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CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Ytlaya posted:

^^^ They can get really specific; like the one I posted about earlier (and quoted in this post) involved impersonating my boss (like the actual specific person, not just the role of "boss") and used his name/position. It basically relied on assuming it'd hit some people personally acquainted with him (or subordinate to him) and that they'd assume that it's safer to send the gift cards than risk getting fired or whatever.


Btw, I ended up finding out that someone else in our department actually completely fell for this scam and tried to send my boss $200 in Playstation gift cards (and are now obviously out $200)

so basically this

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CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Like, even in the 16th/17th century, cries of "Mammon" were pretty much just associated with "more-reformed" sects such as Puritans/Independents/Presbyterians etc.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Lutha Mahtin posted:

using the word mammon to represent greed is a common idiom in western cultures in general, not just Christians who are using it in an explicitly religious sense. i know that a subset of goons have a giant stick up their rear end whenever religion is brought up in any context other than mocking it, especially Christianity, but there's really no need to embarrass yourselves like this

I'm not making this poo poo up because of some reddit atheism grudge - I think you're projecting a bit, for some reason.

"Mammon" for "greed" is the kind of thing that Ben Jonson puts into the mouths of his Puritain caricatures to sneer at them for being backward turds. It wasn't a commonplace expression then, and even less so now.

If I'm demonstrably wrong, please provide some examples of it coming up in everyday speech.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


I just watched the John Oliver video and holy poo poo these people are just pulling basic EVE Online scams.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


BiggerBoat posted:

I can't believe Peter Popov, one of the faith healers that James Randi exposed, is back on TV doing what he always did and people still buy it. I listened to a conned podcast that covered him, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart and god drat I hate ALL these motherfuckers so much.

EDIT:

Also, I have another one. Toner cartridges.

I can't print or copy anything at home as it stands until I replace my cyan ($40) cartridge on my home printer. This despite replacing all 4 toner cartridges on it less than a year ago and ONLY printing B&W things on it since. Customer support tried to lecture about the nuances of CMYK and that it still uses cyan ink despite the fact I have worked in printing for 30+ years. Ok, then let me print it with just the black. Grayscale.

There is ZERO reason any of my CMY ink cartridges should be empty or even low. None. They want $40 (1/5 of what I paid for the whole printer) for ONE cartridge I have specifically told my printer not to use. Why even have a B&W setting? I've bought off brand toner for it and, what do you know, the machine is smart enough to know I paid less for the ink but not smart enough to NOT use color ink when I am printing out a tax form, some email I want a hard copy of or copying my tenant's lease in B&W.

Pretty sure there was a class action lawsuit about this very thing a few years ago but I can't find it.

Still can't get over "customer support" trying to explain to me how offset printing and color management works though. OK, fine. Print it WITHOUT the cyan then. Black and white like I want.

Buy a b&w laser printer and throw your inkjet into the trash where it belongs. It costs 25% more up front for the laser, the toner doesn't dry out, and each toner cartridge lasts in the thousands of pages, and it's still only $60-80 for a third-party refill.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


shame on an IGA posted:

I'm frankly impressed that the local walmart got burned by aliexpress movie prop $100s with giant hot pink chinese lettering on them six times in a single day

Yeah this is actually good

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


ToxicSlurpee posted:

Yeah, at this point I just don't bother with people that get suckered into MLMs. They're basically cults that suck people in where they get lost. I'll make a token attempt but once they start posting about nothing but their MLM on social media they're just too far gone. They'll figure it out eventually but the MLMs always have a list of canned responses. "They warned me about people like you" is one of them. Calling it a "business" and saying things like "it's fine if you don't support my new business" is another.

Like...no. It isn't your business. You are not operating a business. You are getting scammed and are trying to vacuum other people in. gently caress off with your guilt tripping and "but don't you want me to be successful?!?" Yes I do want you to be successful and want the best for you, fellow human, which is why I'm telling you to nope the gently caress out. Like 1% of people ever made money on MLM and you could make more money spending that time scavenging cans to sell them as scrap.

I know someone who has a staggering amount of high-level business qualifications and who posts like this. I think in this case that they know it's MLM but they are convinced they're going to "win."

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


The grocery store had a big red STOP sign sticker at the till telling people not to buy gift cards for paying a fee they got an unsolicited email about.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


But trains are cool

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


The mall near us is extremely dead most of the time except for its anchors. They keep building chain restaurants in the parking lot so it's a gigantic pain in the rear end to get in there now, which basically I'll only do when I need to go to the post office, which is at the back of the drug store in that loving mall.

I can't recall the last time I went in there for anything other than the post office or the grocery store.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Absurd Alhazred posted:

I've had something weird happen to me twice on AbeBooks: I order a book from a seller, get a confirmation of the order, then get not tracking number for at least a week, ask them where the tracking number is, get some weird bullshit about here being a miscommunication with the delivery company or something, then when I ask for another update they say the item got lost and issue me a refund. Is the idea that a lot of people might forget they've ordered it, or might not use the extremely simple contact interface to ask what was up?

I'll have to keep an eye out for that. I often buy like 10 books at once and then the order gets fragmented into a ton of smaller orders which trickle in over weeks, so it's likely that unless it was the book I was after and not an add-on Gene Wolfe novel or something, I'd not notice.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Most of those apps take ridiculous charges from the restaurants too.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Sydin posted:

I asked the head manager at a place I used to frequent often before COVID what Doordash takes from them, and he told me that it's apparently something you bargain with them. Doordash originally came at them demanding a 25% cut but they were able to negotiate it down to 18%. Note that this is a well liked and frequented business that has three locations in town and is in the process of opening a fourth up north. So my guess is that if you're a small mom and pop then gently caress you either you eat 25% or they walk, if you're reasonably successful you can hover around ~20%, and I'd imagine national chains are even lower then that.

Yeah that's hosed.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Sydin posted:

:same: Sorry if it came off like I was giving them poo poo, if anything it's loving sad that they have to jump through so many hoops just for the system to pay them something approaching a workable wage.


So that it looks like they are close to the pickup location and idle. You hang a bunch of phones in trees, go do an order, come back and pick up all the phones and hope you have multiple orders, do all of those in bulk, rinse repeat.

Gives me the same vibes as multibox farming in MMOs. gently caress.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Someone sent me an MLM pitch last night for "Nu Skin" and "Nourish the Children"

Now even googling "Nu Skin" brought up hits that the company has been investigated repeatedly and fined for being a pyramid scheme (not that I'd get into that snake oil even if it weren't), but there is less out there on Nourish the Children. Anyone know what the grift is there?

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Hutla posted:

Probably just the standard lovely "charity" that spends 95% of its donations on wildly high executive salaries and 5% on programming.

Well I guess, probably. BTW this video is so loving WASPy & white man's burden that I feel that it needs some kind of TW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PP8QW5V50

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


I've gotten burned by Newegg affiliates or whatever they're called. Quadruple check before you buy any item that you're buying it from Newegg and not a reseller partner in China.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


I've been thinking about selling some of my wood carving on Etsy and this is giving me ideas for how to a) write my ad copy ("you will never see this exact item on etsy again") and b) justify raising my prices.

I'll have to go through the effort of doing photos for every single item, but that's ok if I'm getting paid for the effort.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Absurd Alhazred posted:

I've had that happen with both Newegg and AbeBooks.

Abebooks is Amazon.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Absurd Alhazred posted:

*Goes to wikipedia*

Well that's depressing.

I went through that cycle of depression about 6 months ago. I order from BetterWorldBooks.com now

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


thrakkorzog posted:

So how many people fall for your cars warranty is about to expire? I find this the most exhausting, just because I have to pick up my phone, hoping for work, and nope, it's a scammer.

I can always shut them down with a simple question, "What kind of car do I own?" And yet they never stop.

I've done something similar with the "this is microsoft support there is a problem with your windows computer" call - "be more specific - I have seven computers running various windows OSes right now."

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


goatsestretchgoals posted:

This is legit interesting to me.

1999: I had to deal with the fallout from someone copying the EarthLink website pixel for pixel and spamming out “lol reset your password” emails.

2009: Your computer has been locked because you looked at the Bad Porn(tm). *it wasn’t usually locked except this pop up on login*

2019: All your data is encrypted now, send me a sliver of a bitcoin…please?

My dumb rear end walked into a brand new job that got shitslammed by HR lady clicking on a thing and I spent a week fixing permissions and asking for office lady to not have computer access to all of our production files.

I was denied.

HR missus click a lot is the boss’ wife.

just accidentally change it and nobody will know

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Where I live locksmiths are all bonded and IIRC it's illegal to call a business a locksmith/lock service/locksmithing service etc here without a certain regulatory oversight.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


A few years back now but I was at my friend's house and her then three-year-old daughter was poking around watching toy slime videos on youtube (goofy voice: oh boy here's thomas the tank engine I hope no slime gets on him! etc) and then the voiceover on one of the videos started evangelizing to her about her lord and savior jesus christ. Think about how often parents put headphones on their kids for screen time.

I also was under the impression that things had been fixed since then.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


I've been getting some new suspicious text message lately - like once per month, maybe. It's always something like "Hey coach Dave do you think my son can start coming to the afternoon class?" from a non-local area code. The first time I responded "Sorry wrong number; check your area code" and then the person started texting me about how being a single mother is hard blah blah blah. It has happened a few times now since summer.

I've just taken to ignoring them now, but is this some kind of "check to see if the number is active for future scams" scam? Or maybe more of a variation on the nigerian prince?

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


BiggerBoat posted:

I hear there's an issue with my Netflix payment

When I see that I think "drat right there is I cancelled it over a year ago."

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


In all seriousness this sounds like a joke but it might work for getting the Red Cross off of your case, as Canadian Blood Services does the same harassment and I've seen it work with them.

Again this will sound like a shitpost but it's not: tell them that you're no longer eligible to donate because you handled some monkey brains, so you will never be able to book again.

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CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


greazeball posted:

We're part of a phish-hunting "contest" at work and it's dreadful. I work in a college but the contest is on the municipal level so you can see how all the different departments stack up. The secretaries and admins are beating the IT dept at reporting all the planted phishing emails we get. Meanwhile the teaching staff are under 60% so I'm also glad I have my own device and storage and I'm not sharing with these goobers.

Admin and secretaries always have the highest participation on activities like this because they live in those communication channels. I'm a uni teacher and those emails are tertiary to my work. I delete the daily heaps of mass emails so fast that there's a good chance that I would have deleted the "contest!" email without reading it.

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