What happened to me today?(short)

Factual Questions
1

This may be better for IMHO or MPSIMS, but it also might be a GQ so I put it here.

I was outside Farmer Jack, walking in. A guy in a pickup truck was driving by me and he stopped to get my attention.

He said, “Hey!”

I thought he wanted directions so I said, “Yes?”

He said, “Do you want a surround sound system for your home?”

I paused and said, “Nope.”

He said, “Oh.” And he drove away.

Have any of you encountered this kind of thing? He seemed like a very normal, non-shady looking kind of guy. Is he driving around with stolen surround sound systems? Did I miss a great opporunity(unlikely)?

2

Theives come in all shapes and sizes.
My guess is he was trying to off some stolen goods on you.
I doubt, however, that you missed out on the deal of the century.

3

I vote scam.

He may have shown you a surround system, but when you got the boxes home, it’s all Thaidog “I got a rock in a box”.

4

In the U.S., it is common for scammers to cruise around looking for single young males to hawk poor quality speakers to. Because so many of these scammers drive white vans, the speakers are commonly called “white van speakers”. The mark is given some BS story about how the seller has two leftover speakers for some reason (ordered two recieved two pair, for instance). The seller will claim that the speakers are very expensive and try to get a good price for them. They may have fake audio magazines or other “supporting documentation”. No idea if this, or something similar, was what happened to you. You might check

http://www.scamshield.com/Feature.asp?id=1

or

http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/InPerson/speaker_scams.htm

to see if this scam is going on in your area. Some of the audio boards also will have updates about where they’re active.

5

I agree with the above that it is very common. The goods probably aren’t stolen either. They are just very cheaply made speakers that will, in fact, function but they are dressed up as much more expensive goods. They make it sound like a great deal while they are, in fact, a scam even at the low price.

There have been several threads about this on the SDMB before.

6

Not necessarily stolen. As stated before, this is a scam that’s also been covered here before. You’ll likely only end up paying too much for a pair of speakers.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=318578&highlight=white+speakers

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=292297&highlight=white+speakers

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=170894&highlight=white+speakers

And plenty more besides. Some funny stories, but I only recall one of them (in an even older thread) where someone got screwed instead of ripped off. Someone else said he bought a pair and they were perfectly fine and indeed still uses them.