Scams...

I think it was 6 years ago. I was fresh out of university, had just gotten my first full-time job and successfully applied for a credit card. I wanted to earn extra so I looked all over cyberspace for legitimate earning gigs. I must have invested almost $30 for what I thought was a genuine website for online jobs and signed up for it through my brand new credit card. But what do you know? I suddenly maxed out my credit limit. Worse, I never earned a single thing from the site and even received thousands of spammy emails. I had to cut my credit card after that.

Thankfully, I learned from that experience and can now detect a fraudulent site from an authentic one. Any site that forces you to dish out money when it's supposed to offer you a job isn't legitimate at all. Remember that.

 

@LilAnn It sounds as if the dentist and oral surgeon had a reciprocity agreement. I'm sure the surgeon referred people who needed cleanings and regular checkups to the dentist, too. People who have never struggled have no idea what it's like to need something and be unable to pay for it, nor to be able to qualify for assistance or credit. I'm glad your hubby was able to get the work done.

 

My former dentist would routinely double bill my insurance any time I went in there for a procedure - so if I had one tooth drilled he would put down that he worked on two of my teeth. I would have turned him in for insurance fraud, but he was my friends uncle, so I just stopped going to him and went to someone else. I guess he figured that his customers don't bother reading the receipts the insurance companies mail to them for such charges.

Another sort of scam was a company my friend was working for - it was a call center. Basically, they were working on behalf of one of the big cell phone companies, I think it was AT&T, cold calling their existing customers to offer them a "free iphone upgrade". In reality what they were doing was renewing their contracts for another two years, but I believe the way they worded their scripted stuff, it downplayed that so the customer didn't realize they were stuck with them for another two years. Plus the iPhone model they were giving away for "free" was the soon to be outdated model, because they would run these campaigns over the summer, when the new model would be coming out in September.

 

I almost got ripped off on airbnb. I was going to travel to Spain and was looking for affordable accommodation for a month. I came across the "perfect place" for just the right price. So, I contacted the alleged owner, wanting to find out more about the place, but airbnb rules restrict essential information. You can't contact owners privately, you have to pay your booking fee to airbnb and the place you want to rent, in advance. I thought it was a reputable company, so I almost went ahead with it. But in the last moment a little voice told me to wait, and send a friend around to see what the place looked like from the outside. And surprise, surprise! The place didn't exist at all. So, I hope airbnb got their act together and weed out the frauds that get into their systems.

 

I can't remember a scam I have been victim of, although I remember to have fallen into a few.

However talking about dentists, my sister was scammed by one who promising to make the best aesthetic denture she was in need for, the job was horrible, with an extra tooth that was exactly the opposite to the promised.

The worst thing is that such dentist vanished into the "thin air" a few days later after my sister received such a ugly and costly dentistry job.

 

There's one internet marketing forum which is the lair of scammers. The scammers get awya with there scams because no one really knows what's going on. Once you get scammed to recover the money you've lost, you'll join the scammers, create a "product" and sell it to unsuspecting newbies.

This is how it works:

Someone joins the forum, asks a question. The forum members [most of whom are scammers] respond and refer him to a thread where they are selling a "product" that would make him/her more money than s/he can count. You'll see lots of replies there, testimonials of sorts [positive feedback mostly] which will convince the newbie that what they'll buy actually will make them money.

Those Ebooks and videos however have nothing useful in them — just re-packaged stuff you'd find elsewhere on the net if you did some research.

Interested in internet marketing? Stay away from Warrior Forum.

 

I got scammed by a Chinese clothing "wholesale". The website was so pretty and had trendy and gorgeous clothes. I should have known it was too good to be true because it was cheap. But I got sucked in and bought a few things I wanted to sell on eBay. When they arrived, I was too shocked for words. There are many shoddily made clothes out there, but this took the biscuit.

The hems were not finished, there was cotton hanging off the clothes; they basically looked like the "raw samples" that were yet to be finished! I tried to complain, but they wouldn't listen. I retrospectively did a search of reviews and was floored by the reams of negative reviews on the web, especially from America. I only had myself to blame because I just dived straight in without checking first. A first for me, because before I start buying anything online, I ALWAYS do my research. Since then, I refuse to buy from that neck of the woods.

 

I got scammed by an online "opportunity when I was 18. The site was selling an e-book they claimed had all the information and how to directions to start making all this money through sales commissions and all these so called reviews from people whose lives had been changed by being able to make a living this way. Turned out the directions were worthless and didn't work even though I followed them carefully. I never made a cent off that stuff. Waste of $40.

 

Now that I think about it, I did pay for one of those envelope stuffing scams many years ago. The boyfriend at the time was always looking for a get rich scheme to pay off, and convinced me it was worth checking into. It wasn't worth it, and neither was he.

I know that there's no such thing as a free lunch, so I'm cautious when I approach any potential new venture.

@Lushlala Sorry you had that happen. I see a lot of those sites, and I agree, the clothing looks great. I think they probably steal pictures from legitimate sites, and figure people they scam will decide it's not worth pursuing, since there's usually very little recourse.

 

I don't think I've come across one in my life yet. That, or I just haven't noticed. I'm the type of person who is usually really careful about any "propositions" or anything like that though so I don't fall for scams easily. The one that my friends (who have traveled to Europe) have said is to watch out for Romani folks or Gypsies because they will con you out of money if you're not careful. I try not to believe in stereotypes but still, it makes me a little cautious.

 

Thanks, Diane. It was awful, and I felt stupid for a very long time because I let myself be sucked in by the gorgeous clothes and the cheap prices, totally ignoring all the red flags. I should've known better, really.

-and you're absolutely right. From that point, I became obsessed with doing research on these types of clothing wholesalers. What I found was very alarming. They do indeed steal pictures from completely legitimate sites and pass them off as their own. Also, most of them haven't been running for very long, and keep changing sites to avoid being found out. They may go by one name now, but by the time you go back to the site, it's disappeared and they have a different name. What irked me the most was the fact that they make the sites appear as though they are based in America, which is where I like to shop. So these days I make sure I check reviews and run a report on scam advisor or similar sites. To this day, I refuse to order from the Far East.

 

I know @Lushlala, sometimes a deal is too good to resist, but now you know, and can warn others, and hopefully it won't happen to you again. It's hard to always be on guard, though. You're right about them changing sites and site and company names, too. I posted before about them stealing designs, which really sucks when someone has worked for a long time, coming up with original designs, making jewelry or other products, and then the designs/patterns are stolen by unscrupulous foreigners. I'm sure there are scammers who do the same in other countries, but it does tend to be prevalent in the Far East.

I've noticed some on eBay that sell cheap supplies state that their location is Australia, but it's the same exact listings i see from those in China, so they're either doing some sort of drop shipment, lying about location, or have some other type of arrangement. I think what many on there do is create multiple accounts, since they sell in bulk, their sales numbers climb rapidly, and so their feedback tends to be o.k., but once they screw up and get some bad feedback, the same items/descriptions are listed by other accounts, so I think they spread the listings around, so the bad feedback is diluted by the high volume of sales.

 

I still can't get over the scam I got pressured into over a year ago where you buy and sell websites. I don't think I ever will as I would say that is the biggest scam I have encountered to me. I am hoping that legal aid can help but I would think the official consumer protection agency not helping doesn't speak well. The statute of limitations hasn't apparently passed yet. My state makes me so mad! They never back me on anything. They're almost as bad as PayPal to me.

 

The good thing is the more you hear of these scams and others like them the less likely you'll fall for them . . .

. . . because you are armed with the knowledge that there are scammers out there who want to steal your money, you'll always be on the look out for the thieves. That makes it a little bit harder for anyone to scam you.

 

I think I just ran across a scam. There is a site called

Log In

and they make it sound like they have all kinds of mystery shopping jobs to do. They list a couple of sentences about the job, but they tell you you have to sign up for their premium version (which costs money) in order to get the specific details you need for the job and how to apply for it. Not cool!

 

Absolutely, Diane! Those people are tireless, relentless and unscrupulous, always changing up their game! This is why we always need to have our wits about us. I've noticed that their ratings are always very high on eBay, but I can't even buy into that. They're very clever at tweaking things to make themselves appear legit, and it's very easy to fall for their scams. That's why I've resorted to scrap them altogether, even if it means missing out on good deals. Unless someone I know speaks very highly of them, and actually has first hand experience with them, I won't touch them with a barge pole.

 

I did not fall for this, but I have a friend who signed up for a cleansing juice on the internet, and didn't read the small print, and ended up being charged several hundred pounds per month for a long time afterwards, for something that she didn't really want in the first place. It was a shame for her, because she was very short of money, and she didn't realise that the money was being taken as it was on her credit card. She managed to get the money back in the end, but I know that she found it incredibly stressful at the time, which is a shame for her.