I’ve read all the articles on Snopes, had a giggle at Those of Lesser Intellect Than Myself, and try to keep up to date on con jobs. Unfortunately, I’ve just been scammed off $20.
An unkempt saleman knocks on my door offering to sell me something (strike 1). I ask for personal and professional ID, which he has, but don’t check it up (strike 1 1/2). He says that a new council bylaw requires people to have reflective housenumbers on their kerbside (big 'ol strike 2). He offers to sell me it for a suspeciously reasonable sum of $20 and bill me later (strike 3 and I’m goonne…). It’s a real shame the [smack] smilie are offline; prehaps I can put in a back order for a few hundred.
A few hours of nagging thoughts finally won the day, and a quick phone call showed the whole council bylaw thing is a sham. Hopefully I can wriggle out of the bill since the NZ laws on unfair sales practices are pretty strict. For the rest of the day, I’ve had sneaking suspicion I’m not nearly as smug in my high intellect as I think I am.
So Dopers, has anybody else been scammed and willing to share stories?
A long, long, long time ago, I wanted to be an actor. Don’t laugh, I really did. Honest.
So, I saw this ad for a casting agency seeking new talent, and I thought I might give it a try. I was young. I really was.
Anyway, I showed up at the place and it seemed like a serious outlet. They would charge me 30$ a year to keep my file. That didn’t seem too expensive. They took pictures of me. They had a small studio-like space that looked professional enough. So I paid the 30$.
Anyway, the next day, I turn on the teevee to find out that the fine folks I had just given 30$ were arrested for running a scam that involved a fake casting agency. Ouch.
Also, I have been scammed many times and in many different ways while I was in China, but that’s nothing exceptional nor is it anything to be ashamed of.
I was scammed yesterday by a woman who claimed to have bought two subs at my store on the weekend (I don’t work weekends). She said the steak was tough and chewy. I explained that we don’t cook the steak, it comes pre-cooked, we just heat it up. She went OFF. She said; “Well, I had the same problem at a Subway in Ontario, and they had the common human decency to replace my food with something edible.”
She came in, I made her two subs. Total value: about $16.08 CDN.
Then I remembered something my wifey, Upside_Down_Amber had told me about a woman who had scammed her Wendy’s twice in the same week. She was very convincing and operated in such a way that you practically HAD to give her the food, according to the customer service procedures in the manual. I called up The Wife and asked her for a description.
We had just moved to the area, and the hubby was looking for work. One of the the want ads said that there would be a civil service exam for postal service jobs, secretarial, filing, etc, etc, etc, up to $15 an hour, exam to be held such-and-such a date at such and such a place, send $20 for a information booklet and application kit.
So he ordered it, and got a poor quality, cheaply bound photocopied booklet, full of grammatical errors, with lots of bone-headed advice on how to study for the exam. The “application kit” was a list of information and documentation you would be expected to supply when you applied for the exam.
Applied to the actual office that was actually giving the exam.
Which was not these people.
I guess $20 was a cheap enough way to learn to read the address carefully and make sure it was actually a government office, not “John Smith, Clerk, Office of Examinations and Employment” at a PO box.
I worked in a head shop for a while when I was younger and one of the girls got scammed by a quick-changer one day. We were only out $15, but dammit if he wasn’t smooth as silk while he was scamming her.
My favorite scam story though was one I read somewhere, sometime (nice and specific, right?) about people sending $5.95 in response to an ad for a “Very realistic, high quality engraving of George Washington”. They recieved a one dollar bill.
I know this doesn’t answer the question asked in the OP, but Rabid_Squirrel, you may not be able to get your $20 back, but you may be able to prevent it from happening to someone else. Give your local PD or newspaper a call to let them know there’s a scam artist in the neighborhood. Your neighbors will appreciate it!
Now to answer the question yes, I have been scammed. My husband and I, when we were engaged and thinking about honeymoon options and had very little money to spend on one, got scammed by one of those vacation mailings that tell you you’ve won a cheap vacation. All we won was the right to fork over $100 to them and never see it again.
When hubby and I were still dating, he lived in another town for a few months. He had played those free lotteries online, so when he got a call one day saying he’d won $80,000, he thought it was the real deal. Then the guy started talking about how it was the Spanish National Lottery, and before the funds could be released, he would have to pay the Spanish taxes on it. He ended up sending them about $800 I think before realizing it was a scam.
When I was 16 or 17 and working for an arts & crafts store as a cashier, I was had by a quick-changer. The lady got $100, and I still have no idea how the hell she did it.
About 10 or 12 years ago, my husband almost got taken by one of those phone calls saying “You just won a trip to the Bahamas!!” The call came on his birthday and he was all excited. I was the spoilsport who told him it was probably a scam. About that time, there was an article in the paper about that very scam, so we dodged that bullet.
Another time, he agreed to have someone come “clean” our carpet for $19.95 or some such. The guy who showed up tried a hard sell on me for all kinds of crap that I wasn’t buying. Then he filled his carpet cleaner from our tap - so I know the water wasn’t all that hot. The extractor was defective - our carpets were soggy for 3 days, and that was with fans blowing on them full time.
The same company called our inlaws a few months later. I warned them and they cancelled the appointment.
His modus operentii isn’t to state that it was recommended by the city council, he was just talking fast and giving letters stating that reflective kerbside numbers was ‘a good thing’. I have to give the guy credit though, he must have thought out his patter and skirted around the legal issues like a pro.
about 1 hour ago I went door knocking and a few people were also taken in by his hard sale tactics. By chance, I saw him across the road, and managed to get my name off that Cursed List as he was approaching a customer. He turned around and started acosting me on how it was solely my decision to buy it, how I was annoying his clients and how I could have easily rejected the bill anytime. Cry me a river baby - I’m pissed off and got my Stomping Boot of Vengeance on. He did admit that sole piece of contact detail, the phone number, wasn’t working yet :rolleyes:. I guess he’ll also charge a removal fee if you don’t want it. I’m filing a complaint to the Commerce Commission for overzealous selling and potentially misleading tactics.
I"ve also rang up the real city council approved reflective kerbside number installer (quite a nice guy too), and there’s been quite a few interesting stories regarding that company.
I fell for that get paid for online surveys thing, prolly cos someone told me that you can earn money by being online and when I saw the link for this “get paid for being online!!” thing I clicked …
Bring back the <smack> emoticon!!!
Now!!!
Don’t make me get the dogs, or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouths
I worked at a hospital in Uptown, (chicago) and there were always a lot of homeless, crackhead winos around, so you got used to ignoring all the hustles they played.
I was out at breaktime, smoking a cigarette, and this h/c/w guy walks up in my face, close up in my face, and asks me for a cig. I told him to piss off. Then he starts demanding I give him a dollar. Now I’m irritated, so I go up in his face close and tell him to get lost, before I really get mad.
He wanders away muttering and cursing.
2 hours later. Lunchtime. Same spot, now out there with a co-worker.
H/C/W lady walks up with screaming baby in a carriage, with sob story about how she has no baby formula, no bus fare, etc. etc.
I eyeball her suspicously.
Co-worker gives her money.
2 hours later. Same spot.
Look across the street into the park.
H/C/W guy, H/C/W lady, baby in buggy (still screaming), assorted other winos, sitting on bench, 2:00 in the afternoon, getting drunk.
I looked for a cop to set on them, if for no other reason than the poor kid probably wasn’t getting his turn at the bottle of Richards they were passing around.
I *sort of * got scammed with the time share thing. I didn’t buy one mind you, but when they called and did the ’ listen to our spiel and pick a prize’. Almost every prize involved a trip that had to be taken Sunday through Thursday, you had to pay the airfare, and they would put you up at a timeshare location in an exotic city (New Orleans, Las Vegas, etc.) The one prize that seemed reasonable (since we live in San Diego) was two nights at a hotel in Anaheim, CA and tickets for two to Disneyland. Supposedly it could be taken ANYTIME, and there were no other restrictions…I specifically asked.
So we hear the hard sell spiel, and say “no thank you” about 50 times. Then after TWO HOURS of wasting our time, they finally get to the coughing up prizes stage and the Disneyland deal suddenly has the following restrictions:
You can only go Sunday through Thursday
You have to pay for the room and tickets to Disneyland, then send the receipts to them and get ‘re-imbursed’. (Like that would ever happen… “Sorry sir, your receipts must have gotten lost in the mail…”)
When I complained, they said they were very sorry their telephone people were new and sometimes miscommunicated information. Besides, that person wasn’t even working for them any longer…supposedly (I had the person’s name).
So I called BS on them and told them they had five minutes to figure out a prize to give us, or I’d be making a call to the Better Business Bureau and the state Attorney General to report them. I ended up with a $50 restaurant gift certificate, and a lot of dirty looks from the people like I was the criminal…
We got a letter from an outfit that purported to help us find scholarship money for our children’s college education. Ivylad even went so far as to make an appointment. Then I reread the letter and something tickled my “uh-oh” bone.
