Scams you've fallen for

I fell for the Office Space door-to-door mag salesman as a freshman. That ****** hit me up when I was drunk as hell and in that super friendly mode. My roommate asked me what the receipt for 20 mag subscriptions was for the next morning. Luckily, they had a 24 hour opt out period.
 
Out of the blue (never ordered by us), we received Smithsonian Magazine last month. Now we're getting the dunning notice about not paying, we sent it to you in good faith, blah, blah, blah.
 
A few years ago two incredibly hot chicks came into the office and sold me a $40 coupon booklet for discounts on oil changes and the like. I wasn't really paying attention. I guess I just figured they would be the ones to service...uhhh....my vehicle.
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me and a bunch of people in my dorm fell for the magazine scam our freshman year. the dude knocked on my door the day after i moved in. i signed up for like rolling stone and ew. then about 2 hours later i was like "wtf1 did i just do" and i called the # and opted out and also put a stop payment on my check just in case.

the guy down the hall got a bunch of magazines but they were all ****** knockoffs of what he had ordered. instead of sports illustrated, he got "Sport". instead of some baseball magazine he got a baseball card magazine. he was super pissed off.
 
Speaking of the school ones, I got hooked on a couple just before graduation. A great "business" opportunity turned into selling cigarettes in the Rio Grande valley, perfect for me b/c I did well on Spanish at the time. The other one was because of my degree in economics which turned into some shady FOREX trading deal.
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In ’92 when I interviewed for it, Vector wasn’t that much of a scam. It was a sales gig. But I was still in high school and it was a decent part time job. Did it for 2 months or so, made a little money, then stopped fooling around with it. But who knows, maybe its full scam now.

While at UT one of my dorm floor friends talked about getting paid $40 to walk around a few neighborhoods for 3 hours interviewing folks about their spending habits. Figured what the hell, $40 for 3 hours in ’94 was actually pretty decent part time money. Was driven along with 3 or 4 other guys to a local Austin neighborhood, and told to wander around for 3 hours having folks fill out a simple questionnaire. Found out about 30 minutes into the gig that it was a subversive scam by Rainbow vacuum to get leads. Got really mad because it wasn’t obvious (small print on the back side of the card), and that I had to hang around for another 2.5 hours before we would get picked up. But I still made sure I got paid before I “quit”.

However, I got my money in both those endeavors, so I cant call it a scam.


I did avoid a HUGE pyramid scheme about 4 years ago. One of my fellow managers talked to me about a website called something like “Lapzone” or something retarded. It had some super convoluted system where you would pay $100 in the persons name they get credit for you and you then needed something like 6 people to sign up and as soon as that happened you “made a lap” which paid you $100, there was also some secondary way to make a lap depending on the number of people you signed up who signed someone else up as well. I instantly recognized it as a pyramid scheme, even with the fancy schmancy website.

Flat out TOLD him it was a scam, showed him it was a classic pyramid (but he had already sent in his cash), so rather than listen to me, and just chalk it up as stupidity, he proceeded to sign up something like 20 of our employees (which I only found out about later, I assumed me telling him it was a scam would have been enough).

Like a month later it all came crashing down, the checks sent out to “pay” the laps all bounced. Almost every person he signed up had gotten multiple other folks to sign up. Results in everyone losing $100, plus multiple employees who’s family members and friends got burned as well. The employees all complained that their manager basically forced them to sign up- which wasn’t exactly the truth, but it sure as hell wasn’t that far off. What a freaking mess.
 
I once gave $5 to a couple at a carwash on N Lamar who were "out of gas," stranded, and needed gas money to get back to Corpus Christi.

I have also given change to homeless people on numerous occasions.

Gordon Shumway should be participating in this thread. Where you at, Gordo?
 
Stat, you're on Bourbon St. Some guy comes up to you and says "Nice shoes. I'll bet you five dollars I can tell you where you got those shoes". You say "You're on!". He says "You got those shoes on Bourbon St in New Orleans Louisiana. That'll be five dollars."
 
I was approached in San Francisco by a bum attempting the shoe scam except he f'ed up and said "bought" instead of "got". As soon as I agreed to the bet he realized his mistake and fumbled around for a few seconds before blurting out "Foot Locker". He didn't pay up...
 
In college I had a car with some damage on the door that I couldn't afford to fix, there was a guy in the parking lot where I worked that claimed to fix damage like that. I paid him a $150, and he breaks out some crazy suction cups and pulls out the dent and paints a square of primer on the spot. He looks at me and says "looks good, huh?" As he was driving off, I am looking at it "What did I do?" It looked like **** I could afford to get it painted, I drove around with a square of primer on my door for a year. It was on the driver side and every time I got into my car, I was reminded of what a dumb *** I was.
 
Cutco/Vector, Southwestern, Kirby Vacuums aren't straight up scams (although the products may be overpriced), but what rubs people the wrong way is that instead of advertising "Sales Jobs", they dance around the fact that you're going to be selling stuff door to door until they've got you hooked in. They advertise "Student Work", then they spend the first couple "interviews" convincing you they only hire the smartest / most motivated 1% and you're really special and we think you'll work out ok.

Then there's the Kirby Vacuum "interview" that consisted entirely of showing me other people's commission checks.
 
My mother in law and an aunt both buy Gogi juice (a.k.a. overpriced kool-aid) for $40 a month, which is another pyramid scheme.
I know the guy who is at teh top of the pyramid here and the guy defends gogi as a great remedy when we get into arguments about it.
But i would defend it too if i made 150K doing nothing but put in orders every other week and having the rest of the 'pyramid' come pick it up and distribute it.
The guy buys it for ~5 bucks a bottle and the end price is 30-50 depend where on teh pyrimad it is sold to an end user. His profit on each bottle is about 10-15 bucks. If he has ~1000 paying end users each month that adds up quickly.
 
"I bet I can tell you where you got those shoes. You got them on yo feet." (New Orleans - they should make that part of the Louisiana state seal)

Bought a real gold plated chain necklace on MLK for $20. What the hell made me think a guy would sell real gold for $20.
 
Didn't fall for it, but one time I was bored and allowed the Kirby vacuum door-to-door sales guy do a lengthy presentation at our house. After 31 years of living in a cave, I was unaware of their racket, and naively decided to humor the guy for a while. One of the more entertaining parts was that the guy kept having to borrow OUR phone to check in with his pimp/boss/whatever as to his progress at suckering us in. Finally, he gets down to the bottom line, and quotes us $2000 for this vacuum made with "space age polymers used at NASA" or something like that. We could even finance the debt with monthly payments if we wanted to. My wife and I looked at each other, and basically had to stifle a laugh at the poor guy. We said "thanks, but no thanks" and politely escorted him out. I bet his superior was not happy.

Come to find out, you can buy the same model of Kirby vacuum on eBay for around $400. I should have pointed that out to the guy. It would have been priceless to see his reaction.

I don't care how desperate I get, that is one job I absolutely will not take.
 
I've had two or three of the 'need $ for gas' requests over my life. One involved a guy, his wife, and two kids who pulled up to me in a parking lot so I really think that had to be legit.

I almost fell for the speakers in a car wash when I was young and could have used some good speakers for little $.

The one that still reminds me that I can be gullible was in Hsin Chu, Taiwan at the city flea market.

3-Card Monty... I had heard about it but didn't put two and two together with the Taiwanese running it and didn't know how the system worked. I always thought it was one guy running the scam and actually stood next to one of the shills and thought he was making easy money as I was picking the right card almost every time, until of course another patsy put $ down and I picked the completely wrong card. I think if I had waited a few more minutes before donating my $20 USD worth of NT, I would have figured the scam. Not the best $20 lesson I've ever received but it was fun teasing the shill for his bad picks as I warmed up to 'donating'.
 
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