To the users that have accidentally purchased doll furniture; How did the prices compare to what you would have paid for full sized versions?
These stores were in the days *before *the message started appearing. They were the cause of that message.
Oh, it can be worse than that, one of the main 3D model webstores (as in 3D computer models) had, or perhaps still has as it’s home page a full screen warning that pretty much told people “Hey dummy, we sell virtual stuff, not real, got it?”
Apparently there were many people buying cars, houses, zeppelins or whatnot that were a tad miffed when they got only ones and zeros in electronic form for their money.
The flat screen and X-Box pictures cited above seem to be thinly-veiled scams. The PS2 box may have been one too, I don’t know. At the time, the news reports made it look like a joke that not everyone got.
I believe that the “flat screen” guy was playing a joke, if he really had a picture of the window screen maker on the page, and of the door handle as the “control.”
But who sells a box? I can’t think of any reason someone would want a box, as opposed to wanting a bug screen, which is a real thing.
There’s a story somewhere of a guy who sold a fake laptop to a scammer. The scam had to do with putting the money in an escrow account, supposedly to make sure he actually got the item, and then releasing it when the item arrived, only the escrow account wasn’t real and the scammer had no intention of paying for the item. So the seller set up an elaborate hoax, and baited the scammer, blogging about it the whole time. Scammers don’t read blogs, I guess.
I sold a box once.
It was the box for a Mac 128K computer, and was very, very explicitly labeled as such. It sold for $103, and it cost a lot to ship it to Japan (I had to find an even bigger box to put it in).
Turns out, boxes can be collectables.
Regarding the “flat screen” sale, who calls a screen window a “flat screen?” How often are windows screens not flat? (Presumably some are but that’s very unusual.) And flat screen is used as shorthand for “flat-screen television.” So I agree that the seller was being deliberately misleading.
And a follow-up question: Is there no getting your money back?
There was the opposite premise in The Big Bang Theory, where they thought they were buying a model of the HG Wells time machine from the movie. It turned out to be a full-sized replica, about 8 feet by 8 feet that took up the entire living room.
There was a story many years ago about someone who took out a classified ad in “High Times”, advertising an ounce of grass for $5. Lots of people did indeed send in their $5, and got a Baggie with an an ounce of lawn clippings in it.
No crime was committed.
What were they expecting, anyway? :dubious:
I never heard of people selling XBox pictures, but I do remember a brief wave of listings for “BRAND NEW XBOX 360 BOX XBOX BOX PERFECT FOR WRAPPING UNDER CHRISTMAS TREE”.
It happens.
I once worked with a company that sold expensive dollhouse furniture online. They would call things names like “Miniature Oak Table.” They would put the dimensions (3"x2") and weight (.25 lb) in the description. They would put a picture of the thing next to a coin to show visually that the furniture was about the same size as a coin. And they’d still regularly get requests for returns from people who thought they were getting an incredible deal on people-sized things.
I thought you were going to say “but it turned out to be a fully-functioning time machine.” 
Some people have full-sized brains, and apparently others have miniature replicas.
And they can’t even complain to the post office about mail fraud because they didn’t get the marijuana they bought.
Did anyone ever complain about not getting the giant coin with their order?
You can get a higher price for an item if its sold in the box, with documentation that would have normally come with that item. Be interesting if someone actually held on to the polystyrene and plastic bags, as well.
Declan
Child-size chair, anywhere from 20% - 40% less than the adult-size models I had been pricing. I thought 20% would be a legitimate price difference for online, assemble-it-yourself furniture.
There might have been, if I hadn’t made doubly sure of my assembly techniques by gluing the individual pieces of the frame together before realizing I wasn’t assembling a full-size frame.:smack:
Only time I got scammed like this was years ago when I bought a paper shredder off eBay. It looked like a normal, top of the waste basket-sized shredder, but it turned out to only be desktop sized (I didn’t know such a thing existed!) The ad never made this clear so it was definitely deliberate, but I kept it anyway. It was crosscut and credit card statements fit into it perfectly…
Previous thread on the subject, where a number of crimes the sellers could be guilty of was enumerated:
“Unclean hands” is definitely a thing, but it doesn’t always get people who scam criminals off the hook entirely. It’s entirely possible for both people in a transaction to be guilty of committing different crimes, and prosecuted as such.
I would think in any jurisdiction, offering drugs for sale is a crime whether there are drugs or not. (I remember one case I saw where someone was charged because for twenty dollars they told someone - and undercover cop - who they could buy drugs off of. That too is a crime in Canada)
However, the twist here is that “grass” can mean lawn clippings or pot. Unless you are advertising in say, High Times, I would imaging the seller could claim “I made no representation that it was a controlled substance”. This whole “people buy doll furniture by mistake” thing just proves the point that people can jump to conclusions.