Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

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Tunicate: May 15, 2012

CoolCab posted:

the components of ham sandwiches in a styrofoam case. didn't even assemble em.

Also no ham.

# ¿ May 14, 2017 21:56

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# ¿ Sep 12, 2024 22:20

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Non Serviam posted:

I met an autistic kid who, as I write this, is boarding a flight to Russia to go and personally give 5 thousand pounds to a girl he met who needs it for a heart transplant.

I tried to dissuade him, but apparently his mom signed off on his trip.
.

Edit. I say kid, but it's early 20s

quick, email scam him out of his bank account

# ¿ May 21, 2017 03:58

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

bongwizzard posted:

Oh yea, my coworkers and I will send each other the one star reviews for the hotels we get stuck in, it can be funny as hell. But picking food by reading internet reviews seems like picking music based on youtube comments.

On vacation it's a decent way of finding places that aren't chains and won't give you the runs.

# ¿ May 25, 2017 19:05

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Yeah at least my cable company will just raise rates without twlling you, 'forget' about agreed on prices, not deliver their claimed speeds, and advertise prices that don't include arbitrary amounts of fees.

And pays off the local government to shut down municipal internet projects, to ensure their monopoly status.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 18:02

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

MANime in the sheets posted:

It happens all over the country. Google has gotten cock-blocked the same way in several municipalities as well.

Yeah they do the same thing everywhere. Which I guess makes it a common con.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 20:39

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

hosed up if true

# ¿ Jun 30, 2017 20:54

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Old Binsby posted:

They record it and cut/paste the yes into a consent bit for something it's hard to back out of because they have real lovely customer service, website and hide/don't use any registered physical addresses
I literally heard this from my grandma so it might as well be a several thousand year old urban legend thing that never happens

It's just an urban legend

# ¿ Jul 7, 2017 22:05

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

HerStuddMuffin posted:

A lot of android apps require blanket permission to access just about everything on your phone or they simply won't install. You can relinquish control over all your private information, or not install anything. Your choice.

It's stupid as gently caress users can't do item-by-item permission revoking in android by default.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2017 06:18

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

The Sexual Shiite posted:

I work for a company that builds mining machinery and sells parts for that machinery, and I'm familiar enough with the formatting of the POs that the major underground coal companies in the US use that fake POs would be hard to get away with.

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that there are several things that would make it harder for you to do that.

A: you'd have to give a mine name that has a current account in good standing. That can be more difficult than looking in your phone book, as different mines have a tendency to test how late they can get away with paying us.

B: you'll have to give a PO in the format that company uses. Some companies use a format of 6 digits, some use a format that's two letters+6 digits, some use 8 letters. I'm the only guy answering phones at night, in the US, so I've seen them all, and, over the last 11 years, have seen them all with enough frequency that I know what feels right with the mine names.

C: if you give me a PO that's already in use, my computer pops up a notice that it is, and tells me what order number has it already. If we're in orders numbering 532xxxx, and the number you give me is in use on order 321xxxx, I'm not keying the order.

D: I'm not selling you poo poo if you don't have our part number for the part, as my company's system sucks for searching for parts by description, and we have a lot of parts that use similar descriptions but are different measurements or shapes. If I go by description and send you the wrong one, I'm the one getting yelled at when the machine is down for 6 extra hours.

Granted, our stuff is a lot more specialized than Rural King or Lowes, so I'm not as likely to get a scammer call, and my customer list only has around 350 names, but every industry has its own quirks. You might be more or less successful depending on where you go.

so basically they have to fish something out of the garbage and tweak it a little.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2017 21:00

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

BiggerBoat posted:

Comcast cable box update.

I returned the remaining equipment I had but, stunningly, they had no record of me even attempting to cancel my TV and phone services and gave me a direct number to call to do it AGAIN, so the month delay for the last box I kept had nothing to do with anything. My bill WAS lower, because of the poo poo I had returned right away, but, as I suspected, they basically just left the service on because they could and I had no way to prove I had called so they billed me for it.

The dude at Xfinity store straight up told me that the delay in the equipment return had no bearing on anything and gave me the REAL number to call for cancellation so gently caress all you people that tried to hang this horseshit on me.

This is why you record your calls to corporations

# ¿ Aug 11, 2017 20:29

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

goatsestretchgoals posted:

What really needs to happen is a complete rework of the caller ID system into something less trusting than 'this is my number' 'okay then'

Sorry but they get paid too much to make it useless

# ¿ Aug 30, 2017 03:11

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Proteus Jones posted:

This is exactly what Van Eck phreaking is. With the right equipment you can get a fairly accurate realtime recreation from a CRT or the signal leakage of analog signaling like VGA.

Yeah it costs about $2k of equipment or so to read LCD monitors. CRTs cost like $20.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 10:11

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

stringball posted:

Even if he posted that in here by accident, there's lovely people price gouging, if you could consider that a scam

So a hurricane techincally can cause people to be scamed

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/09/06/hurricane-irma-case-water-sells-99-99-amazon-residents-fear-price-gouging/636893001/

seems like a bot price more than anything else - it noticed everything below it selling out so marked up the price.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2017 17:29

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Platystemon posted:

So wait, when do I want to buy a car?

Look for the worst salesman near the end of the month?

Walk in at the end of the month, find the guy who looks most stressed out, give him an insane lowball offer and a throwaway email address, and walk away.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 07:20

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Chef Bourgeoisie posted:

Got a new one the other day. Just a voicemail, from Washington (state, not DC), stating that the cops (their word, they didn't say police) were looking to speak to me over a few separate charges. As soon as I heard cops I giggled and deleted the voicemail.

One that I'm not sure if it's a scam or not, but apparently a third party seller on Amazon has/had my phone number listed as their customer support line. I've only had one interaction from a customer so far, but it was repeated phone calls until I picked up and told him he had the wrong number, which took him a little bit to believe. Anything to do about that since I have no other information for the company?

do a google search on site:amazon for your phone number?

# ¿ Nov 5, 2017 04:43

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

BiggerBoat posted:

They do. They're increasingly prevalent in poorer third world countries where people don't know any better.

There was a huge emu pyramid scheme in India recently

# ¿ Dec 14, 2017 02:22

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

ON YER FEET

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 00:16

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Proteus Jones posted:

Yeah, it's one way of saying "these are not bots".

I'm also super reticent whenever anyone I don't know is deliberately trying to get me to use the word "Yes". I'm always suspicious they're trying to get me to consent to something out of context.

Get you to use what word now?

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 08:12

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

yeah, the freecreditreport dot com scam

guess who owned them

equifax

# ¿ Apr 6, 2018 06:55

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

The gas can is just a prop, gas can men want money.

he spent the last of his money getting the gas can, man

# ¿ May 9, 2018 18:07

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Sanford posted:

What the gently caress is Shark Tank and why does all my spam for a fortnight tell me that whatever poo poo it�s trying to hock is available on Shark Tank? I�ve just deleted thirty-six spam emails from my work account and thirty-four of them mention Shark Tank either in the title or the text.

it's a tv show where people with an idea try to convince billionaires to buy in

# ¿ May 22, 2018 19:02

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Whether or not he can get the money back, with his decisionmaking he'll be turbofucked regardless

# ¿ Jun 8, 2018 00:56

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Blackchamber posted:

I still can't figure how one of the spas that is only open until 9pm would charge my card at 2am. Again this info is coming from my bank, that was when the charge was made not when the transaction posted.

bought a gift card online maybe?

# ¿ Jun 12, 2018 19:08

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

movax posted:

What's the most painful way to waste the time of the robocallers? I'm getting them every other day now, of course spoofing my area code and I decided to ask today if I could get off their list and the guy said 'gently caress you rear end in a top hat' and hung up.

Or is the best way simply following the algorithm of "Are you expecting a phone call today / do you have kids that might be emergency calling?" and if the answer is "no" then letting it go to voicemail?

Lenny is a great bot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k

It's a series of prerecorded messages that trigger whenever there's a gap in the conversation, designed to keep them in the telemarketer script as long as possible. There's a guy with a ton of lennybots set up, and you can set things up to forward to Lenny from your phone

Tunicate fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 10, 2018

# ¿ Jul 10, 2018 17:22

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Robocalls are difficult to deal with because there's a spoofing arms race right now. I think a lot of them are also international so the FCC can't do much more than just and wish they could do something about it.

Also because the phone companies don't give a poo poo.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2018 16:58

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

ToxicSlurpee posted:

At the telemarketing place we got told that the best calls to get were old people with mild dementia because they'd sign up for basically anything. I guarantee that robocall spammers are thinking the same thing.

That's why Lenny is such a good honeypot. He just keeps going off on tangents and then saying yes

# ¿ Jul 11, 2018 22:51

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Corsair Pool Boy posted:

They knew she was pregnant before her father did, because

Also the only source on that is a marketing guy, and lol if you take a marketing guy at his word about how amazing his product is, lying about that is literally his job

# ¿ Aug 21, 2018 23:36

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

The IRS sends important poo poo through mail, a lot of states are hella less professional

# ¿ Sep 24, 2018 00:44

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Eroom's law: software gets slower at the same rate hardware gets faster

# ¿ Sep 24, 2018 18:35

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/building-credit/should-you-carry-a-balance-on-a-credit-card/

quote:

If I were to guess, the confusion about carrying a balance probably started because someone misunderstood the difference between receiving a statement and carrying a balance.

Yes, you need to let your statement cycle so you show some utilization on your bill. Even something small like a $5 purchase, don�t pay it the second it appears on your online portal and let it appear on your statement. A statement doesn�t cycle until you receive a message from your credit card company that your statement is available and you owe XX amount or a XX minimum.

What you shouldn�t do is receive the statement and just pay the minimum due � thus carry a balance. While it doesn�t hurt your credit score to only pay the minimum due, it just ends up being more money you pay in interest to the bank. Why pay your lender for something you can be getting for free?!

# ¿ Oct 1, 2018 21:29

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

A 50S RAYGUN posted:

this is confusing - he was simultaneously in a call with a real person and a robot? why have the robot in this situation?

Almost Human: The Surreal, Cyborg Future of Telemarketing

# ¿ Oct 3, 2018 08:06

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

ChocNitty posted:

A lot of city kids are going to the suburbs to scam people with these coupon cards that supposedly give big discounts on local businesses, like unlimited two for ones. Asking $20 for these plastic cards, claiming its a school fundraiser. I overheard one reasonable person asking to see the kids student ID, and of course he gave a BS excuse.

They had legit ones in my city, they were really quite good deals.

So good that no businesses signed up to do it the next year.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2018 21:39

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

The real trick for the coupon books is for vacations - if you're gonna be spending a couple weeks somewhere, buy the book, and now you have a handy list of local nonchain places, with abridged menus and coupons.

I mean yeah you could try to fight through yelp for recommendations i guess, but the coupon book works better IME, and actually saves money.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2018 02:20

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

The problem isn't the end users, the problem is that checks are a fundamentally broken system.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2018 00:38

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Its 2008 all over again

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/gold_kit.shtml

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 02:07

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

My previously-great car repair shop changed hands, and the new guys absolutely ripped me off and I had to find a new place.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 06:49

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

https://youtu.be/ixo0V6rNqi0

It's amazing how many crooked dentists there are.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2019 00:36

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

AlbieQuirky posted:

My dentist always shows me the cavity on the X-ray

can you tell your teeth from someone else's?

# ¿ Feb 2, 2019 07:07

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Major US Telcos are actually finally moving on getting verification, they just haven't taken the necessary step of cutting off overseas telcos who don't abide by the verification standards

# ¿ May 15, 2019 01:04

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# ¿ Sep 12, 2024 22:20

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Thats just caller id blocking. Scammers are spoofing it, and a common scam is a scummy phone company allowing people to make tons of spoof calls through their service to 1800 numbers. Since each phone company involved in the chain gets a cut, they split the scambucks.

# ¿ May 15, 2019 19:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

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