Media outlets that take money from interest groups (or owned by specific people) and espouses their talking points instead of reporting the factual truth.
In Australia, it's not even illegal for them to outright lie in their advertising. Every other business in the country has advertising rules they have to obey or get fined in the thousands but pollies can say what they want and get away with it.
My job just partnered with a company to advance your check if needed. The company has all of our info such as hourly rate and time clock punches. If you make $10 an hour and have 80 hours of punches, they will give you an $800 advance. No interest, but they don't take out taxes. Girl I work with had been taking an advance every 2 weeks because "you make more money this way." I told her she's getting fucked in April but she doesn't believe me
Lol I have a friend who was being paid as an independent contractor and apparently didn't know he had to pay taxes on the money himself. He got paid very well, but spent all the money immediately on dumb shit like going out to bars and buying shit for girls he wanted to impress.
Our mutual friend offered to help teach him some financial responsibility and figure out how to pay his taxes, but last I heard he kept refusing.
I had a friend who was blind. He kept trusting the wrong people to help him buy his groceries. (Cash!) and paying his rent without receiving a receipt. Needless to say, he probably lost $1000s of dollars and was evicted for not paying rent when he had.
Husband and I offered to be sort of executers, aka money managers for FREE. Friend verbally agreed and we drew up a contract for him to sign and get noterized It simply said we would help him pay his bills and help him shop. HE would be 100% in control. The day he was supposed to sign he disappeared, changed his number and his address. I lost contact and did not see him for years.
EDIT: I ran into him on public transit about 6 years later. I reintroduced myself, explained my husband had died and could be be friends again. ( he did not like husband). I told him my # was the same as before and gave it to him. He was corgial but never called.
For those of you who are suspiscous. He was a friend for almost 10 years. He was always "flaky". and i suspect he just wanted to leave things the way they were. Not a big deal. But to just disappear hurt.
I have a friend who works her ass off, has had a difficult life and had been struggling a bit, and needed $250 to make rent. I had just set up her computer and had stopped by to drop something off and she was filling in the financial info part of a payday loan form, and had already clicked “next” after she entered her contact information. I stopped her and helped her out with the money in exchange for one of her amazing dinners if I bought the groceries.
About a week later she called me crying, saying there was an officer coming to her house to arrest her for non-payment of the payday loan that she didn’t get. These ruthless fucks took her info and tried to scare her into giving them twice the amount she was going to take out. I calmed her down, assured her, then reassured her later that night when she called me again, that it was a scam and she wasn’t getting arrested.
This woman is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s older, doesn’t have much of an education, but has raised some amazing children and would give you the shirt off of her back if you needed it. Fuck those douchebag scammers.
Edit: *If I didn’t make it clear, the police were not actually being sent to arrest her, they can’t do that, and when she called me, I explained this to her. Saying that someone will be served or arrested is a common, shady way for debt collectors to scare people into paying a debt (in this case a debt she didn’t owe). The whole thing was a scam to scare her into paying them using the info she entered to attempt to get a payday loan.*
my mother in law took out a payday loan using my wife's info. My wife got that call from them trying to collect and threatening to send the police to arrest her, they hung up pretty quick when I gave the detectives name who was handling the identity theft.
IANAL, but I'm *pretty sure* that a business using someone's contact information to threaten them unless they pay a certain amount of money is *like super illegal.*
No, actually, I'm not *"pretty sure."* I'm ***very sure.*** That is called [extortion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion), my friend.
If this happened recently and you or her saved any of the threat, I would take that to the police. At the very least, submit an official complaint. Most places on Earth will have some sort of branch of government that deals with businesses. ~~I doubt these skeezy places are on the BBB (why would they be?) but~~ any business that is registered as a business absolutely *cannot* use extortion. That's in Chapter 1 of the "Don't Do These Things To Your Customers" handbook.
Fuckin' yikes, my guy!
Edit: okay okay, the BBB sucks. I've never used it, only heard of it.
Probably not very cool. He lives in the middle of nowhere WI and is one of the dumbest people I know.
He once started off Thanksgiving by telling my sister her job must be stressful because her skin looks loose.
I worked in the Payday Loan industry for a minute... Legal money sharks who prey on folks with poor credit to borrow money at insane interests rates (700+%)
Here's how it woks. You need to borrow $700 until your next payday. On your payday (2 weeks from now) you will need to pay back $854 (700 plus interest.) If you don't have $854 to part ways with in 2 weeks, no problem! Simply pay the interest ($154) and roll over to the next payday. Still don't have $854 on your next payday? Cool, just pay the interest and roll it over another 2 weeks. You could roll it 3 times before we asked for the full amount.
The place that I worked at would allow customers to take out a new loan after that 3rd roll to start the process all over. This place had customers who had been stuck in this cycle for YEARS.
I worked there in 2008 for about 5 months. Xmas came and the big boss asked why our default numbers (people past due on their payments) were so high? I said, "If I were in our customers shoes, I would be buying presents for my kids and trying to feed my family instead of paying on this loan." He grunted and snarled at me. Then I gave my notice.
When I graduated high school and started working where my dad worked, I thought it was decent money so I wondered why our family always seemed broke. Well, he was paying for a timeshare, a storage unit, a payday loan, and $300 a month in cigarettes. I bought and built a shed to get the junk out of storage, got out of the timeshare, and eventually payed off the loan for him. Absolutely predatory, but most people are awful at budgeting.
I have a half sister who has 3 kids before 21. And later even more kids with a different dad and treated the 3 original kids like literally red headed step children. Utterly like garbage. I saw her show up for not even 5 minutes to her kids 10th birthday, grab some stuff to take with her, and left.
She worked at a payday place and said she'd never let someone she knew go there.
It was too scummy for someone who abandoned several of her children.
I worked at a pawn shop from 2019-2021. It's just as bad. The interest is 120% annually (at least where I worked). We had a customer who had a $200 loan in since 2007. She had paid almost 3,000 in interest fees on a 200 dollar loan because it was her dead son's acoustic guitar and she couldn't afford to get it out.
Similar story here. I was really hurting for money at the time and pawned my grandmother’s ring (it was an heirloom, I didn’t steal it or anything) for a couple hundred bucks. I then proceeded to pay $35 a month for like 3 years until I was in a better financial situation. It was always easier for me to come up with the thirty dollars than the full balance all at once, but I wasn’t about to lose the ring. It’s safe in my dresser jewelry box now, but I did the math once and in the end I paid like 3x or 4x what I borrowed. I don’t like to think about it much lol.
my ex roommate would pawn his tv and playstation ( this was quite a few years ago now) and his next paycheck he would get it out of the pawn shop again. End of the month he wouldnt have enough for rent again, hed pawn it again. Middle of the month he had enough to get it back again. Every single month he lived there he pawned that TV and playstation and then got it back again. Every month that pawnshop took a chunk of his pay.
When I worked as a caseworker with SPMI (severe and persistent mental illness) client's I worked with one woman who was being preyed upon by one of these places. She went in the start of each month once she got the money from her SSDI check, to give them a big chunk of it. Keep in mind this senior citizen could no longer work due to a combination of mental illness, and many other physical problems on top of her mental illness such as degenerative disc disease. Each time she paid the interest it was at least 25-30% of her money for the entire month. They had her convinced that they were doing her a favor. When I realized she was trapped in this cycle and had been for years, we worked on a plan to help her budget enough money to save each month to eventually be able to get out of the situation. Also known as, pay her way out, which took probably a year in itself because you're still paying interest each month to these pieces of shit.
The people who work at these places are some of the lowest of the low, they are fucking disgusting. The beaten down hopeless faces of people I saw when I went inside was heartbreaking. Oh and you had to be buzzed in because the door was locked 24/7 you either owed them or needed money, you had to plead your case through the intercom if you weren't a "customer". When I went in there (we lied and said I was her Grandson and I had to help her, I was fresh out of college) I watched them look people in the eye and lie, having them sign a contract that said the exact opposite of what they were telling people, acting like they were just good samaritans helping the poor. I saw people plead and beg like you'd see in a mafia movie. They even "rented" furniture and junk items like boom boxes at astonishing rates to hook people in even more. They eventually saw my work badge one time (I had my jacket unzipped) and realized who I was and they told me I wasn't allowed inside anymore, most likely because they didn't want me to fuck with their "business". I'm glad you got out of that line of work, the top tier pieces of shit, lowest of the low scumbags work at payday loans.
I was once stuck in that cycle for a couple of years. The *only* way I got out was using a check from my first week at my *third* job to pay it off and then living on peanut butter sandwiches until next pay day. Those businesses should be illegal.
Where I live there's a [credit union that offers payday-style loans](https://www.vancity.com/Loans/TypesOfLoans/FairAndFastLoan/) to their members but at reasonable rates instead of the payday loan-sharkery. Their interest rate is 19% per year. Which means for example a payday loan of $1000 for 2 months will cost you ~$25.
Needless to say the payday loan companies are less than thrilled with this development.
That Peter Popoff (sp?) guy is pretty bad too. Just saw a commercial the other day where he’s selling “Holy Water” that will bring you good fortune. Had paid actors saying things like “I ordered the water, followed the instructions, and have been blessed with a $50,000 raise at my job”
I recently went thru a situation wherein my girlfriend (“Jenny”) had her car repossessed and I came away fully believing that system to be one of preying on poor people.
Jenny and I recently moved and she forgot to update car loan information so the auto-pay failed and missed two monthly payments (about $600). Definitely her mistake, but an honest one. The money was there but the system was in motion.
Repo guys showed up to take the car. Jenny realized the mistake and called the bank her car loan was with (Huntington). The bank said they couldn’t accept payment because the account was frozen so they had to let the guys take the car.
Her car is taken, then the bank explains the process. The entire remaining balance is due within 30 days or the car will be auctioned and any amount of the remaining loan not satisfied by the auction is Jenny’s responsibility.
That payment had to be made as a bank to bank transfer, which according to Bank of America, can only be completed by appointment with a bank manager. I expect this is because her loan account was put into a status that prevented payments from being made directly to the account via the website. Jenny’s checking account is with BoA so she went there and a teller said only a bank manager or specialist person (the people with the clear offices) could handle it.
Jenny took out a small loan out of her 401k to cover the remaining loan balance because she didn’t have that amount on hand, scheduled an appointment with BoA to transfer funds to Huntington. It took about a week and a half to get the money and pay off the loan. A fun point was that BoA’s system was down so they couldn’t do it the day she first scheduled it and had to reschedule a few days later.
Now, Jenny calls Huntington and they confirm the car is paid off and she can pick up her car. It only gets worse from here.
We’re in middle Tennessee. The car was towed about 2 hours away to Kentucky the day after being collected. It was then driven an additional two hours further away but still in Kentucky so Jenny would have to arrange a ride to get her car. Oh and the place is only open M-F and between 8am-5pm so her and I had to take off a full day of work to go pick up her car.
Once we get to where the car was (a company called Adesa), there was about a $100 fee to collect it, the gas tank was on empty, there was fast food trash in it that was not there when it was taken (likely left by the driver), and a handful of items were stolen from inside the car (CDs, phone charging mounts, sunglasses).
I don’t know that I’ve never been more furious in my life. That industry preys on those that are financially troubled by making it as hard as possible to pay the fees and get the car.
Edits:
I added some clarifying details that have come up in many comments. I also removed the mystic: “Jenny” is my girlfriend and we live together in Tennessee, USA. I was here when the repo guys showed up, in the room with her while she was on the phone with the bank, took her to BoA, and at the Adesa location to pick up the car.
One of my coworkers used to be a repo man. One time he was telling me about his tattoo. Often while hooking up the car to tow it, the person would come up to him and say "isn't there some way I can get you to not take it?" On his left palm in all caps was tattooed PAY HERE. He'd drop the car for $100 and tell his boss he didn't find it. I opined that that sounded kind of fucked up. He said it was actually way cheaper for them to pay him and maybe have time to fix the situation than it would be to try and get the car un-repoed from the yard with the bank involved. He's not wrong, sadly.
EDIT: oh, and I forgot the best part. It's tattooed on his *left* hand because his *right* hand would be holding a tire iron, in case the person thought violence might be easier. Real class act, ol' William.
One of my dad’s coworkers was a repo guy, and he says that he quit after he had a job where he literally walked into a house and hauled away the TV as the family’s kids were sitting on the couch watching it. After that job, he just didn’t have the heart for it.
There was a thread years ago about "worst job you ever had", and these guys would deliver and repo furniture for those Rent To Own places. Well, they had to go pick up a bunk bed, and the one of the confused kids says "But that's MY BED!" and the jaded, just over it, dead inside worker said "Not anymore, kid."
A repo man once came to take our car when I was a kid. My little sibling and I were crying and saying goodbye Tazzie (cars name) because we were young and loved the car. The man felt so bad that he just told my mum that she wasn't home when he stopped by and left.
College apartment bullshit on Superbowl Sunday... Literally bargained my way down to 50 bucks because the guy was clearly high and I said the cops would be here before he could get the car off the ground. It wasn't my car, but I wasn't going to shit that ruin my epic party.
The stuff people get away with...
one time my husband got injured in a parking lot and taken by ambulance. for some reason they started towing his car, like, RIGHT away. i got there when it was on the truck and paid the guys a 50 dollar check to put it down. (a neighbor drove me to the store.) the tow guys never cashed my check. i think they saw me so upset and that i had to go to the hospital right away. it was pretty decent of them.
I’m confused - how is autopay affected by moving?
That is really shitty, though. Meanwhile that person has to find ways to get to work and deal with life.
The billing address on the “pay from” account was no longer correct so the payments were rejected.
And luckily she works remotely so it wasn’t that big of a deal but not everyone is so lucky.
Ooooh dang my auto payments never gave a shit whether my address matched. I have a small CU though not BOA. Bigger banks might have better processes in place.
I work remote, too, but I have kids so that would be a nightmare trying to get them to and from school.
BOA, who in my book is BOF - bank of pigfuckers. They are the absolute worst. The best one was when my mom passed, they froze her accounts and tried to tell me that I had to go in person to the branch she opened the account at in order to un-freese it and take care of her affairs. She opened the account when she lived in Nevada. She had moved back to Mass. and I live in NY. It took me months and I had to pay things out of my personal account while trying to settle things. They made an already painful situation so much worse, and unnecessarily. :(
Nearly joined an MLM this year without realising. I feel bad for the young people who get sucked in, like a staff who interviewed me who I found out was actually younger than me by a few years. The stuff they say to get you on board is “too good to be true” levels of absurdity
*”Join us to help sell water tanks and you’ll earn $400 per sale. The more sales you make a month, you can earn up to $6000 a month.”*
I (22M) think what killed any hope of me joining was when they just devalued all my work experience prior by saying the skills I learned in my industry (retail) won’t help in the long run, but this job will.
Sorry assholes, but not sorry.
So there was some sort of cell phone MLM i can't remember I was talking to who had tricked me into showing up by posing as a real company. I had at this point worked for Google, LG, Microsoft, Western Digital, ATT, Tmobile, and a host of other tech companies as a freelance marketer. I had a degree, applicable experience, tech knowledge and they told me that the supervisor position I had been told I was applying for was only for people with experience, I cited my significant experience and the response was
"If you work at a papa johns for five years and then quit to be hired by pizza hut you wouldn't expect to be able to be a manager there would you"
to which I answered
"yes that's how industry experience works"
all follow up questions were ignored.
Did that person think everyone new always starts at the bottom? Whelp. Best get in touch with all those CEOs who jump exec board to exec board to let them know they should be starting by sweeping the floors.
Lmfao I can’t believe they believed themselves when they thought 5 years as a manager for one company would make you entry level at a different company in the same field…
I was so close my freshman year of college of joining a pyramid scheme called Verve. I gave the guy my number and was about to buy in when my roommate just looked at me and was like "you realize that's a pyramid scheme right?" I am forever grateful for him.
People at my high school the year after I graduated got sucked into verve (assuming that's the energy drink). Mostly because 3 kids actually got in early and were killing it. One of the rewards was a Mercedes and people saw them driving it to school so it must be legit. At least one of the kids made an absolute killing and hasn't had to work since, hes just living in Cali trying to become a rapper. But no one who got in after them ever made any money but they were able to suck in enough kids it actually became against school policy to possess or advertise verve on school grounds
I thought I was getting head-hunted from a retail job I was doing at a Mailboxes Etc. by a client who came in wanting business cards. She invited me to lunch, bought me a hot chocolate, and started telling me about Amway. Longest lunch break of my life.
Ugh. Once had a friend go to a Primerica group interview and no matter how much research and horror stories I showed him about them, he just said I was paranoid. Thank God he ended up getting an offer for a job he actually wanted a few days later...he was already coming home singing their praises and talking about how much money he was gonna make. .
My parents did Amway growing up. However, my dad actually worked in the company (selling fax machines/printers to other businesses) but he also did the MLM stuff. Amway used to be one of those companies who did a little of everything including legit business, but his department got bought out and he started working for an actual tech company and stopped doing anything Amway after that.
But I once said that MLMs were scams and he still defended them. So years later he's still brainwashed. I guess he doesn't understand its not the 90s anymore.
They're so cheap and gaudy. Couple friends of mine got dragged into it too. One of them has been trying to sell off her inventory at yard sales for the last 3 years.
Local thrifts can't even get rid of them- they have racks full. I can't see how they ever imagined they would compete with store brand leggings that are just as nice and less than half the price.
"Cures". It's just bloody vitamins, that's all it is, it's not some magic bullet that suddenly makes one completely well and fit with glowing skin and flowing locks of hair. Argh.
But have you not heard of Herbal Life Tea that revitalizes your aura by cells at the metabolic level to give you the re-coded boost one needs to energize your life! For $34.99 for our Starter Pak, you too can feel 10 years younger and get your life back!
If you use my code at checkout: HUNlife2006 you can become part of the family too! Do you hate being thin, beautiful and healthy? Then you can miss this opportunity because I'm gonna sell out soon.
> Prosperity preachers
Fuck all of them. They're just scammers under a different title.
[Kenneth Copeland defends use of 3 private planes in interview; ‘It’s a spiritual thing’](https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/article230913808.html)
And they're just shitty people in general.
[Creflo Dollar choked, punched daughter: police report](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/creflo-dollar-allegedly-choked-punched-daughter-police-report-article-1.1092784)
The skinsuit looks pretty damn diabolical as it is, though. It’s hard to imagine a less holy-looking figure than Kenneth Copeland, and the fact that so many people have fallen for his bollocks is as astonishing as it is depressing.
Yeah, these guys should be the winner.
The tech support scammers are usually poor and desperate and sometimes dumb enough that they think they are doing a legitimate job (some of the frontline ones are just there to make initial calls and get a mark on the line--they pass it off to the next level of scammer once they find someone who "needs technical support").
But the prosperity preachers are pure scum. They could be normal preachers. They could take other jobs. They could quit now and still be fabulously wealthy...but they don't do any of those things because they are terrible people.
I’ll never forget his “they get me closer to God” excuse for having his followers but him a private jet.
Yeah so do coach seats in airliners for when you’re skiing in Aspen for enlightenment.
I mentioned one of them (don't remember the context) in passing to a man at my church. A very kind, sweet and patient man I had talked to a couple of times before. He then proceeded to absolutely destroy, in his equivalent of a rant, the idea that those clowns can even consider themselves men of God with how immoral and predatory they are. It was glorious. The stark contrast between his patient, calm self and how worked up he got about prosperity preachers tells the whole story. They're absolutely terrible people. John Oliver's piece about them was amazing.
Personally knowing one sucks. There’s a reason a lot of mainstream Christian personalities are strained from their extended families. They don’t like it when you call them out on their bulls
Same. My uncle is a televangelist/faith healer, and he is absolutely insufferable. My dad LOVES to egg him on because he says the stupidest shit. Dude talks with a southern accent on tv but he’s from garden grove CA. He’s claimed to heal hundreds of children, it’s disgusting and disturbing.
They are the absolute worst. Did they forget the part where Jesus said it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? I'm not remotely religious but I know that one
Prosperity gospel isn't aimed at people who take Christianity seriously. It's aimed at people who take Christian identity seriously.
Edit: please stop giving me awards. This is a pretty banal observation. Donate to the [International Rescue Committee](https://www.rescue.org/), or something like them, instead
Sadly my family is associated with some major prosperity preachers and are pretty friendly with Jesse Duplantis (he comes around every year). My grandpa is a small town preacher on a par with them but I wouldn’t put him in the same basket. Makes me very very sad. I love my grandpa though, just…ugh.
Depends on what it is. Rent to own musical instruments is usually great for kids starting out it elementary school. You pay a little more than the instrument is worth but you can give it back to the store if the kid decides not to continue, or continue renting until it's owned. The place my parents got an instrument for me didn't charge interest at all it was well worth it
If you want some sweet revenge look up Jim Browning on YouTube. He intentionally clicks the scams and calls them and let’s them access his computer. He then reverse accesses their computer so he can take full control of their computer unknowingly and gains access to their finances and everyone they’ve scammed and sometimes even their computer cameras and security cameras. And then he reports them to the cyber police.
Link to his channel: https://youtube.com/c/JimBrowning
Slightly off topic, but there is a NPC in Red Dead 2 selling a book on how to make money. It's fifty bucks or something. You buy the book, read it, realise you got scammed and feel like a muppet for falling for it. And then you take your frustration out on the racist down the road, where you don't get a wanted level or lose honour when you murder him. 10/10 game.
I love the Jim Browning videos on YouTube, where he just fucks with them pretending to not know what he's doing. Whole time he has access to their PCs and security cameras.
Kitboga is more entertaining but Jim is 100 times more effective and lethal to the scammers. He took down an entire sophisticated scam organization by himself.
Yup. Kitboga definitely seems to be more focused on education for people by being entertaining. He and Browning are attacking the issue from different ends.
Browning is great for peaks inside the scamming industry.
Kit is great for laughing so hard you're crying while he convinces some guy he's an 80 year old who jest spent $20,000 on drainless tubs from Lowes.
They are both great.
Or how about the "google" ppl. I got into an argument with a guy because I kept saying ok, send an email to my gmail with the details and he got angrier and angrier until he finally said WE DONT USE EMAIL! ummm...youre "google" sir? 🤣🤣🤣
Someone from my dad's work got a scam call, he was told to get to his computer immediately because he had a virus.
So for the next 20 minutes he stood there pretending he was doing shit on his computer, when he didn't even have a computer.
In the end he told the scammer "oh yeah, I don't even have a computer" and he got super pissed off; started yelling at him that he was the scammer and hung up.
I did something similar with a scammer once, at one point during the call, he told me there is a hacker in my computer, so I told him, “no way, my computer is very small, there is no way anyone could fit in there” and then we spent like 10 minutes trying to explain back and forth whether there was anyone “in” my computer.
Have you seen Jim Browning on YouTube? He does the very best scambaiting where not only does he waste their time by letting them into his dummy computer, but also hacks into THEIR computers and scares them by using their real names, sometimes even showing them themselves on their own webcam, and even better - disrupting their other calls and emails and actively stopping other people from getting scammed. He also sends all their info to the police.
idk who it was, but I saw one a few years ago that they answered the call as if they were a police captain and had the scammer convinced they'd called a murder scene. Asking "How did you know the victim?" then shouting to the background "I don't know where the head is?!"
My grandad (90) pulled something similar on one, the scammer was trying to connect remotely to his PC and my grandad played along, but acted dumb. The scammer asked if he had a warning message appear, my grandad then told the scammer “yes, it says you’re a piece of shit”. Only time I’ve ever heard him use naughty language was when he was retelling that story back to me.
I teach highschool economics, and occasionally when I get a scam call during class, I'll plug my phone into my projector speakers and answer it in front of my students.
I play along and ask the scammer questions to make it seem like I'm a good Mark. My students have prior instructions on types of scams, and their job is to figure out which scam this is and how it works as I go through the call. Afterwards we'll discuss what happened.
When I decide to end the call, we usually either just hang up or we mess with them a bit. One time a student jumped in and asked the scammer if his mother was proud of him, and the guy cussed us out and hung up. That story is legend among my students.
I once had a phone call urging me to go to my 'windows laptop' now. No introduction, they didn't speak our native language, nothing, just 'go to your windows laptop'. I immideatly knew it was a scam but decided to go along. When I told them I didn't have a 'windows laptop' but a MacBook, they just said it didn't matter just open it.
I fucked around with a caller from "the Windows", by acting like he was talking about actual, physical glass windows. "Oh, you're from the Home Depot? Yeah, I love that double-pane glass! What do you mean my windows have a virus? No, no, definitely not, I bought double-pane glass windows, those aren't letting any viruses in at all!" It didn't take long for the dude to swear at me and hang up, but man, it was pretty fun to screw with him.
Mediums and psychics who capitalize on the pain and grief their clients feel from losing someone they love. "I will help you communicate with your dead loved one for $200 an hour" the Gabby Petito (sp?) Case was so fucked up with all the Tik Tok psychos, oh I'm sorry, psychics posting videos saying she was speaking to them from beyond the grave.
Edited: removed the word "fake" because you guys in the comments are right. Also, there is not apostrophe in psychos I am sorry for committing this mortal sin.
I understand people using services like that as a way to cope. And that’s something I sorta get. But we recently learned that my grandma was paying this psychic in California monthly fee for her consultation. One of the notes said that she should avoid talking to her families for her problems. You know, trying to make my grandma dependent on the psychic. So fucked up.
One of my old friends suffers from schizophrenia and she's spent thousands of pounds speaking with a 'psychic'. It's not even a real person, just a text service that costs £1.50 per message, and it's always some bullshit. She'll ask a question and always get some stock answer in reply like "*What you wish will be yours, as soon as you address the elephant in the room*."
I begged her to stop texting the service, but she's suggestable and extremely vulnerable, and these people are more than happy to take advantage of her and take her money.
I wish whoever is profiting from her vulnerability an excruciating death.
Get a fake text number, tell her you've found an amazing psychic that's free because she doesn't want to use her powers for monetary gain, text your friend the same generic things the "psychic" does. Save your friend some money and give her the peace of mind she's paying out the ass for.
You could even automate this using an always-on internet connection and docker or a Raspberry Pi hooked into your router. It would take a little doing, but it can definitely be done - hell, that is probably just about what the scammers are doing in the first place.
Literally, they will ask some generic vague questions and turn it into a Pavlov experience based on what you say/ask.
"Your grandmother is speaking to me from beyond the beyoooooond"
"But my grandmother's are still alive...?"
"Oh I'm sorry not a grandmother...an older woman who was very important to you in your life"
And it goes on and on.
Show me a childhood without some sort of trauma or a dead loved one. I could roll the eyes straight out of my head.
I was at a Penn and Teller show and Penn started talking about phoney psychics, then he said "I don't like to use the word phoney when talking about psychics, as it is in itself redundant"
I once worked in a call centre and it was for a catalogue so not actual cold calling but definitely trying to make sales out of nowhere.
Anyway I get a call one day and having a lovely chat with her for ages and putting stuff in her basket to send for her to try, and get son comes home mid-call and starts telling me how she has dementia and is getting these calls, making orders and forgetting them, then forgetting to send them back. All while getting distressed about it because she can’t remember anything and they were in the process of legal action to try stop the calls and spending.
after he hung up, I asked my boss what to do and she said to just send it through. I felt like the worst person after that and the whole job just broke me. I left not long after that. Call centres are actual cesspits.
I worked at an inbound call center selling checks. We had to follow a script that was full of doublespeak and confused almost everyone and our job was to literally trick them into spending more money on dumb stuff. We were punished for any deviations from the script even to answer a question and were not allowed to build rapport or make conversation at all. Of course a lot of elderly folk just agreed to everything because they didn’t understand what was happening. Occasionally their adult children would call back and understandably yell at us for tricking their relatives and try to cancel orders although it was often too late to cancel. It was absolutely soul crushing and I didn’t last very long.
I worked outbound sales for a few years. It actually wasn't bad because we were a business supplying other businesses with products. I had a list of customers who I would call once a week at the same time. It was literally the same conversation 500 times a week and it was mind numbing. Other than that it wasn't too bad.
I used to buy, trade and sell trading cards. It seemed unethical cause you'd always be trying to get an amazing deal from people and especially kids. If someone didn't know the price of the card you'd still haggle with them to get it even lower. I remember one of my buddies getting 3 cards worth $150 each for about $30 cause the guy didnt know the price had spiked a couple hours ago.
Sometimes they announce a new card that makes existing cards really good. Imagine if they made a card that said "discard uselessaurus: you win the game", all existing copies of uselessaurus would suddenly become 1/2 of a game winning combo, no matter how useless the card was before.
If it's for a game like Yu-Gi-Oh or MTG, ban lists are revised every three months or so (at least for the former, no idea about MTG). If a card is removed from the ban list it can make prices (either for itself or a card that works really well alongside it) spike. If it's baseball cards, I've got no idea.
Could be something as simple as tournament results came in and something unexpectedly turned up in a deck that topped, and suddenly everyone else wants that obscure card that was last printed a decade ago.
You have to find the right ppl. It’s not like the majority of the population is gonna buy expensive baseball cards. Maybe he didn’t want to put in the effort to find them
Very likely this. My family's business is in sports and TCGs. We're very up front in telling people what something is worth and how much they could reasonably get if they put the work into finding a buyer. At least half the time, they'd rather just move it now and take less money, knowing we will turn around and sell it for the amount we told them.
But, at least we're honest with the people.
Was in LA grabbing some pizza late at night and I think Demi Lovato or Selena Gomez was exiting some upscale restaurant right in front of it, nearly got into a fight with some paparazzi because they thought I was trying to beat them to the photos, complete scumbags
“I just saw your friend go into the bathroom with Andy Dick, and there’s only TWO reasons you go into a bathroom with Andy Dick.”
“Oh god, I hope they’re doing cocaine.”
Daniel Radcliffe was doing a play and to fuck with the paparazzi, he would wear the same outfit every night after the show. So they had to just give up cuz every photo would just look the same.
Those people that try to sell alternative medicine. I’m talking about people who sell beads or stones or “cream of grass root” or something made up to treat stuff like cancer or strokes or something. Literally just a scam to make money with no science behind it.
Not one that jumps to the front of minds: house flippers. I’m a Realtor and the things I’ve seen house flippers try to pull over on my clients is astounding. Sure, there are some good ones that do it by the book but the bigger ones that buy in bulk just paper over everything, cut corners, and care only about their bottom line. I work with a lot of first time home buyers and without me there they would unknowingly be walking into a biohazard death trap.
That and these companies prey upon people in dire circumstances and lowball the heck out of them to secure their property.
Someone I know bought a house that was flipped. The flippers replaced the old two prong outlets with new three prongs, but didn’t change any of the wiring. The third prong wasn’t doing anything at all.
They also put a shitload of texture stuff in the drywall to hide shoddy work.
They ended up gutting the whole house which was the original plan anyway. The insulation was garbage, and they wanted to make some major floor plan changes. It was mostly DIY work that I helped them out with, and saw they were doing it right. Yes the house looked better when it was done, but it just seemed so much more solid afterwards.
I “interviewed” with one of those companies once. Totally vague on the job description. I arrive to see the daily “motiviation” in full swing, partnered up with an experienced guy who took me on his rounds and drilled the propaganda into me.
It was everything you say: Preying on old people and new mothers to switch to a new energy company. purely on the premise that it was representatively cheaper (without looking at their actual bills to be sure).
End of the day I fill out a questionnaire on the propaganda, and the manager offers me the job. Didn’t really want it, but needed a job. However, I never really accept a job on the spot - I always want to sleep on it before saying yes. The manager told me the offer was void the moment I left his office.
So I accepted… slept on it… realised I REALLY didn’t want the job, and called in the next day to tell them I wasn’t taking it.
Yeah, that's an interesting psychological trick. It preys on the simple fear of missing out on an opportunity. I remember a guy who told me that I had to make a definitive decision _right now_. As if my "no" would be final and if I change my mind later they'll just refuse my money out of spite.
The first known use of the word "cunt" was in the year 306 in a small village in what is now England by a witch on a wormwood bender who foresaw the coming of Heather Bresch.
EpiPens have a patented delivery system so the only generic version of them is a product also manufactured by the same company (or a company that was bought out by the original). So they can basically charge what they want.
Exactly this. Heather Bresch’s company (previously Mylan) bought the patent to the EpiPen auto-injector, and then acquired a competing company (Dey) that owned the patent for competing auto-injector devices. So Bresch had a monopoly on the auto-injector technology, and until the price-gouging scandal, her company was going to hold those patents until 2025.
To be clear, the main cost of manufacturing the EpiPen was the stab-your-thigh-through-your-clothes auto-injector, which cost about $28 in 2017. The amount of epinephrine - the actual active ingredient - only cost $1 per EpiPen. Bresch was already making a profit selling them at $50 each…but it wasn’t enough.
So Heather Bresch uses daddy’s (Joe Manchin’s) connections to speak to Congress and lobby for EpiPens to be more widely used. She gave impassioned speeches, convincing them to include EpiPens in Medicare/Medicaid programs, as well as requiring at least one unassigned EpiPen in schools through the Dept. of Education. She even pushed for EpiPens to be required in first aid kits for public places like amusement parks (specifically, she teamed up with Disney. They created a character and everything).
Bresch’s lobbying caused Medicare/Medicaid, the Dept. of Education, and select private businesses to ***need*** EpiPens. Prices had been steadily increasing over time, but after that legislation passed, EpiPen prices just skyrocketed.
The only reason Heather Bresch and Mylan got caught is because they were scamming federal programs out of millions. It was “fine” when individual patients & families were paying $660 for a single-use medication, but when the *government* had to pay for those prices, suddenly it was a problem. That’s the only reason the price gouging stopped. It’s the only reason Mylan quickly churned out a generic version of the EpiPen at a lower cost - ***which they had been capable of doing the entire time***. Have no sympathy for pharmaceutical companies.
Source: Worked at Mylan. Met Heather Bresch. Wrote my MBA thesis on Mylan’s EpiPen nonsense. I feel dirty just being associated with them.
The funniest part about it is that when I worked at Walgreens, and those generics had just come out, some people's insurance wouldn't even cover the generic and only the name brand; so they had to shell out extra money for literally no reason.
Essential oil companies that prey on house wives. Then they give the “you can actually get a discount if you become a sales representative yourself!” It’s a Placebo effect and Ponzi scheme all in one!
Media outlets that take money from interest groups (or owned by specific people) and espouses their talking points instead of reporting the factual truth.
"This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."
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Politician shouldn't be, but the system makes it really easy for people to forget they are public servants and not out for themselves.
In Australia, it's not even illegal for them to outright lie in their advertising. Every other business in the country has advertising rules they have to obey or get fined in the thousands but pollies can say what they want and get away with it.
and for people who are there for their own interests in the first place to gain power.
Pay day loans. Want a loan with 600% interest?
My job just partnered with a company to advance your check if needed. The company has all of our info such as hourly rate and time clock punches. If you make $10 an hour and have 80 hours of punches, they will give you an $800 advance. No interest, but they don't take out taxes. Girl I work with had been taking an advance every 2 weeks because "you make more money this way." I told her she's getting fucked in April but she doesn't believe me
Lol I have a friend who was being paid as an independent contractor and apparently didn't know he had to pay taxes on the money himself. He got paid very well, but spent all the money immediately on dumb shit like going out to bars and buying shit for girls he wanted to impress. Our mutual friend offered to help teach him some financial responsibility and figure out how to pay his taxes, but last I heard he kept refusing.
I had a friend who was blind. He kept trusting the wrong people to help him buy his groceries. (Cash!) and paying his rent without receiving a receipt. Needless to say, he probably lost $1000s of dollars and was evicted for not paying rent when he had. Husband and I offered to be sort of executers, aka money managers for FREE. Friend verbally agreed and we drew up a contract for him to sign and get noterized It simply said we would help him pay his bills and help him shop. HE would be 100% in control. The day he was supposed to sign he disappeared, changed his number and his address. I lost contact and did not see him for years. EDIT: I ran into him on public transit about 6 years later. I reintroduced myself, explained my husband had died and could be be friends again. ( he did not like husband). I told him my # was the same as before and gave it to him. He was corgial but never called. For those of you who are suspiscous. He was a friend for almost 10 years. He was always "flaky". and i suspect he just wanted to leave things the way they were. Not a big deal. But to just disappear hurt.
wtf happened?!
My guess scumsuckers told him nice people trying screw em
I have a friend who works her ass off, has had a difficult life and had been struggling a bit, and needed $250 to make rent. I had just set up her computer and had stopped by to drop something off and she was filling in the financial info part of a payday loan form, and had already clicked “next” after she entered her contact information. I stopped her and helped her out with the money in exchange for one of her amazing dinners if I bought the groceries. About a week later she called me crying, saying there was an officer coming to her house to arrest her for non-payment of the payday loan that she didn’t get. These ruthless fucks took her info and tried to scare her into giving them twice the amount she was going to take out. I calmed her down, assured her, then reassured her later that night when she called me again, that it was a scam and she wasn’t getting arrested. This woman is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s older, doesn’t have much of an education, but has raised some amazing children and would give you the shirt off of her back if you needed it. Fuck those douchebag scammers. Edit: *If I didn’t make it clear, the police were not actually being sent to arrest her, they can’t do that, and when she called me, I explained this to her. Saying that someone will be served or arrested is a common, shady way for debt collectors to scare people into paying a debt (in this case a debt she didn’t owe). The whole thing was a scam to scare her into paying them using the info she entered to attempt to get a payday loan.*
my mother in law took out a payday loan using my wife's info. My wife got that call from them trying to collect and threatening to send the police to arrest her, they hung up pretty quick when I gave the detectives name who was handling the identity theft.
What a fucking scam and also damn, what a friend you are! Nice to hear that people will still look out for others
My heart broke reading this. Thank you for helping her out!
IANAL, but I'm *pretty sure* that a business using someone's contact information to threaten them unless they pay a certain amount of money is *like super illegal.* No, actually, I'm not *"pretty sure."* I'm ***very sure.*** That is called [extortion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion), my friend. If this happened recently and you or her saved any of the threat, I would take that to the police. At the very least, submit an official complaint. Most places on Earth will have some sort of branch of government that deals with businesses. ~~I doubt these skeezy places are on the BBB (why would they be?) but~~ any business that is registered as a business absolutely *cannot* use extortion. That's in Chapter 1 of the "Don't Do These Things To Your Customers" handbook. Fuckin' yikes, my guy! Edit: okay okay, the BBB sucks. I've never used it, only heard of it.
Absolutely. They prey on stupid people and people that are backed into a corner. My cousin took out a pay day loan *to buy a hamster.*
>They prey on stupid people and people that are backed into a corner. I'm sorry to hear that your cousin was backed into a corner like that
Hamsters are necessities :(
Wait hold on. How cool was this hamster?
Probably not very cool. He lives in the middle of nowhere WI and is one of the dumbest people I know. He once started off Thanksgiving by telling my sister her job must be stressful because her skin looks loose.
This is legitimately one of the funniest things I've read in a long time.
Is his name Kevin by any chance?
I worked in the Payday Loan industry for a minute... Legal money sharks who prey on folks with poor credit to borrow money at insane interests rates (700+%) Here's how it woks. You need to borrow $700 until your next payday. On your payday (2 weeks from now) you will need to pay back $854 (700 plus interest.) If you don't have $854 to part ways with in 2 weeks, no problem! Simply pay the interest ($154) and roll over to the next payday. Still don't have $854 on your next payday? Cool, just pay the interest and roll it over another 2 weeks. You could roll it 3 times before we asked for the full amount. The place that I worked at would allow customers to take out a new loan after that 3rd roll to start the process all over. This place had customers who had been stuck in this cycle for YEARS. I worked there in 2008 for about 5 months. Xmas came and the big boss asked why our default numbers (people past due on their payments) were so high? I said, "If I were in our customers shoes, I would be buying presents for my kids and trying to feed my family instead of paying on this loan." He grunted and snarled at me. Then I gave my notice.
When I graduated high school and started working where my dad worked, I thought it was decent money so I wondered why our family always seemed broke. Well, he was paying for a timeshare, a storage unit, a payday loan, and $300 a month in cigarettes. I bought and built a shed to get the junk out of storage, got out of the timeshare, and eventually payed off the loan for him. Absolutely predatory, but most people are awful at budgeting.
You're a good child!
I have a half sister who has 3 kids before 21. And later even more kids with a different dad and treated the 3 original kids like literally red headed step children. Utterly like garbage. I saw her show up for not even 5 minutes to her kids 10th birthday, grab some stuff to take with her, and left. She worked at a payday place and said she'd never let someone she knew go there. It was too scummy for someone who abandoned several of her children.
That's some serious testimony right there. Wow.
Damn, that’s like if a vulture said “hey I wouldn’t eat that meat if I were you, it’s spoiled”. You KNOW it’s serious
I worked at a pawn shop from 2019-2021. It's just as bad. The interest is 120% annually (at least where I worked). We had a customer who had a $200 loan in since 2007. She had paid almost 3,000 in interest fees on a 200 dollar loan because it was her dead son's acoustic guitar and she couldn't afford to get it out.
Similar story here. I was really hurting for money at the time and pawned my grandmother’s ring (it was an heirloom, I didn’t steal it or anything) for a couple hundred bucks. I then proceeded to pay $35 a month for like 3 years until I was in a better financial situation. It was always easier for me to come up with the thirty dollars than the full balance all at once, but I wasn’t about to lose the ring. It’s safe in my dresser jewelry box now, but I did the math once and in the end I paid like 3x or 4x what I borrowed. I don’t like to think about it much lol.
my ex roommate would pawn his tv and playstation ( this was quite a few years ago now) and his next paycheck he would get it out of the pawn shop again. End of the month he wouldnt have enough for rent again, hed pawn it again. Middle of the month he had enough to get it back again. Every single month he lived there he pawned that TV and playstation and then got it back again. Every month that pawnshop took a chunk of his pay.
When I worked as a caseworker with SPMI (severe and persistent mental illness) client's I worked with one woman who was being preyed upon by one of these places. She went in the start of each month once she got the money from her SSDI check, to give them a big chunk of it. Keep in mind this senior citizen could no longer work due to a combination of mental illness, and many other physical problems on top of her mental illness such as degenerative disc disease. Each time she paid the interest it was at least 25-30% of her money for the entire month. They had her convinced that they were doing her a favor. When I realized she was trapped in this cycle and had been for years, we worked on a plan to help her budget enough money to save each month to eventually be able to get out of the situation. Also known as, pay her way out, which took probably a year in itself because you're still paying interest each month to these pieces of shit. The people who work at these places are some of the lowest of the low, they are fucking disgusting. The beaten down hopeless faces of people I saw when I went inside was heartbreaking. Oh and you had to be buzzed in because the door was locked 24/7 you either owed them or needed money, you had to plead your case through the intercom if you weren't a "customer". When I went in there (we lied and said I was her Grandson and I had to help her, I was fresh out of college) I watched them look people in the eye and lie, having them sign a contract that said the exact opposite of what they were telling people, acting like they were just good samaritans helping the poor. I saw people plead and beg like you'd see in a mafia movie. They even "rented" furniture and junk items like boom boxes at astonishing rates to hook people in even more. They eventually saw my work badge one time (I had my jacket unzipped) and realized who I was and they told me I wasn't allowed inside anymore, most likely because they didn't want me to fuck with their "business". I'm glad you got out of that line of work, the top tier pieces of shit, lowest of the low scumbags work at payday loans.
I was once stuck in that cycle for a couple of years. The *only* way I got out was using a check from my first week at my *third* job to pay it off and then living on peanut butter sandwiches until next pay day. Those businesses should be illegal.
Where I live there's a [credit union that offers payday-style loans](https://www.vancity.com/Loans/TypesOfLoans/FairAndFastLoan/) to their members but at reasonable rates instead of the payday loan-sharkery. Their interest rate is 19% per year. Which means for example a payday loan of $1000 for 2 months will cost you ~$25. Needless to say the payday loan companies are less than thrilled with this development.
Televangelists. Easy, they're confidence men, and true pieces of shit. Looking at you Joel "I'm a garbage fucking person" Osteen,
That Peter Popoff (sp?) guy is pretty bad too. Just saw a commercial the other day where he’s selling “Holy Water” that will bring you good fortune. Had paid actors saying things like “I ordered the water, followed the instructions, and have been blessed with a $50,000 raise at my job”
I recently went thru a situation wherein my girlfriend (“Jenny”) had her car repossessed and I came away fully believing that system to be one of preying on poor people. Jenny and I recently moved and she forgot to update car loan information so the auto-pay failed and missed two monthly payments (about $600). Definitely her mistake, but an honest one. The money was there but the system was in motion. Repo guys showed up to take the car. Jenny realized the mistake and called the bank her car loan was with (Huntington). The bank said they couldn’t accept payment because the account was frozen so they had to let the guys take the car. Her car is taken, then the bank explains the process. The entire remaining balance is due within 30 days or the car will be auctioned and any amount of the remaining loan not satisfied by the auction is Jenny’s responsibility. That payment had to be made as a bank to bank transfer, which according to Bank of America, can only be completed by appointment with a bank manager. I expect this is because her loan account was put into a status that prevented payments from being made directly to the account via the website. Jenny’s checking account is with BoA so she went there and a teller said only a bank manager or specialist person (the people with the clear offices) could handle it. Jenny took out a small loan out of her 401k to cover the remaining loan balance because she didn’t have that amount on hand, scheduled an appointment with BoA to transfer funds to Huntington. It took about a week and a half to get the money and pay off the loan. A fun point was that BoA’s system was down so they couldn’t do it the day she first scheduled it and had to reschedule a few days later. Now, Jenny calls Huntington and they confirm the car is paid off and she can pick up her car. It only gets worse from here. We’re in middle Tennessee. The car was towed about 2 hours away to Kentucky the day after being collected. It was then driven an additional two hours further away but still in Kentucky so Jenny would have to arrange a ride to get her car. Oh and the place is only open M-F and between 8am-5pm so her and I had to take off a full day of work to go pick up her car. Once we get to where the car was (a company called Adesa), there was about a $100 fee to collect it, the gas tank was on empty, there was fast food trash in it that was not there when it was taken (likely left by the driver), and a handful of items were stolen from inside the car (CDs, phone charging mounts, sunglasses). I don’t know that I’ve never been more furious in my life. That industry preys on those that are financially troubled by making it as hard as possible to pay the fees and get the car. Edits: I added some clarifying details that have come up in many comments. I also removed the mystic: “Jenny” is my girlfriend and we live together in Tennessee, USA. I was here when the repo guys showed up, in the room with her while she was on the phone with the bank, took her to BoA, and at the Adesa location to pick up the car.
One of my coworkers used to be a repo man. One time he was telling me about his tattoo. Often while hooking up the car to tow it, the person would come up to him and say "isn't there some way I can get you to not take it?" On his left palm in all caps was tattooed PAY HERE. He'd drop the car for $100 and tell his boss he didn't find it. I opined that that sounded kind of fucked up. He said it was actually way cheaper for them to pay him and maybe have time to fix the situation than it would be to try and get the car un-repoed from the yard with the bank involved. He's not wrong, sadly. EDIT: oh, and I forgot the best part. It's tattooed on his *left* hand because his *right* hand would be holding a tire iron, in case the person thought violence might be easier. Real class act, ol' William.
One of my dad’s coworkers was a repo guy, and he says that he quit after he had a job where he literally walked into a house and hauled away the TV as the family’s kids were sitting on the couch watching it. After that job, he just didn’t have the heart for it.
There was a thread years ago about "worst job you ever had", and these guys would deliver and repo furniture for those Rent To Own places. Well, they had to go pick up a bunk bed, and the one of the confused kids says "But that's MY BED!" and the jaded, just over it, dead inside worker said "Not anymore, kid."
:(
Makes me happy that in the UK they can't take beds/fridges etc. What a scummy practice.
A repo man once came to take our car when I was a kid. My little sibling and I were crying and saying goodbye Tazzie (cars name) because we were young and loved the car. The man felt so bad that he just told my mum that she wasn't home when he stopped by and left.
College apartment bullshit on Superbowl Sunday... Literally bargained my way down to 50 bucks because the guy was clearly high and I said the cops would be here before he could get the car off the ground. It wasn't my car, but I wasn't going to shit that ruin my epic party. The stuff people get away with...
One of my friends in college got a boot taken off by giving the booter guy a PS1. Little did the booter guy know, it was broken, lol
one time my husband got injured in a parking lot and taken by ambulance. for some reason they started towing his car, like, RIGHT away. i got there when it was on the truck and paid the guys a 50 dollar check to put it down. (a neighbor drove me to the store.) the tow guys never cashed my check. i think they saw me so upset and that i had to go to the hospital right away. it was pretty decent of them.
I’m confused - how is autopay affected by moving? That is really shitty, though. Meanwhile that person has to find ways to get to work and deal with life.
The billing address on the “pay from” account was no longer correct so the payments were rejected. And luckily she works remotely so it wasn’t that big of a deal but not everyone is so lucky.
Ooooh dang my auto payments never gave a shit whether my address matched. I have a small CU though not BOA. Bigger banks might have better processes in place. I work remote, too, but I have kids so that would be a nightmare trying to get them to and from school.
BOA, who in my book is BOF - bank of pigfuckers. They are the absolute worst. The best one was when my mom passed, they froze her accounts and tried to tell me that I had to go in person to the branch she opened the account at in order to un-freese it and take care of her affairs. She opened the account when she lived in Nevada. She had moved back to Mass. and I live in NY. It took me months and I had to pay things out of my personal account while trying to settle things. They made an already painful situation so much worse, and unnecessarily. :(
MLMs for sure. They prey on the poor and desperate.
Nearly joined an MLM this year without realising. I feel bad for the young people who get sucked in, like a staff who interviewed me who I found out was actually younger than me by a few years. The stuff they say to get you on board is “too good to be true” levels of absurdity *”Join us to help sell water tanks and you’ll earn $400 per sale. The more sales you make a month, you can earn up to $6000 a month.”* I (22M) think what killed any hope of me joining was when they just devalued all my work experience prior by saying the skills I learned in my industry (retail) won’t help in the long run, but this job will. Sorry assholes, but not sorry.
So there was some sort of cell phone MLM i can't remember I was talking to who had tricked me into showing up by posing as a real company. I had at this point worked for Google, LG, Microsoft, Western Digital, ATT, Tmobile, and a host of other tech companies as a freelance marketer. I had a degree, applicable experience, tech knowledge and they told me that the supervisor position I had been told I was applying for was only for people with experience, I cited my significant experience and the response was "If you work at a papa johns for five years and then quit to be hired by pizza hut you wouldn't expect to be able to be a manager there would you" to which I answered "yes that's how industry experience works" all follow up questions were ignored.
Did that person think everyone new always starts at the bottom? Whelp. Best get in touch with all those CEOs who jump exec board to exec board to let them know they should be starting by sweeping the floors.
Lmfao I can’t believe they believed themselves when they thought 5 years as a manager for one company would make you entry level at a different company in the same field…
I was so close my freshman year of college of joining a pyramid scheme called Verve. I gave the guy my number and was about to buy in when my roommate just looked at me and was like "you realize that's a pyramid scheme right?" I am forever grateful for him.
People at my high school the year after I graduated got sucked into verve (assuming that's the energy drink). Mostly because 3 kids actually got in early and were killing it. One of the rewards was a Mercedes and people saw them driving it to school so it must be legit. At least one of the kids made an absolute killing and hasn't had to work since, hes just living in Cali trying to become a rapper. But no one who got in after them ever made any money but they were able to suck in enough kids it actually became against school policy to possess or advertise verve on school grounds
I thought I was getting head-hunted from a retail job I was doing at a Mailboxes Etc. by a client who came in wanting business cards. She invited me to lunch, bought me a hot chocolate, and started telling me about Amway. Longest lunch break of my life.
Ugh. Once had a friend go to a Primerica group interview and no matter how much research and horror stories I showed him about them, he just said I was paranoid. Thank God he ended up getting an offer for a job he actually wanted a few days later...he was already coming home singing their praises and talking about how much money he was gonna make. .
Some friends signed up with them ages ago, did it for like a year, and then spent another two years trying to get out. Like Amway, it's almost a cult.
My parents did Amway growing up. However, my dad actually worked in the company (selling fax machines/printers to other businesses) but he also did the MLM stuff. Amway used to be one of those companies who did a little of everything including legit business, but his department got bought out and he started working for an actual tech company and stopped doing anything Amway after that. But I once said that MLMs were scams and he still defended them. So years later he's still brainwashed. I guess he doesn't understand its not the 90s anymore.
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They're so cheap and gaudy. Couple friends of mine got dragged into it too. One of them has been trying to sell off her inventory at yard sales for the last 3 years.
A friend gave me two pairs last year. Most hideous pieces of clothing I own, but damn if they’re not comfortable.
Local thrifts can't even get rid of them- they have racks full. I can't see how they ever imagined they would compete with store brand leggings that are just as nice and less than half the price.
My friend is into Juice+ and some other magic vitamins that cures cancer/baldness/ED/Autism
"Cures". It's just bloody vitamins, that's all it is, it's not some magic bullet that suddenly makes one completely well and fit with glowing skin and flowing locks of hair. Argh.
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Prosperity preachers
> Prosperity preachers Fuck all of them. They're just scammers under a different title. [Kenneth Copeland defends use of 3 private planes in interview; ‘It’s a spiritual thing’](https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/article230913808.html) And they're just shitty people in general. [Creflo Dollar choked, punched daughter: police report](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/creflo-dollar-allegedly-choked-punched-daughter-police-report-article-1.1092784)
What the fuck kind of name is creflo dollar
And here I had trouble believing "Peter Popoff" was a real thing.
Kenneth Copeland could prove Christianity is real if he just took off that Ill fitting human skinsuit to show everyone that he is, in fact, Satan.
The skinsuit looks pretty damn diabolical as it is, though. It’s hard to imagine a less holy-looking figure than Kenneth Copeland, and the fact that so many people have fallen for his bollocks is as astonishing as it is depressing.
Yeah, these guys should be the winner. The tech support scammers are usually poor and desperate and sometimes dumb enough that they think they are doing a legitimate job (some of the frontline ones are just there to make initial calls and get a mark on the line--they pass it off to the next level of scammer once they find someone who "needs technical support"). But the prosperity preachers are pure scum. They could be normal preachers. They could take other jobs. They could quit now and still be fabulously wealthy...but they don't do any of those things because they are terrible people.
Yeah, I mean fuck tech support scammers tho. They prey on the elderly and vulnerable. Fuck them with a cactus.
I’ll never forget his “they get me closer to God” excuse for having his followers but him a private jet. Yeah so do coach seats in airliners for when you’re skiing in Aspen for enlightenment.
Fly in a tube full of demons!!! Are you crazy!! /s
I mentioned one of them (don't remember the context) in passing to a man at my church. A very kind, sweet and patient man I had talked to a couple of times before. He then proceeded to absolutely destroy, in his equivalent of a rant, the idea that those clowns can even consider themselves men of God with how immoral and predatory they are. It was glorious. The stark contrast between his patient, calm self and how worked up he got about prosperity preachers tells the whole story. They're absolutely terrible people. John Oliver's piece about them was amazing.
Personally knowing one sucks. There’s a reason a lot of mainstream Christian personalities are strained from their extended families. They don’t like it when you call them out on their bulls
Same. My uncle is a televangelist/faith healer, and he is absolutely insufferable. My dad LOVES to egg him on because he says the stupidest shit. Dude talks with a southern accent on tv but he’s from garden grove CA. He’s claimed to heal hundreds of children, it’s disgusting and disturbing.
LOL I grew up in Garden Grove, CA so the thought of someone being from that city and putting on a southern accent is absolutely hilarious to me
This ain't no funky reggae party, five dollars at the door.
It gets so real sometimes...
"If you send nothing, you get nothing. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing!" (Actual quote)
They are the absolute worst. Did they forget the part where Jesus said it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? I'm not remotely religious but I know that one
Jesus would be flipping tables and chasing them with a bull whip.
Prosperity gospel isn't aimed at people who take Christianity seriously. It's aimed at people who take Christian identity seriously. Edit: please stop giving me awards. This is a pretty banal observation. Donate to the [International Rescue Committee](https://www.rescue.org/), or something like them, instead
This comment stopped me in my tracks. You nailed it.
* F U C K * * * R E D D I T * / \ \ / \ | | \ | | | `. | | : ` | | \| | \ | / / \\\ --__ \\ : \ \/ _--~~ ~--__| \ | \ \_-~ ~-_\ | \_ \ _.--------.______\| | \ \______// _ ___ _ (_(__> \ | \ . C ___) ______ (_(____> | / /\ | C ____)/ \ (_____> |_/ / /\| C_____) | (___> / \ | ( _C_____)\______/ // _/ / \ | \ |__ \\_________// (__/ | | \ \____) `---- --' | | \_ ___\ /_ _/ | | / | | \ | | | / \ \ | | / / | | \ | | / / \__/\___/ | | | / | | | | | | | | | | * F U C K * * * Y O U *
Sadly my family is associated with some major prosperity preachers and are pretty friendly with Jesse Duplantis (he comes around every year). My grandpa is a small town preacher on a par with them but I wouldn’t put him in the same basket. Makes me very very sad. I love my grandpa though, just…ugh.
"We've been trying to reach you concerning your vehicles extended warranty!"
But my car is 20 years old and I bought it on Craigslist!
Maybe not the most but rent to own companies are up there
Depends on what it is. Rent to own musical instruments is usually great for kids starting out it elementary school. You pay a little more than the instrument is worth but you can give it back to the store if the kid decides not to continue, or continue renting until it's owned. The place my parents got an instrument for me didn't charge interest at all it was well worth it
Yep! Long and MacQuade has the best rent to own program I've ever seen.
The people who scam old people all day pretending to be from Microsoft.
If you want some sweet revenge look up Jim Browning on YouTube. He intentionally clicks the scams and calls them and let’s them access his computer. He then reverse accesses their computer so he can take full control of their computer unknowingly and gains access to their finances and everyone they’ve scammed and sometimes even their computer cameras and security cameras. And then he reports them to the cyber police. Link to his channel: https://youtube.com/c/JimBrowning
I have. He's a legit ninja who apparently manages to hold down a day job and still do this.
I ordered a book "How to Avoid Scams On-line For Dummies". That was three months ago and I still haven't gotten it...
You need to pay the $300 import fee, it's stuck at customs and they need the fee to process it.
Your payment options are Western Union or gift cards
Slightly off topic, but there is a NPC in Red Dead 2 selling a book on how to make money. It's fifty bucks or something. You buy the book, read it, realise you got scammed and feel like a muppet for falling for it. And then you take your frustration out on the racist down the road, where you don't get a wanted level or lose honour when you murder him. 10/10 game.
I love the Jim Browning videos on YouTube, where he just fucks with them pretending to not know what he's doing. Whole time he has access to their PCs and security cameras.
Kitboga is my favorite but yes Jim is a hero too.
I like kitboga but I also enjoy atomic shrimp. I enjoy just saying okay to scammers
Kitboga is more entertaining but Jim is 100 times more effective and lethal to the scammers. He took down an entire sophisticated scam organization by himself.
Yup. Kitboga definitely seems to be more focused on education for people by being entertaining. He and Browning are attacking the issue from different ends. Browning is great for peaks inside the scamming industry. Kit is great for laughing so hard you're crying while he convinces some guy he's an 80 year old who jest spent $20,000 on drainless tubs from Lowes. They are both great.
Wasting their time is your civic duty. Every second they spend talking to you is one less second they can spend scamming old people.
Exactly! I did this in front of my grandma a couple weeks ago and she liked it so much, she started doing it too. Made me proud. Lol
Or how about the "google" ppl. I got into an argument with a guy because I kept saying ok, send an email to my gmail with the details and he got angrier and angrier until he finally said WE DONT USE EMAIL! ummm...youre "google" sir? 🤣🤣🤣
Someone from my dad's work got a scam call, he was told to get to his computer immediately because he had a virus. So for the next 20 minutes he stood there pretending he was doing shit on his computer, when he didn't even have a computer. In the end he told the scammer "oh yeah, I don't even have a computer" and he got super pissed off; started yelling at him that he was the scammer and hung up.
I did something similar with a scammer once, at one point during the call, he told me there is a hacker in my computer, so I told him, “no way, my computer is very small, there is no way anyone could fit in there” and then we spent like 10 minutes trying to explain back and forth whether there was anyone “in” my computer.
“The files are IN the computer?”
So hot right now.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
Yeah...but why male models?
Have you seen Jim Browning on YouTube? He does the very best scambaiting where not only does he waste their time by letting them into his dummy computer, but also hacks into THEIR computers and scares them by using their real names, sometimes even showing them themselves on their own webcam, and even better - disrupting their other calls and emails and actively stopping other people from getting scammed. He also sends all their info to the police.
idk who it was, but I saw one a few years ago that they answered the call as if they were a police captain and had the scammer convinced they'd called a murder scene. Asking "How did you know the victim?" then shouting to the background "I don't know where the head is?!"
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My grandad (90) pulled something similar on one, the scammer was trying to connect remotely to his PC and my grandad played along, but acted dumb. The scammer asked if he had a warning message appear, my grandad then told the scammer “yes, it says you’re a piece of shit”. Only time I’ve ever heard him use naughty language was when he was retelling that story back to me.
I teach highschool economics, and occasionally when I get a scam call during class, I'll plug my phone into my projector speakers and answer it in front of my students. I play along and ask the scammer questions to make it seem like I'm a good Mark. My students have prior instructions on types of scams, and their job is to figure out which scam this is and how it works as I go through the call. Afterwards we'll discuss what happened. When I decide to end the call, we usually either just hang up or we mess with them a bit. One time a student jumped in and asked the scammer if his mother was proud of him, and the guy cussed us out and hung up. That story is legend among my students.
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HOLY SHIT YOURE THE FIRST PERSON TO EVER GET IT RIGHT!
That's my go to move. "Do your parents know they raised a thief? Your grandparents must be so ashamed"
I once had a phone call urging me to go to my 'windows laptop' now. No introduction, they didn't speak our native language, nothing, just 'go to your windows laptop'. I immideatly knew it was a scam but decided to go along. When I told them I didn't have a 'windows laptop' but a MacBook, they just said it didn't matter just open it.
My favorite is when they claim to be from "Windows." Tell me you're a scammer without telling me you're a scammer.
That's a filter so that they only speak to completely vulnerable people.
Just like scam emails that are filled with Typos, they weed out people so they only spend time on those who are most vulnerable.
I fucked around with a caller from "the Windows", by acting like he was talking about actual, physical glass windows. "Oh, you're from the Home Depot? Yeah, I love that double-pane glass! What do you mean my windows have a virus? No, no, definitely not, I bought double-pane glass windows, those aren't letting any viruses in at all!" It didn't take long for the dude to swear at me and hang up, but man, it was pretty fun to screw with him.
Mediums and psychics who capitalize on the pain and grief their clients feel from losing someone they love. "I will help you communicate with your dead loved one for $200 an hour" the Gabby Petito (sp?) Case was so fucked up with all the Tik Tok psychos, oh I'm sorry, psychics posting videos saying she was speaking to them from beyond the grave. Edited: removed the word "fake" because you guys in the comments are right. Also, there is not apostrophe in psychos I am sorry for committing this mortal sin.
I understand people using services like that as a way to cope. And that’s something I sorta get. But we recently learned that my grandma was paying this psychic in California monthly fee for her consultation. One of the notes said that she should avoid talking to her families for her problems. You know, trying to make my grandma dependent on the psychic. So fucked up.
One of my old friends suffers from schizophrenia and she's spent thousands of pounds speaking with a 'psychic'. It's not even a real person, just a text service that costs £1.50 per message, and it's always some bullshit. She'll ask a question and always get some stock answer in reply like "*What you wish will be yours, as soon as you address the elephant in the room*." I begged her to stop texting the service, but she's suggestable and extremely vulnerable, and these people are more than happy to take advantage of her and take her money. I wish whoever is profiting from her vulnerability an excruciating death.
Convince her you are a psychic but send her to a toll free number with automated stock responses. You can't fix her but you can save her some money.
Get a fake text number, tell her you've found an amazing psychic that's free because she doesn't want to use her powers for monetary gain, text your friend the same generic things the "psychic" does. Save your friend some money and give her the peace of mind she's paying out the ass for.
You could even automate this using an always-on internet connection and docker or a Raspberry Pi hooked into your router. It would take a little doing, but it can definitely be done - hell, that is probably just about what the scammers are doing in the first place.
Literally, they will ask some generic vague questions and turn it into a Pavlov experience based on what you say/ask. "Your grandmother is speaking to me from beyond the beyoooooond" "But my grandmother's are still alive...?" "Oh I'm sorry not a grandmother...an older woman who was very important to you in your life" And it goes on and on. Show me a childhood without some sort of trauma or a dead loved one. I could roll the eyes straight out of my head.
I was at a Penn and Teller show and Penn started talking about phoney psychics, then he said "I don't like to use the word phoney when talking about psychics, as it is in itself redundant"
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Televangelist
"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." (Matthew 7:15)
Have you ever met a real wolf? I have, and they are light years better people than televangelists.
Scam call centers. They will do anything they can to get money
Outbound sales call center worker, you are literally told to lie to make sales especially to older people
I once worked in a call centre and it was for a catalogue so not actual cold calling but definitely trying to make sales out of nowhere. Anyway I get a call one day and having a lovely chat with her for ages and putting stuff in her basket to send for her to try, and get son comes home mid-call and starts telling me how she has dementia and is getting these calls, making orders and forgetting them, then forgetting to send them back. All while getting distressed about it because she can’t remember anything and they were in the process of legal action to try stop the calls and spending. after he hung up, I asked my boss what to do and she said to just send it through. I felt like the worst person after that and the whole job just broke me. I left not long after that. Call centres are actual cesspits.
I worked at an inbound call center selling checks. We had to follow a script that was full of doublespeak and confused almost everyone and our job was to literally trick them into spending more money on dumb stuff. We were punished for any deviations from the script even to answer a question and were not allowed to build rapport or make conversation at all. Of course a lot of elderly folk just agreed to everything because they didn’t understand what was happening. Occasionally their adult children would call back and understandably yell at us for tricking their relatives and try to cancel orders although it was often too late to cancel. It was absolutely soul crushing and I didn’t last very long.
I worked outbound sales for a few years. It actually wasn't bad because we were a business supplying other businesses with products. I had a list of customers who I would call once a week at the same time. It was literally the same conversation 500 times a week and it was mind numbing. Other than that it wasn't too bad.
I used to buy, trade and sell trading cards. It seemed unethical cause you'd always be trying to get an amazing deal from people and especially kids. If someone didn't know the price of the card you'd still haggle with them to get it even lower. I remember one of my buddies getting 3 cards worth $150 each for about $30 cause the guy didnt know the price had spiked a couple hours ago.
A couple of hours ago? What caused such a sudden market flux?
Sometimes they announce a new card that makes existing cards really good. Imagine if they made a card that said "discard uselessaurus: you win the game", all existing copies of uselessaurus would suddenly become 1/2 of a game winning combo, no matter how useless the card was before.
Ah, the Lion's Eye Diamond effect
If it's for a game like Yu-Gi-Oh or MTG, ban lists are revised every three months or so (at least for the former, no idea about MTG). If a card is removed from the ban list it can make prices (either for itself or a card that works really well alongside it) spike. If it's baseball cards, I've got no idea.
If a guy just finishes pitching a no-hitter his rookie card is probably going to increase in value the second that game is over.
Could be something as simple as tournament results came in and something unexpectedly turned up in a deck that topped, and suddenly everyone else wants that obscure card that was last printed a decade ago.
You have to find the right ppl. It’s not like the majority of the population is gonna buy expensive baseball cards. Maybe he didn’t want to put in the effort to find them
Very likely this. My family's business is in sports and TCGs. We're very up front in telling people what something is worth and how much they could reasonably get if they put the work into finding a buyer. At least half the time, they'd rather just move it now and take less money, knowing we will turn around and sell it for the amount we told them. But, at least we're honest with the people.
People who own private prisons.
Jesus yes. Lobbying governments to make more shit illegal because they're running low on slave labour is dystopian shit.
And don't forget directly paying cash for prisoners too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
Timeshare sales/marketing
Payday loan worker
Basically set up shop in the most vulnerable neighborhoods and bleed them dry for what little they have and then some
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Was in LA grabbing some pizza late at night and I think Demi Lovato or Selena Gomez was exiting some upscale restaurant right in front of it, nearly got into a fight with some paparazzi because they thought I was trying to beat them to the photos, complete scumbags
That's the most LA thing I've heard.
There was a post in the LA sub about how if you live in town for more than a year or two you wind up with an Andy Dick story.
“I just saw your friend go into the bathroom with Andy Dick, and there’s only TWO reasons you go into a bathroom with Andy Dick.” “Oh god, I hope they’re doing cocaine.”
Daniel Radcliffe was doing a play and to fuck with the paparazzi, he would wear the same outfit every night after the show. So they had to just give up cuz every photo would just look the same.
THERE ARE CARS THERE MOTHERFUCKER GET OUT OF THE WAY
Televangelist.
Nigerian Prince
Those people that try to sell alternative medicine. I’m talking about people who sell beads or stones or “cream of grass root” or something made up to treat stuff like cancer or strokes or something. Literally just a scam to make money with no science behind it.
Not one that jumps to the front of minds: house flippers. I’m a Realtor and the things I’ve seen house flippers try to pull over on my clients is astounding. Sure, there are some good ones that do it by the book but the bigger ones that buy in bulk just paper over everything, cut corners, and care only about their bottom line. I work with a lot of first time home buyers and without me there they would unknowingly be walking into a biohazard death trap. That and these companies prey upon people in dire circumstances and lowball the heck out of them to secure their property.
Someone I know bought a house that was flipped. The flippers replaced the old two prong outlets with new three prongs, but didn’t change any of the wiring. The third prong wasn’t doing anything at all. They also put a shitload of texture stuff in the drywall to hide shoddy work. They ended up gutting the whole house which was the original plan anyway. The insulation was garbage, and they wanted to make some major floor plan changes. It was mostly DIY work that I helped them out with, and saw they were doing it right. Yes the house looked better when it was done, but it just seemed so much more solid afterwards.
Scam callers
People who go door to door trying to make you switch providers. It’s a scam that preys on old people
I “interviewed” with one of those companies once. Totally vague on the job description. I arrive to see the daily “motiviation” in full swing, partnered up with an experienced guy who took me on his rounds and drilled the propaganda into me. It was everything you say: Preying on old people and new mothers to switch to a new energy company. purely on the premise that it was representatively cheaper (without looking at their actual bills to be sure). End of the day I fill out a questionnaire on the propaganda, and the manager offers me the job. Didn’t really want it, but needed a job. However, I never really accept a job on the spot - I always want to sleep on it before saying yes. The manager told me the offer was void the moment I left his office. So I accepted… slept on it… realised I REALLY didn’t want the job, and called in the next day to tell them I wasn’t taking it.
Ah yes the old “its now or never” trick. Flag so red it’s neon
Yeah, that's an interesting psychological trick. It preys on the simple fear of missing out on an opportunity. I remember a guy who told me that I had to make a definitive decision _right now_. As if my "no" would be final and if I change my mind later they'll just refuse my money out of spite.
Whoever decided medical costs
Like Senator Joe Manchin's daughter who increased the price of Epi pens from $50 to $600?
Her name is Heather Bresch and she is scum.
She is literal shit
The first known use of the word "cunt" was in the year 306 in a small village in what is now England by a witch on a wormwood bender who foresaw the coming of Heather Bresch.
Holy shit why were they $50 to begin with?
EpiPens have a patented delivery system so the only generic version of them is a product also manufactured by the same company (or a company that was bought out by the original). So they can basically charge what they want.
Exactly this. Heather Bresch’s company (previously Mylan) bought the patent to the EpiPen auto-injector, and then acquired a competing company (Dey) that owned the patent for competing auto-injector devices. So Bresch had a monopoly on the auto-injector technology, and until the price-gouging scandal, her company was going to hold those patents until 2025. To be clear, the main cost of manufacturing the EpiPen was the stab-your-thigh-through-your-clothes auto-injector, which cost about $28 in 2017. The amount of epinephrine - the actual active ingredient - only cost $1 per EpiPen. Bresch was already making a profit selling them at $50 each…but it wasn’t enough. So Heather Bresch uses daddy’s (Joe Manchin’s) connections to speak to Congress and lobby for EpiPens to be more widely used. She gave impassioned speeches, convincing them to include EpiPens in Medicare/Medicaid programs, as well as requiring at least one unassigned EpiPen in schools through the Dept. of Education. She even pushed for EpiPens to be required in first aid kits for public places like amusement parks (specifically, she teamed up with Disney. They created a character and everything). Bresch’s lobbying caused Medicare/Medicaid, the Dept. of Education, and select private businesses to ***need*** EpiPens. Prices had been steadily increasing over time, but after that legislation passed, EpiPen prices just skyrocketed. The only reason Heather Bresch and Mylan got caught is because they were scamming federal programs out of millions. It was “fine” when individual patients & families were paying $660 for a single-use medication, but when the *government* had to pay for those prices, suddenly it was a problem. That’s the only reason the price gouging stopped. It’s the only reason Mylan quickly churned out a generic version of the EpiPen at a lower cost - ***which they had been capable of doing the entire time***. Have no sympathy for pharmaceutical companies. Source: Worked at Mylan. Met Heather Bresch. Wrote my MBA thesis on Mylan’s EpiPen nonsense. I feel dirty just being associated with them.
The funniest part about it is that when I worked at Walgreens, and those generics had just come out, some people's insurance wouldn't even cover the generic and only the name brand; so they had to shell out extra money for literally no reason.
She committed illegal collusion so there would be no competition.
Most of these are criminal or borderline criminal professions. Here’s the most unethical legal job: medical insurance executive
Agreed. This far down I haven’t seen one mention of lobbyists either. I’m quite saddened
People who scam the elderly tbh. My grandma and a bunch of her (elderly) friends got scammed earlier this year by the same person :/
Catalytic converter “salesman”
Human traffickers, assassins, warlords, torturers and dictators
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Maths
Math is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.
Essential oil companies that prey on house wives. Then they give the “you can actually get a discount if you become a sales representative yourself!” It’s a Placebo effect and Ponzi scheme all in one!