam is based on convincing you that circumstances have conspired to give you a great deal, and creating a sense of urgency so that you make a decision before you’ve had time to think about it. It’s no different from the “leftover asphalt” scam or others straight out of the con man playbook.
99% of the time you should assume that a door-to-door salesman is a crook.
As everyone else has said, I’d be very wary of the quality of the meat and the conditions it was kept in. I’m not sure if it would fit the legal definition of a scam in that you could get them in trouble, or anything, but it’s certainly shady and only a sucker would fall for it.
What?! That’s hilarious! Is this a thing? Or is this just something local to you?
I sort of got taken in by one of these meat truck dudes once. I was a confirmed pescetarian at the time, but he had shrimp and fish on his truck as well. :dubious: I asked if it was local – I’m only 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, so any seafood that wasn’t caught today is already about four hours too old for me. He insisted all his shrimp was local Gulf shrimp. I bought some and paid with a check. Off he drove. A while later, I’m inspecting the box and notice that the shrimp I bought was fresh in Thailand about two weeks ago. Og only knows how many times it had thawed and been refrozen by the time it got to me. Ew.
I called the guy (who’d left a card) and politely asked him to come pick up the shrimp – still frozen – and return my check as I did not want the produce anymore. If he’s a legitimate business, this won’t be a problem, will it?
He didn’t return my calls (note: calls. I made many attempts to get back up with him.) until I stopped payment on the check. Then he called me back, “Why did you stop payment?” “Well, I attempted to contact you to return the product because you lied. You said it was local and the box clearly states it’s from Asia. That is unacceptable, especially given the price. You can come and pick up your still-frozen product, but if you don’t I’m pitching it in the trash.”
I vaguely recall that, after much whining and cajoling and a little more lying, the dude finally caved in and picked up his natty refrozen shrimp. Totally worth the stop-payment fee.
I have a strict “I don’t buy anything that comes to me” policy now. Not even Girl Scout cookies. If I want the product, I will find it all by myself. I probably don’t want anything that magically appears at my doorstep.
