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Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

thehustle.co

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Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#161

Post by astura »

glenneroo wrote: post #110
m_fayer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade ago I would have thought your comment was over the top. Then I moved to Germany. And was surprised to find an utter lack of spammy phone calls, no crowd of ubiquitous scammers vying for my attention, no surprise mystery medical bills, nothing. I was with my German girlfriend in a department store once, she tore a little slip off the stockings she was buying, put her name and email on it, and dropped it into…

I have more or less the same story moving to Austria. I get spammy calls but they are actually legit surveys (quality of life, political leanings, newspaper preferences, etc) and only because I gave up my phone number at a party many years ago and haven't bothered to have it removed. I get once of these survey calls about every 3-6 months and if I'm not in the mood I just tell them I don't have time and they never ca…

>Visa the company here doesn't actually function as a credit card like in the U.S., rather it's directly connected to your bank account

People get these concepts confused a lot.

Visa is a payment processor - that is, a company that facilitates electronic payments.

Different "payment types" (credit, debit, gift card) can use the Visa network.

Visa, the company, does not issue any credit cards or debit cards directly themselves, they only make agreements with other financial institutions who issue cards that use the Visa network to process payments.

So your debit card is issued by your bank and uses the Visa network to transfer funds.

Visa debit cards are also extremely common here in the US as well.

MasterCard is like Visa in it's just a payment processor, it doesn't issue cards itself. American Express and Discover, however, are both payment processors and issuing banks, they issue credit and debit cards themselves. It gets more complicated because other financial institutions issue credit cards that use the American Express payment network.

So because of all this I've had a debt card that switched from Visa to a MasterCard when the bank's agreement with Visa expired and they got a better deal with MasterCard. I also had a credit card that switched from using the American Express network to the Visa network.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#162

Post by feintruled »

jdietrich wrote: post #153
feintruled wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been amused by Sainsbury's tactics - as well as the bland and unattractive packaging for their value brands, they also add a little passive-aggressive slogan that slightly throws some shade on their own product (and perhaps by association, you). For example, value wipes have "Not quite as thick, but cleans up quick". Value peas have something like "A little smaller, but just as tasty!" https://thetab.com/…

>Of course the joke is all the products are indistinguishable out of the packet as no doubt they come from the same production lines and they aren't likely to tool up to make deliberately inferior versions if that would cost extra That's absolutely not the case. It's definitely economical to make slightly inferior versions for the value brand. If you read the ingredients, you can see where they've cut costs. For exam…

Very informative post, I consider myself roundly corrected!

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#163

Post by pknopf »

pwg wrote: post #99
quickthrower2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the scam? "Free flight" if you buy the timeshare or something?

Roping the unsuspecting into an incredibly expensive time-share using hard-sell boiler-room tactics without ever being up-front about the true costs. I sat through one of these once, curious about how it was going to go, and with the intent going in of not ever buying anything anyway. They present the timeshare as if it costs only pennies a day, and never admit to the true cost unless pressed very hard (and even then…

I'm all for capitalism, but I feel like this should be illegal.

Yes, I know, "the consumers shouldn't be so dumb". But there is always the group of a society that will bite. The seller may make a good buck, but these tactics have many downstream effects that just get compounded for the people buying this garbage.

There should be some kind of protection for the consumers in this case.

I know it would be hard to define the line, but in this specific case, it's clear that it shouldn't be allowed.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#164

Post by glenneroo »

sumedh wrote: post #154
glenneroo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought a debit card was just for withdrawing cash? We have bank cards (Bankomat Karte) for withdrawing cash - in fact, when you pay and want to use the card, many people just say "karte" (literally: card) to mean a bank (debit?) card and not a credit card. Our Visa cards can also withdraw using a pin, but I don't know anyone who does (anecdotally speaking - but I do pay attention to shoppers ahead of me in line, s…

> I thought a debit card was just for withdrawing cash? In many countries you can use the debit card to withdraw cash and make online and EFTPOS transactions. EFTPOS machines can process debit and credit cards. With debit cards the money is deducted from your account immediately or in your case at the end of the month. (but then it should be called credit not debit)

So to answer your question using your selected terminology, they are zero-interest credit cards.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#165

Post by JumpCrisscross »

joncrane wrote: post #141
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm frankly surprised these aren't being blown out of the water by litigation. One might even be able to make the argument that the mall operator, timeshare commission payers, et cetera are complicit.

Prosecutors' offices have other incentives. Keep in mind that the chief prosecutor in any given jurisdiction is likely often egotistical, ambitious individuals. Also, there are plenty of more serious and/or complicated crimes going on in any given jurisdiction. Also keep in mind these scams tend to occur in well-populated areas.

> Prosecutors' offices have other incentives

Litigation, not prosecution. This is probably too low a priority for public prosecution, particularly criminal prosecution. But civil litigation? Would appear to be low-hanging fruit, particularly if one can entangle the timeshare promoter’s assets.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#166

Post by dxxvi »

Once, there was a telemarketer calling me and trying to persuade me to buy a home alarm system. All he wanted is to get my credit card #. I asked him to repeat himself 2-3 times for almost all of his sentences (not all, because that would make him hang up). After about 20 mins, he knew my game and said that I was wasting his time and I was not a good citizen of the U.S. I was sad because somebody said that but the whole conversation was fun :-)

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#167

Post by robterrell »

dluan wrote: post #30

Back in the 90s there was a hilarious trend of winning the car in the mall by being the person to be in the car the longest. This was when SUVs were becoming a really big thing. People were sleeping in the car with 5 other strangers to see who could outlast the others, with only short bathroom breaks allowed. I'm not really sure what the advertisers/dealers won in that exchange.

Perhaps related -- http://handsonahardbodythemovie.com

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#169

Post by nkrisc »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #64

> In the course of an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, 22 hopefuls fill out the digital form. Lets take this hour to be an average hour. Over 12 hours in a day that the mall is presumably open, that's 22*12 = 264 leads. > the mall isn’t behind these giveaways; they merely rent out the advertising space (for around $1.5k per day). This would imply that these leads need to be worth at least $1500/264 = $5.68 per lead. Do…

It's not a lot of leads but they're self-selecting for guillibility. Anyone who thinks they can actually win that car is probably more likely, as you guessed, to buy whatever crap someone is going to try and sell them.

Also that's just an hour on Wednesday afternoon. I'm sure the weekends get many more leads.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#170

Post by throwaway080383 »

erikb wrote: post #109
rubzah wrote: post #81

Why is it always timeshares? What makes them so ideal to sucker people with? I've seen these scams all over the world.

This is one of the investments no normal person with a healthy common sense would even consider to invest in. So if you see "timeshare" and are not dropping the flyer into the trash can, that already says that you are open to getting screwed over. It's like the "African prince died, gives you $10 mio if you give us your credit card details". That said, there is nearly no game or investment that doesn't at least have…

So in practice, I know this is true, but in principle, splitting a vacation property 52 ways so that everyone gets one week a year actually seems pretty reasonable. Why is it that these things are always scams?
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