471–480 of 562 posts
This part sounds weird to me; surely helpdesk employees don't have access to full employee records?
Further, if the scammer already had this much information, couldn't they have used a name of any helpdesk employee who actually does work there?
There's one easy rule that could have avoided all of this - never give out any info on incoming calls. If I get a call or text about fraudulent transactions, I'll keep them on hold while I log into the bank website. If I get a call about a late payment, I'll thank them for the info and ask them to stay on while I pay online. If I get an inbound call with a more complex request, I'll ask them for their employee info a…
I think that any phone calls from a bank about fraud should only be a notification and them telling you to "go to the website, the Contact page, there you will find a number to call in case of fraud". Without naming a web address. And the search engines should mark bank websites and the like as protected, so neither competitors nor scammers can buy ad space when people search for a bank by name.
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Honestly, how do you know what the right number is though? Everybody outsources their stuff. The real website is at jordans-eatery.outsourcedsite.com. Or maybe the guy at jordans-eatery.seo.com is taking calls and placing orders to the real site at a markup. Or maybe the real number is on jordans-eatery.com. Or maybe it's none of those.
Easy, go to the restaurant in person and order takeout or dine in if you want. On your way out ask them what their official website and phone number are. Then you can put them on your "safe to order from' list
Last time I went to order, I looked up their name, went to the page by that name on the known third party menu site, ordered my usual order from their usual menu, only to discover after the charge went through that a scammer had copied their name and entire menu onto a new restaurant on the same site.
Called immediately to cancel the order (why doesn't the site have that option??) and the woman on the phone feigned ignorance. A few minutes later a gruff man called me back and told me I wouldn't be getting a refund. Not sure what I said to convince him, but maybe enough threats and he decided to change his tune.
The scammers are running the asylum.
I was buying a 2 yo Toyota car at an official Toyota salesplace. Before this, I've bought three used cars, looked at tons of videos (eg Chris fix on youtube) on how to check the car itself so I don't buy something that risks needing expensive repairs two years later. I wasn't super prepared against the salesman before though. But he wasn't looking like, and behaving like, a salesguy. He was a bit uncertain in his way to talk, and it felt like I was more sure of the buying process than he was.
I had two main concerns - I didn't want to buy a lemon ("Monday specimen") or a crashed+repaired car. The latter may mean things like bearings being slightly out of alignment and leading to wear quicker. So I voiced those two concerns and asked whether this car had ever been repaired, "No, nope.". I asked about service subscription, the guy whispered "I shouldn't say this, but it's better you get it at the other place which is closer to you" (also an official Toyota place).
Since my daughter has allergies, I asked about smoking or animals, "njet, nada, nopes".
Well, a month later the car was completely registered to me and I got access to the Toyota digital registers and surely enough, it had been smacked along the side by a truck. It also already had a service sub pre-payed on it, so that was him getting out of a 350€ service at their place. A final insult was that, as the chemical perfume smell of the cleaning agent came off, it had a foul pungent smell of wet dog.
I confirmed this with the previous owner too, she'd had a dog in the car. Had to buy a replacement air filter and clean the car internally, but at least my daughter doens't call it the "smelly car" anymore.
Pretty happy with the car, and would likely have bought it even if he was completely truthful, but having been lied to, and fallen for it, makes me pretty angry.
Feels good to share the story :). Don't forget to like and subscribe.
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I think ordering on amazon has become a little like getting your car towed. Towing companies appear to be a large shell game where your $200 tow is handled my one or more middlemen who eventually get some poor independent towtruck driver to tow you for $75 Amazon should do something that would allow partnering with decent brands. Customers would be happy, brands could keep their reputation, amazon could get a reasona…
I'd like to see an economist's view on how the free market is failing here, and what we can do about it.
I honestly just see a regular capitalistic market, where a company is trying to make money at the expense of other companies. By that I don't mean Amazon is outcompeting retailers and pushing them out the market. I mean Amazon is actively causing damage to well known brands by letting scammers sell those branded products to promote their own AmazonBasics brand which is free of scammers.
Even if the scams are unintended, there is no profit incentive to get rid of them.
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I'd like to see an economist's view on how the free market is failing here, and what we can do about it.
I mean, roughly, there's no such thing as an ideal free market, and in all real markets all the ways in which it's not an ideal free market are being exploited by people to collect the margin. The concept of an ideal free market is promulgated by the same people who are making money off those margins. As far as what you can do about it, you could start with preventing those people from interacting with markets. I lea…
What we are doing is the equivalent of looking at a warped mirror e.g. a non free market and declaring that the reflections are not distorted e.g. a free market.
A lot of people are scared of living on the streets or feel shame from living off welfare. There is no way these people are going to make long term decisions if their short term needs haven't been met or there is a constant risk that they won't be met tomorrow.
This is actually one of the more disgusting parts of Austrian economics. Where a low time preference is basically considered the equivalent of a high IQ. If you have a high time preference you must be some dumb consumerist animal, when the truth is that you barely earn enough money to meet your living expenses which means 100% of your spending must go to consumption. Thirst is more urgent than hunger which is more urgent than shelter which is more urgent than social needs and so on. At some point you are not longer hungry or homeless. The urgency is gone. It would be more accurate to say that time preference is a function of wealth and having your needs met, rather than some intellectual jerk off competition where stupid people are filtered out and smart people end up with all the wealth.
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Well this initiated a rant, not directly related to ads, but Google in general. This is an internet literacy issue I’ve noticed more and more. People will refer to Google listings as an authoritative source even if the data comes from some third party. “Is this Jordan’s Tiles?” “No. This is Patrick. You have the wrong number.” “It says on their website this is the number!” “Their website is wrong, this isn’t Jordan’s…
My friend booked one international flight with departure and destination having 12+ hours timezones difference. The email listed the departure time & duration of journey and arrival time, all in local times (as expected). Gmail auto creates an event about flights and hotel bookings, and thus shows the correct departure time, duration & then that AI simply added that duration to departure, and showed departure city's…
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> I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number... 1) Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform, whether it's inventory commingling, sketchy sellers repurposing existing, well-reviewed listings for a to…
> Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform Bought some wireless earbuds a while back, they sent me a horrible knock off. Contacted the store, he said the delivery guy made the switch, took forever but sent me new ones. Left a review stating all of this and warning users not to buy from this sketchy store, my review never saw the light of day.
The things I don't buy from Amazon Prime really anywhere are replacement batteries.
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The author does seem to bang on about his "reasonable assumptions" for how much Wells and Apple Pay suck, so he should continue the call! Like he's just too clever to follow the advice he'd give everyone else to hang up and call back.
I didn't read it as explaining why she should continue the call, just why she did continue the call. She's explaining why those things didn't immediately trigger the scam alarm. Nowhere did I see her claim to be too clever to do anything. I found it an interesting read which details an experience which is far removed from how you expect a scam call to occur. It's interesting to read the signs which should have been a…
I also, admittedly, allowed my cynicism toward my own industry and Wells Fargo to cloud my judgment; I didn't know the first thing about Apple Pay or Google Pay prior to this incident, but I don't have particularly positive experiences or feelings toward either company, and it's extremely common for the process of fixing someone else's mistake on large tech platforms to be nightmarishly convoluted.
Ultimately she did realise & fix her mistake - at some pace - lost nothing, and got an up-close view of a scam in progress.
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I bet your Amazon rep just searched for Reolink and clicked on a Google ad that happened to belong to the scammers.
Well this initiated a rant, not directly related to ads, but Google in general. This is an internet literacy issue I’ve noticed more and more. People will refer to Google listings as an authoritative source even if the data comes from some third party. “Is this Jordan’s Tiles?” “No. This is Patrick. You have the wrong number.” “It says on their website this is the number!” “Their website is wrong, this isn’t Jordan’s…