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EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



sadus posted:

...up to a laughably small max amount per year, typically $1000 per person.

Another dental scam: I once moved states and Delta Dental (new state) made me wait a year before covering fillings, even though I had Delta Dental (old state) for years before that.

Yeah I've got a quote for about $10k of stuff over a year, and need to switch to a new provider and my dentist made sure I was aware of any 'waiting periods' they impose. I think their estimate for how much I'd be paying out of pocket was around $7,500.

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Tunicate
May 15, 2012

https://youtu.be/ixo0V6rNqi0

It's amazing how many crooked dentists there are.

Nighthand
Nov 4, 2009

what horror the gas

One of the dental plans I was looking at a while back had insane limits on stuff. It'll cover 50% of crowns, with a limit of one crown every 84 months!

Pretty much every bit of dental insurance is carefully calculated such that they never have to pay out more than you're paying them. You'd be better off with a lovely bank savings account, at least then you can get 4 cents of interest a year.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
:lol: at "dentistry is more art than science." gently caress off with thinking that flies when your "art" costs thousands of dollars shitstain.

sadus
Apr 5, 2004

3d scanning and then immedietely "printing" a crown on the spot is pretty sweet, not any cheaper though. Good luck getting an old to do this.

OTOH our last dentist retired and sold his customer db to some new, young, face-eater looking guy - no thanks. Still probably better than big chains like Comfort Dental though.

sadus fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Feb 1, 2019

MightyJoe36
Dec 29, 2013

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Sydin posted:


Thankfully the dentist is something you can mostly avoid as long as you're not a goon about dental hygiene, outside of uncontrollable poo poo like wisdom teeth. You can't really avoid mechanics unless you learn to wrench yourself or are incredibly lucky.


A lot of things you can wrench yourself. My wife's car needed an oxygen sensor replaced and the garage wanted over $500. I googled it and found out how easy it was to do it myself. $65 for the part, $5 to rent the special socket I needed for the job (refunded when I returned it) and less than an hour to do it.

Raldikuk
Apr 7, 2006

I'm bad with money and I want that meatball!

Sydin posted:

Yeah it's real easy for a dentist to claim you have [issue] and how the gently caress would you know? Not exactly simple to stick a mirror in your mouth and identify cavities. My old family dentist tried to pull this poo poo on me and claimed I had four (!!!) cavities that were really bad and needed to be filled ASAP despite the fact that I was in zero pain. Thankfully both my parents and I were moving out of the area for various reasons, so I had an excuse to not schedule the filling and go get a second opinion from a dentist near my new place. Sure enough he found nothing and pointed out that I'd probably be in considerable pain while chewing if it had been the case.

Thankfully the dentist is something you can mostly avoid as long as you're not a goon about dental hygiene, outside of uncontrollable poo poo like wisdom teeth. You can't really avoid mechanics unless you learn to wrench yourself or are incredibly lucky.

You absolutely should get cleanings every 6 months regardless of how well you think you clean your teeth. My dental insurance pays for itself with cleanings alone but even if you pay out of pocket it is worth the cost. Find one of the places with the high pressure water jet system too and you can avoid all of the uncomfortable parts of it.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Raldikuk posted:

Find one of the places with the high pressure water jet system too and you can avoid all of the uncomfortable parts of it.

Absolutely this.

My dentist sold his practice a few years ago and I wasn't looking forward to a new hygienist since I had had only one for previous 8-9 years and she was pretty good even though she only used picks. The new hygienist uses the water jet and is extremely gentle. Once you get past the horrible sound, it's the only way to go.

Cory Parsnipson
Nov 15, 2015
If you go to a dentist and they freak out and say you have like 7 cavities they're loving lying. When I was 20 I recently graduated and was living on my own. I put off going to the dentist for about two years and then I met someone in my company parking lot handing out flyers to their dental practice (excellent idea, 20 yr old me). When I went to get checked out they told me I had 6 cavities and then I actually went and got them done. They drilled out my big molars and filled them up in the center. I was way too naive to think it was a scam. I never had any pain from those teeth before then. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

That was probably the worst I've ever been scammed. Not only are you out the money but the unnecessary fillings you get weaken your teeth. I have cracks in my molars now and I have to be careful when I chew. If I bite down on something relatively hard (nuts, seeds, oats) I'll get a brief sharp pain from the filling pressing into my nerve. I was later told by a dentist I trust slightly more that my teeth will eventually crack all the way down to the root and I'll need to replace them and there's nothing I can do about it. It pisses me off how they could just gently caress up someone's mouth for the rest of their life. A bad dentist is not only a financial scam but can be really bad for your health too.

Also a few years later I moved into a really cheap apartment in a sketchy area. Some guy knocked on my door claiming he was a college student selling magazine and newspaper subscriptions to pay tuition and wanted me to sign up. I figured I would help him out so I wrote him a check for 20 dollars. (he specifically asked for a check). He then wanted to come into my apartment, so he could better watch me write out the check or some stupid poo poo.

I wasn't thinking then but it was obviously some double pronged scam to get some pity money out of me and to scope out my apartment to see if there's anything worth stealing. That one's a common scam where they case apartment complexes for new residents and then bother them. I remember that a few more guys came around in later months and knocked but thankfully I never answered. One of my neighbors started screaming at them to gtfo one time (smart neighbor).

I did a lot of loving stupid things when I was 20.

Cory Parsnipson fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Feb 2, 2019

sadus
Apr 5, 2004

Cavities start in the enamel which has no nerves - not having any pain yet is not proof you didn't have cavities. You can feel them being a little sticky when they jam the pointy thing into them.

I too had a "don't go to the dentist until it hurts" plan at one point, but that was a very bad idea. They don't hurt until they get down into the nerve and you need a root canal.

Cory Parsnipson
Nov 15, 2015
Hmm ok that is a good point. Prevention is important too. I still think I was scammed in this instance though.

I have very deep groves in my teeth and when they examined them they took the pick and got it caught in the groves and said it was sticking.

I'm not an expert but it feels fishy to me.

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



sadus posted:

They don't hurt until they get down into the nerve and you need a root canal.

My teeth hate me, so my root canal hurt less than the cleanings. I have a waterpik at home now though, it’s pretty neat. I always sucked with the floss and even my hygienist managed to snap some off in my mouth and found it a nightmare to get it all out. The pik trumps that any day.

AlbieQuirky
Oct 9, 2012

Just me and my 🌊dragon🐉 hanging out
My dentist always shows me the cavity on the X-ray :shrug:

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

AlbieQuirky posted:

My dentist always shows me the cavity on the X-ray :shrug:

can you tell your teeth from someone else's?

Corsair Pool Boy
Dec 17, 2004
College Slice

Tunicate posted:

can you tell your teeth from someone else's?

Haha I can! Catastrophic damage as a kid led to my getting implants in a few places, if I don't see big solid metal rods they ain't my teeth.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tunicate posted:

can you tell your teeth from someone else's?

yeah, the bottom left wisdom tooth was pulled and there's a chip on one of them from where i bit down on a chicken's crop stone by accident

Original_Z
Jun 14, 2005
Z so good
Yeah, good dental work is hard to understand if it's needed or not. I moved and went to a dentist that had good reviews online, he freaked out and told me my old fillings had mercury in them and needed to be replaced right away or I could end up poisoning myself. Those fillings were indeed old but had never given me any trouble. Whatever though, I let him do it and the new filling fell out within a year. Even after visiting other dentists and getting new fillings it keeps coming out every few years, looking online the dangers of mercury fillings seem to be very minor, that guy screwed up my teeth.

Another one was more recent, I noticed one of my teeth had a small dip in it and I didn't know if it was serious or not. My friend recommended me a dentist so I go there instead of my normal one, they tell me it's no problem but they'll polish it for me so I don't feel it. Well after that my tooth becomes incredibly painful whenever I eat or drink something cold, apparently they polished down the enamel during the procedure. I visited several dentists afterwards asking about it and they said that the tooth itself isn't damaged so there's no real way to fix it other than removing the nerve which they don't recommend.

In both cases I was kind of hesitant but assumed they knew what they were doing, guess I should have trusted my instinct.

peanut
Sep 9, 2007


I also got boned for "microcavities" fresh out of college. Luckily I was able to be retroactively re-added to my dad's dental insurance.
There were ~so many microcavities~ that I only got one quadrant done before I moved out of town.

Unnecessary and expensive... but that's the only section of my mouth that doesn't have a bunch of silver fillings now, so I guess he did a good job. Lol

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


A friend is selling a beat up old Porsche for £5,000 and a guy is trying to persuade him to trade it for £13,000 of wildlife portraits. It's... weird.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

Huh. Yeah, good luck googling a wildlife portrait artist called "Forrest" :v:

Content: A dude came by last week to service our fire extinguishers at work. He seemed confused when I stopped him and called the owner.

I always do this after an old job where the guy "servicing" the fire extinguishers was just a random with a clipboard who stole them, and probably would have emptied the tills if there wasn't always someone present. Apparently a common scam in the Vancouver area.

Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Feb 4, 2019

Corsair Pool Boy
Dec 17, 2004
College Slice
He's so concerned about the price of the car that he's offering 260% of the list price in barter?

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Fruits of the sea posted:

Huh. Yeah, good luck googling a wildlife portrait artist called "Forrest" :v:

Content: A dude came by last week to service our fire extinguishers at work. He seemed confused when I stopped him and called the owner.

I always do this after an old job where the guy "servicing" the fire extinguishers was just a random with a clipboard who stole them, and probably would have emptied the tills if there wasn't always someone present. Apparently a common scam in the Vancouver area.

That can just be a common scam in general. There are a lot of people who won't think twice and just let you in even the most secure places if you look official enough. You really have to constantly remind people to be careful about that kind of thing; just because somebody has a uniform and a box doesn't necessarily mean they're a real delivery dude.

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo
I was hardcore sketched out when some dudes with clipboards came 'round my mattress store, purporting to be checking network connectivity and signal, etc. Turns out they were legit. Was still quite odd, though.

HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?

I've had tradespeople get really lovely when I ask for ID. It's a loving pharmacy guy, I'm not going to let just anyone stroll on back here.

shame on an IGA
Apr 8, 2005

ToxicSlurpee posted:

That can just be a common scam in general. There are a lot of people who won't think twice and just let you in even the most secure places if you look official enough. You really have to constantly remind people to be careful about that kind of thing; just because somebody has a uniform and a box doesn't necessarily mean they're a real delivery dude.

Yeah the magical thing about working in Facilities Maintenance has been realizing that a clipboard and tool bag is a golden ticket to go anywhere the gently caress you want

goatsestretchgoals
Jun 4, 2011

Add a blaze orange/neon yellow vest and I’d probably hold the door for you. :(

ulex minor
Apr 30, 2018

HEY GUNS posted:

i bit down on a chicken's crop stone by accident

i'm sorry, what?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

ulex minor posted:

i'm sorry, what?
chickens don't have teeth so they digest food by swallowing little stones and putting them in an organ called the crop. a little round stone got into my meat from somewhere and i assume it was that, like an accident at the butchers. I wasn't expecting it and crunch

iajanus
Aug 17, 2004

NUMBER 1 QUEENSLAND SUPPORTER
MAROONS 2023 STATE OF ORIGIN CHAMPIONS FOR LIFE



shame on an IGA posted:

Yeah the magical thing about working in Facilities Maintenance has been realizing that a clipboard and tool bag is a golden ticket to go anywhere the gently caress you want

I've found wearing my work polo and carrying my toolkit will get me literally anywhere in a business and nearly everyone will just let me onto their work PC without question, providing passwords if asked.

Hell, a good percentage of the time they'll wander off to get a coffee and leave me alone.

ulex minor
Apr 30, 2018

HEY GUNS posted:

chickens don't have teeth so they digest food by swallowing little stones and putting them in an organ called the crop. a little round stone got into my meat from somewhere and i assume it was that, like an accident at the butchers. I wasn't expecting it and crunch

ah no, i know what a crop stone is, for whatever reason i imagined you had been pecking along with them rather than one ending up your meat which...does make more sense

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

ulex minor posted:

for whatever reason i imagined you had been pecking along with them
it's calming

ulex minor
Apr 30, 2018

HEY GUNS posted:

it's calming

obviously my previous suspicions were correct

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



goatsestretchgoals posted:

Add a blaze orange/neon yellow vest and I’d probably hold the door for you. :(

I've worked a wide variety of places, from retail to hospitals to libraries to offices to restaurants.

I've never seen anyone ever question the pest control dude. Show up in some coveralls with some Orkin patches and one of those spray thingies, no one bats an eye, and they'll let you in anywhere.

Rent-A-Cop
Oct 15, 2004

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

Worked security for years. Can confirm there is no effective level of security between an "Employees Only" sign and a SCIF.

LifeSunDeath
Jan 4, 2007

still gay rights and smoke weed every day

JacquelineDempsey posted:

I've worked a wide variety of places, from retail to hospitals to libraries to offices to restaurants.

I've never seen anyone ever question the pest control dude. Show up in some coveralls with some Orkin patches and one of those spray thingies, no one bats an eye, and they'll let you in anywhere.

There was this defcon guy that works as a corporate security consultant and he would just sneak in and social engineer/hack/lockpick his way into building and sensitive areas and access data. Pretty much the most stressful but awesome job because you won't get in trouble, but also the dude talked about how easy it was to get into place by just blending in.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

LifeSunDeath posted:

There was this defcon guy that works as a corporate security consultant and he would just sneak in and social engineer/hack/lockpick his way into building and sensitive areas and access data. Pretty much the most stressful but awesome job because you won't get in trouble, but also the dude talked about how easy it was to get into place by just blending in.

Yeah, there are entire companies that just do that. It's actually hilarious how terrible literally all security actually is. Everybody thinks about hackers as being trench coat wearing guys with sunglasses and weird hair typing at a computer to breaking through all of the security when usually the weakest link was somebody who looked vaguely official talking themselves into a building.

I like the little nod to this in the new Shadowrun games; Johnny Clean dresses like a janitor all the time but is actually a skilled hacker. He dressed like a janitor to get past security so often it just kind of became part of who he was. The reason is that people mostly ignore the janitor. A cleaning uniform, a broom, and a bored look on your face is an easy way to become invisible.

Eric the Mauve
May 8, 2012

Making you happy for a buck since 199X

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Yeah, there are entire companies that just do that. It's actually hilarious how terrible literally all security actually is. Everybody thinks about hackers as being trench coat wearing guys with sunglasses and weird hair typing at a computer to breaking through all of the security when usually the weakest link was somebody who looked vaguely official talking themselves into a building.

I like the little nod to this in the new Shadowrun games; Johnny Clean dresses like a janitor all the time but is actually a skilled hacker. He dressed like a janitor to get past security so often it just kind of became part of who he was. The reason is that people mostly ignore the janitor. A cleaning uniform, a broom, and a bored look on your face is an easy way to become invisible.

Rule One: Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!

quote:

'Ai! Shao! Hai-eee-' he began.

The dojo master stood up. 'Hold!' he commanded. 'Do you not want to know the name of the man you are about to destroy?'

The fighter held his stance, glaring at Lu-Tze. 'I don't need to know name of sweeper,' he said.

Lu-Tze rolled the cigarette into a skinny cylinder and winked at the angry man, which only stoked the anger.

'It is always wise to know the name of a sweeper, boy,' said the dojo master. 'And my question was not addressed to you.'

Pewdiepie
Oct 31, 2010

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Recently I got a request to add a person on LinkedIn (remind me: why do I have LinkedIn again?). It is Michael Donnelly Foundation. Who's that? Guess it must be the grinning guy in the profile photo, the one where he's holding a giant payout cheque from a lottery. Nice! Lucky for him for him to have lots of money. Why would he want to contact me? Hey, do you think you think this is one of those....

....cons and scams - we've all heard about them - have even experienced them second or first hand. In this thread we talk about common scans, cons, stings and various tricks used to gain money, property and advantage. We're working on the basis that posters itt are not actually planning or participating in these activities. In this thread we can:

* Explain what common cons are and how they work.
* Ask for advice when we think we (or someone we know) are leaving ourselves open to a con. (On the basis that this what is posted itt isn't in any sense legal or expert advice on the subject. Always consult experts, organisations, charities, legal authorities or the police if you are victims of a crime. If you are being scammed by anonymous internet people don't ask equally anonymous bunch of internet people to help you out.)
* Tell us about the psychological factors that scammers prey on.
* Tell us your experiences of scams.
* Share press/internet stories of scams.
* Provide simple principles which will help us to avoid being victims of con artists.

So, for example I guess this Michael Donnelly is a real lottery winner and hence his story and photo is all across the press in whichever country he lives in. Presumably the scammers set up a fake account and LI/FB profiles and either offer money or wait for people to request money. Then I guess bank details get exchanged and...something? :shrug: Is it the Nigerian prince routine but using real public figures? What's the deal? I had it about 6 months before, with another lottery winner + "Charity" after the name, so I presume it's an established scam which targets mass numbers of targets at random.

Op - ever heard of organized religion? One of if not the worlds biggest scams IMHO.

Admiralty Flag
Jun 7, 2007

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Pewdiepie posted:

Op - ever heard of organized religion? One of if not the worlds biggest scams IMHO.
So clever and insightful and new! Please dispense more pearls of wisdom to us, your new acolytes! Bring us out of the dark superstition to the enlightenment of reason!

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peanut
Sep 9, 2007


woah makes u think

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