|
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.
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2016 18:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:42 |
|
|
greazeball posted:In Dublin, the rental market was really loving crazy in 2003-2004. To get a place, you typically had to show up with first & last in cash and be ready to hand it over and sign the lease on the spot to get keys. None of this, "I'll think about it and call you first thing in the morning" (I found out the hard way about this). But obviously this just leaves people open to all kinds of rip-off artists, like the guy who rented his apartment to 9 different couples who all showed up with working keys and rental agreements on the first of the month. He had gotten about €4000 from each of them. Did you mean to type 2013-2014 or was the rental market bad back then too. Because the rental market has been getting bad the last few years and that scam with a dozen people showing up at the same day to collect the keys to the apartment they already paid a deposit on has happened recently. BeigeJacket posted:These MLM things seem uniquely American. I've never seen them in the UK, and always have been left confused by Amway jokes in movies and TV. They exist in the UK I'm sure. I know loads of people who should know better getting involved in them here in Ireland. Avon and Herbalife seem popular with women. Lately I've seen lads getting involved with MLMs selling gym supplements, protein bars, powders and the like. And I was once solicited by someone through Facebook by someone from England. She may have found my profile through one of my acquaintances who swallowed the "get rich" kool-aid. In any case she gave me some big spiel about what business is recession proof, what product do you always see homeless people using. Her answer was cigarettes and coffee, homeless people always use both somehow showing what popular products they are. At the time I wanted to say homeless people aren't exactly a market flush with money, and that coffee shops are a dime a dozen, but I resisted being snarky and let her continue the sales pitch. She eventually got to her product which was some coffee mixed with a dried mushroom powder. She went on a bit longer about how they're not only a great product to use but they also will sell like hotcakes. I feigned interested and she offered to send me free samples. I was a bit trepidatious about giving my home address to a stranger but she hadn't my real name and my address is only for the flat, I wouldn't have to give which apartment number it was to receive the post, so I went ahead. She did send me 6 packets of Organo Coffee. I tried a few, they were alright but nothing special, definitely not worth the regular price. I still have one of the packets, she included her contact details which I've blacked out. I guess she was hoping I'd sign up after getting free coffee.  That phrase "health and freedom in one cup". I think that was the MLM slogan. She kept repeating how the coffee was both good for your health, but also a path to financial freedom where you won't have to work a 9-5 ever again. Marenghi fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Apr 14, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2016 04:26
|
|
|
BeigeJacket posted:I spent an hour looking at MLM wikis and you tubes. Didn't realise they were so prevalent! They are very good at gaming search algorithms. The top hits on Google for is such and such a scam brings up exactly what you encountered. Links to videos or articles where a person starts out with the premise that people may be worried this opportunity is a scam, followed by a long sales pitch for why you should get involved.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2016 14:51
|
|
|
thrakkorzog posted:For what it's worth, I do occasionally buy some Skin-So-Soft from Avon ladies. It is both a moisturizer, and a rather potent insect repellent. I don't go hiking without some Skin-So-Soft, it prevents both chigger and mosquito bites. I mentioned Avon but I had it confused with a similarly sounding cosmetics MLM. Arbonne was the one, along with Herbalife, that I see way too many women getting involved with here.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2016 19:40
|
|
|
Lutha Mahtin posted:Either a dick or a good bullshitter... It's hard to decide if it's bullshit or if American officers are such dicks that they'd allow him to run a scam on Soviet soldiers for the laugh.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2016 15:38
|
|
|
Don't ya know? min-wage drones don't give a poo poo about things like future employment or keeping a clean record. You can totally get free stuff by asking them to help you steal stuff from their store.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2016 15:22
|
|
|
peanut posted:What's the deal with gold buying agents? They plan to melt down your gold and seriously under price the weight value. There's people out there have tested their gold content and weight before sending it in and had both underestimated in the valuations. That's not even to say the loss you'd incur for the price difference between the gold weight in your jewellery and the work that went into them. You'd probably get more selling the jewellery as is than melting it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2016 04:34
|
|
|
An ad I keep seeing popping up is automated binary trading. It's obviously a scam but I'm not sure which end they're taken the money from. They claim thousands of dollars back if you fail, so are they doing trading through their own platform, and reneging on an obvious lie when the time comes. Or is the bot some sort of virus and they use that to make their money.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2016 01:32
|
|
|
I've always wondered about girls getting desperate lads to order them stuff. Are they not worried about giving some stranger their home address?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2016 03:24
|
|
|
Josef K. Sourdust posted:I assumed it had gone away because I never encountered it in Europe (where I live) and I thought the scam had passed before I encountered it. Maybe it is just a American spin on that scam. Has anyone encountered it outside the US? I've not heard of it in Europe but I know people got caught by it before in America, recently too.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2016 00:57
|
|
|
photomikey posted:This is a scam? I thought it was people trying to promote their own music. What do they do when you take the CD? I am not interested in lovely music, so I've never taken one, but I've seen people take them with no bad juju. The scam is similar to the "free " rose or bracelet here in Europe. You're handed the item as a gift but then they demand money for the present you didn't ask for. There's nothing to stop you not paying but they rely on the fact enough people will pay them rather than put up with the pestering.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2016 03:32
|
|
|
drunk asian neighbor posted:I'll close the Roma discussion by saying this thread caused me to spend like 25 minutes reading about them on Wikipedia. I had no idea they originated in India, I always assumed they had some sort of Euro origin. Thanks, thread! Originally yes but they migrated to Europe 1000 years ago and the largest number live in Romania, which is where most people consider them from. But yes probably best to nip this conversation in the bud as I've never seen it not turn into a yelling match here.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2016 20:29
|
|
|
bitcoin bastard posted:Yeah, if Gucci outsources manufacturing to Asia they probably ARE authentic Guccis in all but inventory listing. Hasn't that been the case for the longest time. Counterfeits are usually built in the same factories as the real deal just with the production ramped up and less quality control.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2016 04:10
|
|
|
RenegadeStyle1 posted:If you try to threaten me vaguely i'll just walk away because after I leave you will probably never see me again so that doesn't scare me. Who does this work on? What if they kept following. Times Square is probably safe with the crowds around but in other places you'd feel a bit scared if they followed you to a less crowded street. I had some young lad begging me and my friend for change an evening in Amsterdam. We said no and kept walking without giving it another mind because the street was crowded. But we noticed he was still following us and the street we were walking up was less populated with some lads looked like his friends peering around from an alleyway ahead. He asked us for money again and we realised begging was about to turn into a mugging. So we flung a few cents his way and did a runner across the bridge away from him and his mate's ahead of us. Marenghi fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 8, 2016 |
|
#
¿
May 8, 2016 18:23
|
|
|
There's a variation on that which is common in rural Ireland. A man or men will show up in van and stalk around into the back garden of a property they think is unattended, the idea is to check for anything that could be stolen and sold readily. The con side is they usually bring their dog with them and if the occupant is home and asks what they're doing, they will reply their dog is thirsty and they were looking for a garden tap for water. Or another method is just to slink about in the driveway to try and deduce if anyone is home, if someone comes out to ask what they are doing they'll say they are a handyman and noticed the driveway needed re-taring, or there's roof damage they could fix, or any other odd job that's plausible. If you do hire them you get a shoddily done job that was probably unnecessary. Or had you not been home to ask what they were doing lurking about in your front yard then they would have been through the back thieving anything not nailed down.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2016 21:01
|
|
|
That's like saying not paying a sex worker after rendering services is rape. It's just good money sense  Going back to that money suit guy. There's legal businesses here I guess you could call a similar scam. Tax refund specialists. The way the tax system works it's quite possible to not use up all your credits and be over-charged on tax if you didn't work enough hours in that work year. Getting a refund is a simple matter of getting a form off the revenue and returning it with your PPS number. If you are entitled then the money will be sent back automatically. So these companies exist where they take your PPS number and fill out the form on your behalf with the payment being to them. They take a 10-25% cut and send you the rest. There is literally no effort to it and they provide no real service. The only reason they exist is because people are gullible and don't realise how easy the process is.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2016 17:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:42 |
|
|
DanAdamKOF posted:An online buddy of mine got catfished. As I understand some lady in The Philippines flirted with him, built up a (fake) online relationship, and got him to cyber on cam, and now she's sending his pics to his facebook friends until he pays her to stop. That happened to someone I knew from college. He messages me out of the blue one day on Facebook to tell me if a girl says something about him she's lying. And any pics would be faked. I heard about that scam so I knew exactly what he had done and couldn't help but burst my hole laughing. The ironic thing is, nothing ever came from it. She never contacted his friends or posted his pics. He warned a few people other than just me. So had he never bothered to try pre-emptively cover his perversions no one would have been the wiser.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2016 00:25
|
|