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bongwizzard posted:I have also twice had Hispanic dudes approach me at gas stations and ask me to break a $100 bill for them so they could buy gas. Both times it was legit but I assume I am going to get burned at some point. I can imagine doing this as a way to get a couple legitimate bills for one counterfeit.
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Apr 3, 2016 00:11
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SomeJazzyRat posted:I can imagine doing this as a way to get a couple legitimate bills for one counterfeit. Yea, but at the same time, around here Hispanic dudes are very often contractors/labors who are paid in cash and both times the gas station had "no bills larger then $20" signs. The loss of $100 would not ruin me and I like to be helpful where I can in life. Once a roommate of mine fell for the white van speaker thing, but it was pre-Internet everywhere so it took us a while to convince him he was taken. He rounded up some of our more beefy redneck friends, found the guys, and got his money back.
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Apr 3, 2016 00:42
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:I hope you said "Yes please!" I told him only if it was 4k. He flipped me a finger and drove off.
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Apr 3, 2016 01:12
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grack posted:I told him only if it was 4k. He flipped me a finger and drove off. better than the kids in my neighborhood who steal generic red bull and frozen shrimp from aldi, then turn around and sell it to corner stores two blocks away
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Apr 3, 2016 01:19
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The_Book_Of_Harry posted:Often very untrue. I had a junky buddy who made a couple hundred bucks a week this way. Eventually, he'd have to switch parts of town, but our city was big enough. Gas Can Man is a real scam.
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Apr 3, 2016 12:16
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Deified Data posted:I think I've only encountered one scam so far (that I'm aware of). It probably cost him nothing to acquire those items. There's scam across Europe where beggars go around with roses on the weekend later in the night when everyone's fairly tipsy. They'll find couples of men and women and pass them a free rose for the lady. Then they'll ask for a donation for the rose they just gave to you. Generally the roses are fairly thorny and rough looking like they were haphazardly harvested from a random garden.
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Apr 3, 2016 18:33
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I legit just don't carry cash, so I'm largely immune to most street scams even if they're good enough to trick me. I did recently have a guy at a gas station give me the whole sob story about being stranded here from out of town after visiting to go to his sister's funeral or whatever and now he couldn't afford gas and the car needed an oil change, whatever. I ended up filling his car up and giving him a quart of oil I happened to have in my trunk anyway, since his car was a piece of poo poo and had his wife and kids in it, so I figured worst case scenario I just gave a guy who wasn't grieving or stranded but probably legit poor $20 worth of gas. Not really scam related: I also visit New Orleans occasionally and have made a habit of giving my to go box leftovers from whatever restaurant to the first homeless person to hit me up for money. One dude complained that the half burger I gave him had mayo on it and seemed actually offended about it, which was too funny to upset me.
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Apr 3, 2016 18:55
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grack posted:Walking out of a dollar store today, some guy pulls up in a minivan and asks me if I want to buy a flat screen TV. Did they actually say flatscreen TV? Because lol at the idea of buying a CRT one, even dirt cheap, in TYOOL 2016.
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Apr 3, 2016 19:04
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feedmegin posted:Did they actually say flatscreen TV? Because lol at the idea of buying a CRT one, even dirt cheap, in TYOOL 2016. He actually said flatscreen tv.
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Apr 3, 2016 19:12
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feedmegin posted:Did they actually say flatscreen TV? Because lol at the idea of buying a CRT one, even dirt cheap, in TYOOL 2016. There's actually a thriving CRT market among arcade enthusiasts due to the limitations on the hardware in like, Mortal Kombat II
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Apr 3, 2016 19:13
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BiggerBoat posted:Quickest way to weed these out is just offer to buy them the item they claim to need. I like to help people out but also hate getting scammed so, if they seem to really need help, I'll say "I'm not carrying any cash but I can buy you the (gas, bus ticket, food, diapers, etc.)" Nine times out of ten they pass which tells you how often they really need help and how often it's a con. My mom used to run into this all the time when she took the train to school/work, someone would ask for a ticket to get home, their car broke down, yadda yadda. She'd offer to buy them a ticket and finally one person finally took her up on it. She was curious if it was a legit case (she grew up in a lovely neighborhood so she has sympathy but also good sense to know when someone's conning her) but the guy was trying to sell the $2.50 ticket when he thought she was out of earshot. There was also a guy who was trying to sell my brother and I drugs right outside of a concert with a cop across the street directing traffic. I'm still not sure to this day if it was a thinly-veiled bust attempt, a cleaned up homeless guy looking for money or a complete idiot.
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Apr 4, 2016 03:37
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Everblight posted:There's actually a thriving CRT market among arcade enthusiasts due to the limitations on the hardware in like, Mortal Kombat II Lightgun games don't and can't work with non-CRTs because they rely on precise timing of how the scanlines fill in.
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Apr 4, 2016 11:18
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Lutha Mahtin posted:better than the kids in my neighborhood who steal generic red bull and frozen shrimp from aldi, then turn around and sell it to corner stores two blocks away When I was in Kyrgyzstan the local crime bosses ran the dump, with no poo poo armed guards keeping everyone out. Reason being is the base was run by local nationals, and we'd routinely bust them dropping cases of frozen steak, shrimp or lobster tails into the dumpster, where it would sit most of a day in 100 degree weather. When it got to the dump it'd be sorted out and resold to local restaurants. Random supplies that would sell were fair game, too - once they tried to throw out a 6' wide spool of fiber optic cable cable and got very indignant when we told them to take it out of the trash heap. There were a few locals who were notorious for trying the "walk up to the obvious American, bump into them and drop a broken cell phone on the ground then loudly demand money" scam. I had the same guy try it on me twice in one week. The only one that really got me was this little four or five year old girl whose mother would basically direct towards you and have her beg for cash or whatever else you've got got on you. My daughter was the same age so she always managed to hit me right in the emotions and sucker me pretty good, which meant every time her mom saw me she'd send her over on the double. Probably took me for a good hundred bucks or so over the six months I was there, but whatever, it was a little kid so I didn't feel too cheated. Usually I'd talk her out of taking cash and buy her some food instead which I could tell annoyed her mom but seemed to make the kid happy.
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Apr 4, 2016 16:12
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Korgan posted:That was a fun thread. man i am baffled by how many people's response was "im a sucker for this stuff, i cant not do it for $30!!!" edit: just got to the part where people receive their boxes loooooool Sharks Eat Bear fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 19:16
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Blue Footed Booby posted:Lightgun games don't and can't work with non-CRTs because they rely on precise timing of how the scanlines fill in. Alright, lol at the idea of people who aren't complete and total nerds like us buying one in TYOOL 2016 
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Apr 4, 2016 19:20
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I'm not sure, but DoTerra seems scammy. I know you get essential oils, but they claim it is somehow way better and more pure than the "toxic" oils sold in health food stores. Are there any independent studies hat actually prove this?
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Apr 5, 2016 23:51
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It looks like doTerra is some kind of MLM scam. Combine that with how essential oils are often hawked with really pseudoscience-y claims and you have a winner.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:11
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The moment someone uses the word "Toxins" and they aren't wearing hazard gear or are a safety officer you can immediately ignore anything they say next because it's 99.9% bullshit.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:18
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Arkanomen posted:The moment someone uses the word "Toxins" and they aren't wearing hazard gear or are a safety officer you can immediately ignore anything they say next because it's 99.9% bullshit. This is excellent advice. Essential oils are constantly being touted as being super healthy. There's no proof for it, and in fact many essential oils can be pretty nasty, much moreso than the stuff they call "toxic".
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Apr 6, 2016 00:42
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i don't know if it counts as an essential oil, but i recently bought a bottle of doctor bronner's liquid soap, the peppermint variety. i've used other varieties of soap from that brand and always thought "yep, it's soap" so i went with the one i thought smelled best. after using it for a few days, well...all i will say is that you don't want to leave it on sensitive areas of your skin for very long
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Apr 6, 2016 00:52
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Part of Everything posted:I'm not sure, but DoTerra seems scammy. I know you get essential oils, but they claim it is somehow way better and more pure than the "toxic" oils sold in health food stores. Are there any independent studies hat actually prove this? Any time someone tries to sell you their product by claiming someone else's product is "toxic" it's bullshit, doubly so if it's some kind of health product.
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Apr 6, 2016 10:13
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As a general rule, it is not possible to say "X is toxic / a toxin, Y is not." Everything is toxic, up to and including water. You need dose information to have a meaningful conversation.
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Apr 6, 2016 10:53
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Lutha Mahtin posted:i don't know if it counts as an essential oil, but i recently bought a bottle of doctor bronner's liquid soap, the peppermint variety. i've used other varieties of soap from that brand and always thought "yep, it's soap" so i went with the one i thought smelled best. after using it for a few days, well...all i will say is that you don't want to leave it on sensitive areas of your skin for very long dont jerk off with peppermint anything, hth e: word filter nailed it tbh
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Apr 6, 2016 15:31
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The Lone Badger posted:As a general rule, it is not possible to say "X is toxic / a toxin, Y is not." Everything is toxic, up to and including water. You need dose information to have a meaningful conversation. Yeah. As I just found out, even bleach is actually beneficial in certain circumstances, at the right dosage (~0.02% of suspect drinking water by volume according to a CDC guide).
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Apr 6, 2016 17:26
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Bleach is mostly water and we are mostly water, therefore we are bleach.
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Apr 6, 2016 17:39
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It's also exceptionally dumb that people are going  TOXIIIINNNNSSSSSS YOU MUST REMOVE THEM ALL because the human body kind of, you know, has systems in place to deal with certain levels of toxins. Even the nastiest substances in existence have tolerable levels. The body is also remarkably good at fixing itself up even if you get exposed to harmful levels of most things.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:17
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Every time someone mentions toxin removal, I always think of the Kinoki foot pad scam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSprnYACYJI
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Apr 6, 2016 20:58
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My ex fell for a ton of scams. One was a door to door salesman selling water filters. At around $4k a pop. You could buy nearly the same thing online from Lowes for about $400. Guy comes in and tests your water, telling you how bad it is, etc etc and how this filter will be amazing, they'll even ship it for you if you move! I tried to interject about how we weren't interested, and was literally told that the MEN would talk about it. After my ex signed the papers and the dude left, I handed him his phone and told him to call them and cancel it asap. He also fell for the good ole "we're selling magazines at school so we can go to a trip to europe!" I still get stupid goddamn emails about 4 wheeler magazine. The very latest ones he's fallen for are beach body. After a move he became friends with one of the coaches who convinced him he'd make big bucks doing it. So of course he signs up, spending $200+ a month on work out shakes (and this was when we were extremely chafed for money. Not exactly the time to be spending that kind of money on a MLM scam) and is sure he'll make tons of money on the side doing this, because the dude who got him into it does. The other guy genuinely makes a disgusting amount of money off this poo poo, he got out of the army and him and his wife basically peddle their work out shakes to people, they're almost like a cult. Last but not least, he fell for the sign up and win a free cruise scam (so long as you pay airfare!!!!). Dudes called him at work saying he won and he was more than happy to fork over his bank account information without a second thought to look the people up. The first few google results were straight up about how the company was a rip off and how you'd wind up paying dramatically more than what they say you will. Needless to say he's out $600 and looked like a 10/10 dumbass when he posted on facebook saying how excited he was. The said part was all the people that replied to the post were equally excited, no one else had the sense to realize that poo poo was too good to be true and gently let him know he'd been scammed. There's a reason we're divorced.
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Apr 6, 2016 21:15
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's also exceptionally dumb that people are going I used to do consumer finance and one of our biggest referrers came from one of those alkalkine/Kangen water MLM schemes. The idea is that you attach a $3 to $5 thousand machine under your sink. It electrifies the water and changes the pH level. Apparently it was pretty big in Japan at the time. Around the same time stores selling jugs of the water and the machines started popping up around the office district I worked in (Wilshire/UCLA), and some crazy looking guy got the local gym to let him stand in their lobby and rush up to you with with a cup full of Kegel water. I wasn't really happy approving or financing those deals, so I always turned the guy down. But man, he had the craziest loving look in his eyes like a cult leader who thought he'd found a lost soul. I barely remembered anything from my high school biology at that point but I knew enough to realize that your body is able to maintain a normal pH level even if you drink a gallon of orange juice. I can't believe how many of those things the guy running that sold if he was just going through us for the ones people financed.
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Apr 6, 2016 21:25
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CrisisCarolina posted:My ex fell for a ton of scams. One was a door to door salesman selling water filters. At around $4k a pop. You could buy nearly the same thing online from Lowes for about $400. Guy comes in and tests your water, telling you how bad it is, etc etc and how this filter will be amazing, they'll even ship it for you if you move! I tried to interject about how we weren't interested, and was literally told that the MEN would talk about it. After my ex signed the papers and the dude left, I handed him his phone and told him to call them and cancel it asap. He also fell for the good ole "we're selling magazines at school so we can go to a trip to europe!" I still get stupid goddamn emails about 4 wheeler magazine. I had one of these I think, they said they were from the county (I've lived in that house for 24 years and that was the first time anyone has came) and wanted my phone number to tell me the result I gave them water from the dog water bowl, a boxer lab mix that drools sometimes and said I didn't have a phone
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Apr 6, 2016 21:26
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stringball posted:I had one of these I think, they said they were from the county (I've lived in that house for 24 years and that was the first time anyone has came) and wanted my phone number to tell me the result yeah, I think these guys said something similar, except they had test tubes and all this fancy looking poo poo to make you think it was legit so they could show you how bad your water was!!!!!  We also got a lot of door to door vacuum sales people, but they always left when I told them we had no carpet and I didn't care.
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Apr 6, 2016 21:34
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I live in the only ZIP code for hundreds of miles in any direction that has no racial majority due to it being a popular spot for immigrant families from all over the world. One thing that's nice is that I haven't had to deal with any door to door solicitors for about half a decade I suspect there are a few factors in play here. One is of course that you might run into people who you have a language barrier with. But it also wouldn't surprise me if your average dipshit scammer just isn't smart enough to sell to people who have successfully navigated the American immigration bureaucracy and started their own small business in a foreign land.
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Apr 7, 2016 01:38
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Several years ago I was talked into giving my checking account information over the phone...I can't remember what the company name was but I seem to remember it had something to do with a "free" cruise. The guy I spoke to asked for me to confirm my checking account number (I don't remember the rationale, probably "fees") and when I balked he put his supervisor on the phone who really pushed the whole "confirming" my account bullshit, like they already knew my account number and I just needed to verify it. I was getting annoyed and just wanted to get off the phone, so instead of just hanging up on them like I should have done I gave them my account info. I went online and looked up the company and quickly found reports of people complaining about unauthorized charges, so the next morning I went to the bank and shut the account down before any transactions occurred.
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Apr 7, 2016 02:33
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Birb Katter posted:The meat scam is the one I can't wrap my head around the most. I get cheap "hot" speakers or whatever but meat just seems like one of those things you'd want a trusted source of. poo poo speakers may not sound that great, poo poo meat can gently caress you up. The meat scam is hilarious. I had a couple of dudes roll up at my house while I was doing yard work in a clearly stolen van with the old logo badly spray painted over. It appeared to be a construction van. They had a household fridge inside plugged into an inverter that was sitting loose on top of the dog house with an extension cable. The first guy leaped out of the van and ran up to me like his hair was on fire and his rear end was catching. He yelled to his friend in the car to "show me the good steaks!" His rap was great and he was very convincing but the fact that I make it a point to not buy stuff out of a running rape van made me decide not to buy. I told him and his buddy to keep up the good work and head out. He whipped a lovely with tires squealing and headed back down the hill from my house. All in all, it was a fun experience.
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Apr 7, 2016 03:08
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Maerlyn posted:Several years ago I was talked into giving my checking account information over the phone...I can't remember what the company name was but I seem to remember it had something to do with a "free" cruise. The guy I spoke to asked for me to confirm my checking account number (I don't remember the rationale, probably "fees") and when I balked he put his supervisor on the phone who really pushed the whole "confirming" my account bullshit, like they already knew my account number and I just needed to verify it. I was getting annoyed and just wanted to get off the phone, so instead of just hanging up on them like I should have done I gave them my account info. I went online and looked up the company and quickly found reports of people complaining about unauthorized charges, so the next morning I went to the bank and shut the account down before any transactions occurred. So... all it takes to get your bank account info is be annoying? Are you my 70 year old rapidly-going-senile aunt?
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Apr 7, 2016 04:38
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hey hey Maerlyn hey what's your social security number
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Apr 7, 2016 07:04
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grack posted:So... all it takes to get your bank account info is be annoying? Are you my 70 year old rapidly-going-senile aunt? Annoying is probably the wrong word, just persistent. I was also young and hadn't really been exposed to someone trying to scam me. I'm more wary now but it's somewhat moot as I don't even answer the phone for numbers I don't recognize and we don't get many door to door solicitors in our neighborhood (having two dogs go batshit crazy when someone knocks on the door also helps).
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Apr 7, 2016 11:50
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One scam I thought of the other day was a panhandler in downtown Toronto: "The Shaky Lady". She would sit in a high traffic area and shake her whole body like she had horrible Parkinsons. People felt sorry for her and she made a lot of money doing it, until a reporter followed her and found that after she packed up at night she walked (slowly) to her car and drove to her $300k house in the suburbs where her symptoms mysteriously disappeared. After she was outed in the paper she stopped showing up.
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Apr 7, 2016 14:14
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cumshitter posted:I used to do consumer finance and one of our biggest referrers came from one of those alkalkine/Kangen water MLM schemes. The idea is that you attach a $3 to $5 thousand machine under your sink. It electrifies the water and changes the pH level. Apparently it was pretty big in Japan at the time. This one is my favorite because when the poo poo in Flint started going down I was Googling for information and stumbled across some crazy alkaline person's website about how the REAL CULPRIT in Flint was fluoridation because fluoride had acidified the water to the DANGEROUSLY ACIDIC pH of 7.3 which was FIVE TIMES AS ACIDIC as normal water which has a neutral pH of 8. (for clarity: all numbers are straight from the website)
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Apr 7, 2016 15:16
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JiimyPopAli posted:One scam I thought of the other day was a panhandler in downtown Toronto: "The Shaky Lady". What a workout.
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Apr 7, 2016 17:39
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