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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

#331

Post by A_Person »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #53
drawkbox wrote: post #47

On the flipside, I worked on promotions game systems in the brand promotions space with instant win and giveaways after the user played a game. If they won we had to contact them to verify and get info to send them the prize. When someone won the prize we had to get the social security number of the person that won for gift tracking as many were over 15k, their contact info and location to send the prize, you'd be su…

As an individual authenticating callers is difficult. I recently had someone claiming to be from the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) call and ask me to identify myself. Not surprising, my tax filing is overdue. I advised them as a security policy I do not give out PII to unauthenticated callers, asked for a reference number and a return phone number. The number I was given is not listed on the ATO website so I did n…

I just had the exact opposite experience! I was discussing scams with my regular painter. He said he got one recently, and showed it to me on his phone. It was an SMS that said, "Dear , we have been trying to contact you without success. Please ring BlergCo on 99999 about your outstanding ATO debt". I thought, easy enough to check. I went to the ATO website; clicked the link about what we do if you don't pay; clicked the link about which collection agencies they use; checked for green padlocks throughout; and voila - BlergCo, 99999! Since the number on the SMS exactly matched the number on the verified ATO website, I couldn't see how the scam would work. So I told my painter I'd changed my mind, it was probably legitimate, and he should ask his tax agent to follow it up. Which he did. Then paid the overdue provisional tax that he'd completely forgotten about! It made me think, legitimate SMSs (like that one) should probably have extra words to tell the recipient how they can check that it's legitimate. For example, "NOTE: to verify our company name and contact number, please go to the ATO website at xxx.yyy.zzz (and remember to check the green padlock!)", or somesuch.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#332

Post by simonbyrne »

lostlogin wrote: post #326
kozikow wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It eventually ends on a reinsurance company that can shoulder insane amounts of risk, e.g. Munich Re, Berkshire Hathaway, Swiss Re etc.

They are doing it wrong - socialise that risk. Here in New Zealand when a big insurer has something bad happen (eg an earthquake flattens a big city) you get bailed out by the government. Departing staff still got big payouts in that era too, so it doesn’t seem to impose any stringent criteria on companies too. AMI specifically. Sarcasm aplenty in this comment.

Even reinsurance has limits, and large earthquakes on major metropolitan centres are basically the one thing that will exceed them (floods can be bad too, but the risks are more predictable, and are often excluded from policies in high-risk areas).

The only alternative to the "government backstop" is that insurers will refuse to write policies or will exclude earthquake risk (in which case the government may need to set up it's own scheme, e.g. in CEA insurance in California).

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#333

Post by gfodor »

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 went to one of these many years ago just after finishing my degree. I explained to the guy laying on the sales pitch that I understood how interest rates worked and I had a masters degree in Computer Science. He said "you aren't the kind of person we're interested in, you can leave."

Thanks for the free Vegas trip! I actually won some money that trip, so technically I walked away from the scam with a profit!

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#334

Post by braythwayt »

VectorLock wrote: post #322
braythwayt wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back in the day, I had a reinsurance company as a client. For those unfamiliar, reinsurance companies insure insurance companies. For example, they might insure a standard insurance company for automobile accidents, with a $1,000,000 deductible. So the retail insurance company handles payouts up to a million dollars, but when there's a really wild claim, the reinsurance company pays the insurance company for anyt…

Wow I'd love to hear some of those stories. What a largely unknown, esoteric and hugely interesting industry.

They used to talk about anti-selection (a/k/a "adverse selection"). For example, if a retail insurer has no reinsurance, it has to incorporate both the probability of claims and the distribution of payout sizes.

But if they have reinsurance, the payouts are 'clipped' at their deductible. This means that they have an incentive to take on clients that are less likely to have any sort of accident, even if when they do have an accident, it has catastrophic consequences.

This means that a reinsurance company cannot rely on the overall statistics for claims, because the insurance companies that buy reinsurance price their products with reinsurance in mind. The people unlikely to run into massive claims will end up in pools where the retail insurance company doesn't buy reinsurance.

So they have to carefully price the reinsurance to account for the fact that the insurance company is packaging their most reinsurance-sensitive pool of customers together.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#335

Post by fwip »

floatrock wrote: post #292
logfromblammo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$3000 on a mattress? WTF? How is that even possible for such a highly commoditized good?

Freakonomics podcast did an episode on it: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ That's also exactly why Casper and a half dozen other upstarts have come out with the memory-foam mailed-to-you-in-a-vacuum-tube online mattress sales.

The conclusion of the podcast was "If you spend $800 you're probably safe, below that it's hard to know if it's good or awful. Above $1500 is too much."

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#336

Post by FireBeyond »

bane wrote: post #151
pwg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 went to one to satisfy the same sort of morbid fascination as well. I really have to hand it to the sales people, it was one of the most incredible sales pitches I've ever seen. They shuttled us to one of their premier properties where they took us to a sales room and served us breakfast. After a few moments they had everybody gather around a large presentation screen and a salesman who spent the next hour not just…

This was a big scam on the Gold Coast in Australia in the 80s and 90s, and my parents milked it.

First thing you need to know is that any major contract in Australia had a "72 hour cooling off period" in which you could cancel it with no redress or regress.

Want a cheap holiday? Bring your kids to the Gold Coast, look up the best time share resort, Friday morning,sit through the spiel, sign on the line that is dotted.

Through the weekend you have access to all the resort amenities, kayaks, jet skis, pools, etc. All comped.

Monday morning, when you were about to head to the airport? Drop off a letter at the front desk with the contract, canceling it.

Ethical? Probably no less so than they were, so hard to find sympathy.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#337

Post by logfromblammo »

im3w1l wrote: post #312
shoo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree. Mattress sellers love the value based sales pitch: how much would you pay for 1 hour extra sleep per night? Maybe paying $10/hour for extra sleep for one year is a bargain in some contexts, then you have a payback period of < 1 year, even for a ridiculously overpriced mattress.

The difference between a $200 mattress and the best in the world is way less than 1h per night.

Not to mention that I have taken some pretty rockin' naps in hammocks of various sizes, the cheapest of which was $4.99, and packed down into a twist of netting smaller than my fist. But to be fair, the two appropriately-spaced trees required for that one were not included.

The mattress is by no means the only way to get a complete and restful night of sleep, and past a certain materials threshold, you can't get longer or better quality sleep with any amount of upgrades to your mattress. The marginal cost is likely better spent by buying light bulbs that phase out blue light in your evenings, or by taking melatonin supplements, or with a therapy device for sleep apnea, or blackout curtains, or any number of other supposedly sleep-improving products. At a certain cost point, you might as well climb into a spa-grade float tank, or dangle from your back-piercings, or sleep in a bounce castle.

I think that there is probably a bigger difference in sleep quality between a $300 mattress and a $500 mattress than between the $500 mattress and a $3000 mattress. Once the specific concerns that typically interrupt sleep are addressed, the returns diminish fast. There is no way I am losing an hour of sleep every night just because my mattress isn't good enough.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#338

Post by technofiend »

god_bless_texas wrote: post #251
technofiend wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a furniture salesman here in Houston who makes heavy use of that sort of promotion. His latest if you spend $3,000 on a mattress and the Astros win the "2018 baseball final championship series" you'll be refunded the purchase price. Not sure why it's worded so formally; must be a legal thing.

Mattress Mack?

Yup!

And as others have posted, he's fairly beloved here in Houston due to his charity work. Heck one of the local rappers remixed his commercials Houston style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74UnjzKJOU

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#339

Post by pweissbrod »

polynomial wrote: post #178
analogmemory wrote: post #37

My dad signed up for one of those sweepstakes back in the '90s. They called and said he won a "prize" but he had to come into view a "presentation". Went to the "presentation" where they tried to hustle him to signup for a timeshare. He resisted and they gave him the "prize", which was a knockoff boombox. That boombox is still alive, my mom uses it in the garage when she's doing gardening. I'm pretty sure the company…

What's a boombox?

Wow you just made me feel old :-)

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#340

Post by Proziam »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #290
freehunter wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to rent space to businesses you know to be conducting illegal activities. The mall operator can't rent space to a drug dealer or arms dealer, they can't rent a brothel, they can't rent space to human traffickers. Mall operators are not common carriers.

>illegal activities > arms dealer I appreciate your political views, but this one is perfectly legal in United States, and will hopefully stay this way.

I'm with you, but it does seem like he's referring to "Lord of War" more than "Gun Shop Owner." The guy selling RPGs to known criminals isn't the same as the guy who sells me my AR15s
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