Scams and shams -

[melty]

I was recently reading about how cold-pressed juice is a scam and it got me thinking about various scams and shams, products/services that claim to have some added value when there's no proof the extra value exists or is non-negligible.
Some things are fairly obviously scams unless you're pretty dumb, like detoxing foot pads. Other things aren't as obvious, or you'd only know if you worked in a certain industry or did a lot of research. Organic food might be a scam. Chiropractors are probably a scam too. That one surprised me because they seemed legit.
What are some things that are lesser known scams, or things you wasted money on that you found out later are scams, OR things that you still waste money on even though everyone says its a scam?

 

[MG 620]

Soylent is a scam that turns men into troons and women into cat ladies.

 

[Autopsy]

What are some things that are lesser known scams

Alex Chiu, habitual scam artist/discoverer of immortality, has faded back into obscurity. If he cropped up a decade later, his thread would be a couple hundred pages by now.

 

[millais]

There's a lot of these commercial property tax assessment services that cold-call business owners, telling them they can secure reductions in property taxes by contesting annual appraisals from your municipal government for a small commission. It's a legitimate, if sleazy professional service, and these guys can indeed get your commercial property taxes lowered, but only suckers hire them. Most of the time, you can often reduce your own (commercial) property appraisal values for free by sending a polite letter of request directly to your local city government's appraisal office, telling them that you have made no substantial improvements to your property warranting an increase in valuation.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

Anyone who comes to your house who wants to talk about your electric bill is a scammer.

 

[Carnegie Felon]

You owe the ultimate con man his tribute in almost exactly a month.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

All of the "Complementary and Alternative Medicine", CAM, stuff. Naturopaths, traditional chinese medicine, acupuncture, health foods, supplements, etc. It is all designed to convince buyers and doesn't spend an ounce of energy trying to convince skeptics and the wider medical community. Which, if they were honest about their desires in healing people, they would be pushing hard doing research to get published and incorporated into conventional medical practice. But they aren't. They instead double down on the "special knowledge" bullshit where they are the only ones able to understand and peddle it. A sure sign of a scam.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Remember these:

 

[CrunkLord420]

Anyone who comes to your house who wants to talk about your electric bill is a scammer.

I have a "friend" who keeps trying to talk me about this shit, it's an obvious MLM-type thing. What the fuck is it?

 

[Somsnosa]

A more subtle scam that is very common here are old farmers that try to sell their uglier, hole filled fruits as 'biologic' to gullible young hippies.
There's so many at food cons.

 

[Deadwaste]

the printer industry is a scam

 

[Bassomatic]

MLM-type thing.

#1 scam.
Fuck those things running.

Scams prey on different emotions of people, fear, greed, desperation, laziness etc. For a lot of the things like @ColtWalker1847 mentioned, it's an interesting blend I think half of the people are uniformed, and needy the other half are greedy. Something like a how to make money, it's pure greed, no one in those is a good person or stays in them once they learn.

The health stuff, people can hide their heads in the sand and the power of the mind does the rest. I don't mean to go easier on them, but I feel if you are willing to spend your money on a 30 dollar bottle of juice and it makes you happy go for it. I can't justify some of my spending I'm sure you can't either. But it brings some joy or a feeling of reward. Now if you want to research you'd learn better and maybe make better choices but we are far past the days of snake oil where they are turpentine and gin with some rose water. Some sure are dangerous still but not like the old days.

The ones I really hold a hate boner towards against is MLM shit. It does not make sense, the concept itself you can't logically explain, and it turns people into cultists. The model just does not work it is that simple. It's predatory and I love small companies, seeing people who want to make it on their own, want to build wealth is great and this preys on the people who have that spark but are unsure where to turn. They are often scared off by the costs of consultants and instead of investing 500 dollars into an hour or so with one they see a guy on TV with a Bently saying for 200 you can be just like him.. then you gotta buy their product. A fun way I like to shoot MLM people down is ask them to cover my costs. I mean I'll make you money so why should I shell outta pocket?

Entire industries are shams and scams and I don't mean small market stuff, I'm talking billions or more dollars.

Also for at @millais mentioned, things like that walk a line of scam, but also it's a fair game hustle. Because end of the day you get a product or result promised. Many people for example will say 50 bucks for an oil change that took 10 mins and used 6 dollars of product is a scam, well if you don't know how to, or feel your time is better spent else where it's not really.

Also I've worked in a field as have many others a monkey could do, but there's legal certifications required to keep people out of the loop. In many ways that's a scam. Not to say I support a swing towards the other way of letting the guy next door do a lung transplant. But you get my drift.

 

[Vocaloid Ruby]

I remember PPI adverts being all over in 2008 and then disappearing almost altogether in 2012.

They’re back again now, and it seems whenever I turn on the radio there’s one company or another talking about how nobody has EVER cheaked their PPI.

Ive never had the effort to check cause I’m pretty sure it’s almost always been a scam.

 

[Karl der Grosse]

The entire textbook publishing industry. There's oceans worth of dirty money sloshing around.

 

[Bassomatic]

The entire textbook publishing industry. There's oceans worth of dirty money sloshing around.

There are a few reasons why that is, I can expand if you want. But a quick cliffs, the schools are often forced to buy/use newest books, so the professors have to assign them, or they don't get any from one of the 5 total publishers. They pay out the ass to the publishers. Those who write/revise them make bank, also they now tack on shit people don't need/want as mandatory IE a learning CD and guess what? Paid just as much for that. Needless to say constant revising just because they can.

It's a closed market bullying students because they are lush with loan cash (that's now federally tied to you mind you). But hey, at least it's not free market economics! That could make things really bad.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

I have a "friend" who keeps trying to talk me about this shit, it's an obvious MLM-type thing. What the fuck is it?

There's a bunch of energy scams. The one I was thinking of is where people come to your house and say they can get you a lower rate on your bill, but actually your rate goes up. They buy electricity from the company that makes it, often the regular electric company, which usually generates their own. This is possible because of deregulation. A variety of them have had lawsuits against them, either class action or by a state attorney general. The MLMs work the same way, I think, except they add a pyramid scheme.

 

[CrunkLord420]

I have been involved with an organization that provides services for MLMs. We once got a bunch of samples to fuck around with at an event and it was all fucking trash. The most successful of all the products were literally scented candles.