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Snatch Duster
Feb 20, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

The White Dragon posted:

Commission-based car sales make for great Idiots on Social Media, though. Someone I knew from high school is constantly talking poo poo about anyone with a "salary" or "paycheck" or "noncompetitive income," posts a photo of one or two sales per year, and then whines the rest of the time that he's making less than $10k a year.

Sounds like he is a bad salesman :smug:

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Johnny Aztec
Jan 30, 2005

by Hand Knit
There is a specific Dr. Pepper plant in Texas that is it's own thing. I mean, it's part of the whole, but it has been the only plant that's been allowed to make Dr. P with real sugar.

What I am saying is: This plant is a rebel, a loner. You don't want to get mixed up with a crazy upsidedown plant like this.

Shifty Pony
Dec 28, 2004

Up ta somethin'


Johnny Aztec posted:

There is a specific Dr. Pepper plant in Texas that is it's own thing. I mean, it's part of the whole, but it has been the only plant that's been allowed to make Dr. P with real sugar.

What I am saying is: This plant is a rebel, a loner. You don't want to get mixed up with a crazy upsidedown plant like this.

And that plant got banned from making Dr Pepper three years ago.

The big bottlers (coke/pepsi) were concerned that the Dublin plant was taking market share and pressured Dr Pepper to pull their license.

cakesmith handyman
Jul 22, 2007

Pip-Pip old chap! Last one in is a rotten egg what what.

The White Dragon posted:

Commission-based car sales make for great Idiots on Social Media, though. Someone I knew from high school is constantly talking poo poo about anyone with a "salary" or "paycheck" or "noncompetitive income," posts a photo of one or two sales per year, and then whines the rest of the time that he's making less than $10k a year.

How else does he effect people to pay for cars? Lottery wins and trust funds?

pastor of muppets
Aug 21, 2007

We were somewhere around the Living Hive, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

Delivery McGee posted:


Commission-based sales are pretty scummy. One summer I took pictures of cars for the local "pre-owned" dealerships' newspaper ads, and every time I drove up all the salesmen ran out the door like vultures, and then looked really disappointed when they saw it was me. They did always offer me a deal when pointing out the cars I was to photograph.

Last summer I was picking up my 7-year-old Chevy from its third recall repair and a sales guy ambushed me in the parking lot to tell me about the :sparkles:special employee pricing:sparkles: for Chevy owners affected by the recalls!

e: It's me, I'm the idiot who bought a Chevy in the first place!

Just remembered this one, too. For a short time in college, I was a manager at a popular women's clothing store in a mall. One night, a group of four or five women came in dressed in pink. They kept talking about how they were at the mall for a work-related convention and kept saying things like, "Yup, we're always on the clock and working hard! We're just popping in to see what we want to spend our HUGE BONUSES on!" They didn't buy anything. I'm sure they were with Mary Kay or something along those lines, but they kept dropping corporate buzz-speak in front of the 18-year-old girls who worked under me and OBVIOUSLY were waiting for someone to ask what they did for a living so they could launch into their recruiting schpeal. The fact that they were targeting young, naive teenagers really pissed me off and I pulled the girls aside and told them not to goad these women on. (Not that they were in a much better position working for our company, mind you; our boss was not-so-secretly cheating all of us out of wages by altering the payroll records so it looked like people clocked out hours earlier than they actually did. She also told these girls that they were "required" to sign up for the 25% APR store credit card. Most of them would get their paychecks and then have to turn around and pay it back to the store for their credit card balances. One of the other managers reported her to HR many times and they didn't do a drat thing about it. Worst job ever.)

This was at a pretty run-down mall in a low-income area and it wasn't my first run-in with scammy scammers there. I had an Amway rep tell me I looked like a "smart, ambitious young lady" and invite me to a presentation at a hotel the following day. She even gave me a promotional DVD to watch in the mean time. After my third "No," she finally got the hint. "Oh. :geno: I'm gonna need that disc back then."

pastor of muppets has a new favorite as of 19:59 on Jun 20, 2015

Problem!
Jan 1, 2007

I am the queen of France.

Delivery McGee posted:

In Texas, Dr Pepper (they got rid of the . in the '80s) has their own bottlers and every restaurant has it. It's really weird going to another state and getting it in Pepsi bottles.

I used to live in Waco, home of Dr Pepper, and literally every restaurant serves Dr Pepper. No Mr. Pibb to be seen anywhere, even in restaurants that only served Coke products.

GOTTA STAY FAI
Mar 24, 2005

~no glitter in the gutter~
~no twilight galaxy~
College Slice

pastor of muppets posted:

One night, a group of four or five women came in dressed in pink. They kept talking about how they were at the mall for a work-related convention and kept saying things like, "Yup, we're always on the clock and working hard! We're just popping in to see what we want to spend our HUGE BONUSES on!"

Few things in life feel better than intentionally not biting when a multi-level marketer is trying his or her best to bait you.

Seriously, showerbeers (goon-declared "best thing ever") are great, but having someone repeat poo poo like "Well yeah I just got a HUGE BONUS at my job, you know, the one with the really flexible hours, so I'm kind of set for cash for a while...wish I had an extra set of hands though, you know, like, I wish I had someone like you onboard to help me spend all this money" and just smiling and saying "That's wonderful, have a good day!" is loving amazing.

Enos Shenk
Nov 3, 2011


Delivery McGee posted:

The ones around here usually also come with a key glued to them, which may open a car at [%LOCAL DEALERSHIP%].

Those crack me up. A cursory glance shows they're not a real key at all, just cheap stamped metal. A real key has the pattern ground in so it leaves tool marks, the promo keys are just smooth.

My dad is a mail carrier, and he HATES the things. Any mailman does, the glued-on keys get hung up on all the mail they're trying to sort as they go, or fall off and they have to try to stick them back on there. You'd think it would be not allowed to mail a piece of cardstock with an item glued on the side, but I guess the rules are different when you're mailing a billion of the things.

JiimyPopAli
Oct 5, 2009
I can't recall if it's been mentioned already or not but the "White Van Speaker Scam" is sorta like advertising and it's certainly scummy.

Several years ago I was approached at least a half dozen times in a short period, usually in a Home Depot parking lot. The pretext was that the guys would be doing a delivery of a "high end sound system" but the accidentally ended up with too much stuff so they were willing to sell it at a steep discount.

They would ask something crazy for it, like $1500 for parts that were work about $85. The sound quality (from what I read online) is absolutely horrible. If you kept hesitating they would lower the price.

I liked to have fun with them and try to waste some of their time. Usually tell them I would take 2 and be right back with the cash so don't move and then I'd just leave. The more time they spend waiting, the less time they spend trying to take advantage of some gullible fool.

1000 Brown M and Ms
Oct 22, 2008

F:\DL>quickfli 4-clowns.fli
Yeah, that's come up before. Still scummy.

Magnus Praeda
Jul 18, 2003
The largess in the land.
I just got one of those "you've won a chance to win a chance at a new car!!!" mailers yesterday with the annoying "code generator" (literally a piece of black plastic with numbers cut out) hot glued to the front. I get how annoying they must be for the USPS, but I do now have two LR44s and a bright green LED to add to my parts drawers.

Strangely enough, I've never had the white van speaker experience despite living next to a college campus my entire life.

Creature
Mar 9, 2009

We've already seen a dead horse
Those 'you've won the chance to win' things are even scummier in the way they target the elderly. My grandad (who was in the early stages of Alzheimer's) kept receiving them because his details had been onsold by Reader's Digest, and every single time he'd call us all excited because he thought he had won all this money or a house or whatever. It's a total fucker to have to explain to an old man on a weekly basis that he's still not a millionaire.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug
Yeah you could probably fill an entire thread of lovely advertising just on used car lots alone.

The funniest thing was the times I've spoken to used car salesmen off the sales floor and one thing I would always end up hearing was "I just don't know why the customers don't trust us!" Well...maybe because you aren't trustworthy?

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together
I used to hear a lot of "we'll pay off your trade no matter what you owe!" If by pay off you mean roll it into a new loan so you're on the hook for two cars at once...

Fart Sandwiches
Apr 4, 2006

i never asked for this

Creature posted:

Those 'you've won the chance to win' things are even scummier in the way they target the elderly. My grandad (who was in the early stages of Alzheimer's) kept receiving them because his details had been onsold by Reader's Digest, and every single time he'd call us all excited because he thought he had won all this money or a house or whatever. It's a total fucker to have to explain to an old man on a weekly basis that he's still not a millionaire.

Watch the movie Nebraska.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1821549/

RenegadeStyle1
Jun 7, 2005

Baby Come Back

ElwoodCuse posted:

I used to hear a lot of "we'll pay off your trade no matter what you owe!" If by pay off you mean roll it into a new loan so you're on the hook for two cars at once...

My friend did this a few times and now he pays like 1200 a month for 5 years, how can you even get into a position where thinking this works for you?

Stoatbringer
Sep 15, 2004

naw, you love it you little ho-bot :roboluv:

RenegadeStyle1 posted:

My friend did this a few times and now he pays like 1200 a month for 5 years, how can you even get into a position where thinking this works for you?

Ah, he can just spread it over a bunch of credit cards, what's the problem?

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
I know this is rehashing old territory, but while I have my 8 year old for the summer, last night we got to talking about school fundraisers. His mother rightly has him not participate, (and once taught him a lesson about them by going out and buying some of the "prizes"). I was shocked however when he then told me the school faculty would regularly lecture him for these decisions, working hard to guilt this 8 year old to shill for them. I am not pleased by this news.

MotU
Mar 6, 2007

It was like she was evicting walking garbage.
Pillbug

Choco1980 posted:

I know this is rehashing old territory, but while I have my 8 year old for the summer, last night we got to talking about school fundraisers. His mother rightly has him not participate, (and once taught him a lesson about them by going out and buying some of the "prizes"). I was shocked however when he then told me the school faculty would regularly lecture him for these decisions, working hard to guilt this 8 year old to shill for them. I am not pleased by this news.

I work for a Fundraising Company and just had to make a new template for the Student Letters we send with them and I had the orders to "make the students feel personally responsible for their own field trips and event days, and that low sales will prevent them from getting these" :v:

how me a frog
Feb 6, 2014

MotU posted:

I work for a Fundraising Company and just had to make a new template for the Student Letters we send with them and I had the orders to "make the students feel personally responsible for their own field trips and event days, and that low sales will prevent them from getting these" :v:

Why on earth would you admit to this?

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Odds are he isn't getting paid enough to see a therapist.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Man I am still surprised those entertainment books don't sell well.

DreamtShadow
Aug 21, 2010

MotU posted:

I work for a Fundraising Company and just had to make a new template for the Student Letters we send with them and I had the orders to "make the students feel personally responsible for their own field trips and event days, and that low sales will prevent them from getting these" :v:

PYF Deep Dark Confession.

The Mighty Moltres
Dec 21, 2012

Come! We must fly!


MotU posted:

I work for a Fundraising Company and just had to make a new template for the Student Letters we send with them and I had the orders to "make the students feel personally responsible for their own field trips and event days, and that low sales will prevent them from getting these" :v:

I really hope you quit your job soon.

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.

Creature posted:

Reader's Digest
:argh: Back when cassette tapes were still quite common for storing music on, these dudes sent one to my parents. My parents handed it over to me since they realised it was bullshit, but thought I might want the free tape :v:

So I gave it a listen. They made it sound so official, like how I'd been specially selected and gone through a whole bunch of elimination rounds already, and am now part of an exclusive minority for whom it is "now 100 percent certain that you have a chance at winning".

"Afterwards, you can re-use this tape for whatever you wish". Hey, free tape! Except there was only five minutes worth of tape in the cassette. One song on each side, I guess.

Disguised as a chance to win, they were trying to sell me something, but I forget what it was. I just remember getting a (very short) free tape.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted

The Endbringer posted:

I really hope you quit your job soon.

Alternatively, do a really poo poo job and/or insert coded messages to the kids.

MotU
Mar 6, 2007

It was like she was evicting walking garbage.
Pillbug

The Endbringer posted:

I really hope you quit your job soon.

Not all of us can work for saints, sorry. I don't particularly enjoy the moral or business aspects but I don't mind the actual 'work' part of the job. At least they refuse to deal with schools that encourage kids to sell door to door?

I posted some more poo poo earlier in the thread about the rest of the junk we do, it is pretty lovely!

trapped mouse
May 25, 2008

by Azathoth




Has anyone else had the pleasure of seeing this sign? If not, consider yourself lucky. One of my friends has this sign, and is constantly travelling. Last night we were drinking and it came up amongst about six of us "Hey, Jeff [not his real name], how are you able to travel all the time?" This is a valid question, as Jeff is broke as gently caress and living in the projects. Excitedly, he says "Oh, you guys want to see?" He asks if we have a Playstation or Xbox to play on a common room screen. At this point Jeff takes out a DVD. We were a little confused at first, and knowing what I know now I'm positive he had to pay to actually get it and advertise the thing. So we're all sitting down, watching blissfully happy people on vacation, taking out that dumb blue sign. The DVD goes on to tell us that you can travel to the best places in the world for the cheapest prices. The DVD then says it's better than Expedia and stuff because it uses some bullshit like "Crystal Technology Algorithm", which makes a few of us laugh. Then it gets to the part where you only have to pay a $199 starting fee (read $200) and a monthly fee of $54.95 (read: $660 a goddamn year), and this doesn't even include the actual packages that you pay for when you travel, which again, you can find on Expedia.

Then it goes to how you can start making money doing this. That's when things get ugly. It says you can make not regular income, but some incredibly bullshit word like "Fluidity Income" which prompts me to audibly say "oh my god" and more snickering. This goes into recruiting other people and making money on getting other people to sign up for this wonderful service. I would later learn that in order to start recruiting, you need to pay ANOTHER $100 fee and ANOTHER $11 PER MONTH. The DVD starts to crap out at this point. There is awkward silence, as he happily asks us what we think. I gingerly try to tell him that this is a pyramid scheme. He says "No, it's not a pyramid scheme, there needs to be a product for a pyramid scheme. I note that this is true, but these days it is called a multi-level marketing scheme. I express happiness that he has been able to make this work, have such amazing times on vacation, that I was just letting him know exactly what it was. He looks around the room for approval, then starts messing with his phone. One of my other friends is being a little more honest at this point (Let's call him Kyle), but he holds up his phone and says "This is an actual person I'm talking to right now, this is the person who signed me up." More silence as we hear this guy give us a sales pitch trying to recruit us so he can help his bottom line, which makes me furious, but I hold my tongue. Keep in mind that this is at 12:30AM, and we've all been drinking.

The phone call ends, and the guy asks "So do you guys wanna sign on?" I say I'm not really a traveler, and others have left the room at this point. Kyle comes in from the other room and says "gently caress no I'm not interested! This is absolute bullshit!" The phone gets hung up, and Jeff says that he never should have disrespected him like that. There is palpable anger from both sides. I assured him that Kyle only did it out of love, but he walks out of the house, really pissed. A couple of our friends note that yes, it's obviously a scam, but that was the exact wrong way to handle it, that if someone calls it bullshit straight out, then they're trying to negate all the wonderful experiences that they have had using this dumbass thing. This pushes them away, and they start to only make friends with people who have already drank the koolaid. Kyle agrees that he hosed up, but I also express my sympathies, as I am really pissed too.

So we look this thing up. This thing by the way, is called DreamTrips, and is the same thing as World Ventures. Turns out reps don't start making money until they recruit 30 people. So 74% of people never even end up making anything. Luckily this guy is friends with everybody, so he is making some money, but the average person who does make commission earns around $325 per year. Not as a profit, mind you. This is AFTER you're paying $660 (now $780 with the added monthly fee) a year, plus all the training DVDs and seminars, because of course they have those. Only 0.1% make an income above the poverty level. It works on this fantasy of making money by being on vacation your whole life, because isn't that the dream? Hell it's called DreamTrips after all.

It would be a little more harmless if Jeff had a cushy job that he could take time off whenever, but Jeff is a broke black dude who not only can't afford to move out of the projects, he can't even pay his $250 in rent most months because of this poo poo. I'm still super pissed about all this, which is why I'm rambling, but if you ever meet anyone into this, gently tell them that this is the bad poo poo.

Source for the numbers: http://twenty-somethingtravel.com/2013/07/worldventures-this-is-not-the-way-to-travel-the-world/

Tired Moritz
Mar 25, 2012

wish Lowtax would get tired of YOUR POSTS

(n o i c e)
Yeah, gently caress DreamTrips. I'm worried that my uncle might have been snared into it. Pyramid schemes piss me off.

Johnny Aztec
Jan 30, 2005

by Hand Knit
Speaking of MLM, has anyone heard of Team National?

END OF AN ERROR
May 16, 2003

IT'S LEGO, not Legos. Heh


I guess while not scummy per say, I did get annoyed at Amazon today.

I was buying a cell phone through them and at the order summary screen they offered "apply for our credit card and get $40 off instantly". I figure why the hell not, I'll use the gift card and just pay off the credit card immediately. So I get approved and taken back to the order summary screen, where now there's an advertisement saying "apply for our credit card and get $70 off instantly".

What the hell amazon

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Johnny Aztec posted:

Speaking of MLM, has anyone heard of Team National?

My parents got involved with it, but thankfully they got out. They were at some meeting/seminar poo poo, someone asked the head scamster if they were going to make the information packets in Spanish, and he did some sort of :bahgawd: "In America we speak English" thing. That was enough to get them to leave, but I'm honestly not sure if my dad hasn't fallen for something else.

He's a hard worker, works a ton of hours, but he's in construction, so there's no way he has enough in his retirement account to retire at 65. And once you get up in years, you can't really do much in construction.

Cocaine Bear
Nov 4, 2011

ACAB

Friend of mine got into ACN a while ago. Went around telling us how stupid we all are for having jobs when we could just be doing what she does!

Typical pyramid scheme but they sell services like cellphone plans and even home utilities I think. Pay the monthly fee, recruit others, make money off their toil. They were exclusively more expensive than your existing services, often hilariously. For example, you could get a cell phone plan for something like 200 minutes and caller ID for $50 a month. You could also add what's called "data" and for an additional $40 a month you get a hundred megabites of this data thing. This was in 2013.

Some of their products were even dumber. For example, she approached a friend of mine that she had met maybe once at a party (she had exhausted or alienated anyone closer already). She contacted him over Skype to try and explain the services. Over Skype he asked her about the $30 a month for video phone services (plus phone rental cost!). And she explained how it worked and why is was a good deal (and why locking in to 3 years service was a good idea too!)... over Skype.

It irked me for a few reasons but what stuck out was that the basic premise was that she wanted all her friends to pay more for services they already have so that she can make a few bucks off us.

Anyway, she also read the Secret and got into Landmark. Fast forward a couple years and she's paying out the rear end to support her pyramid scheme and volunteering all her time to "training" others at Landmark. Her only remaining friends seem to be the other tools involved with said groups. Still works at a bar and last I heard moved back in with the rents. Pretty sad, actually.

I feel like there's some relationship between these types of scams and the phenomena of people latching on to conspiracy theories and the like. My guess is something to do with the allure of some secret knowledge that only you have (and that will make you money/let you know exactly when and how the world will end). I guess that or just plain stupidity. Who knows?

PhotoKirk
Jul 2, 2007

insert witty text here

JoelJoel posted:

Anyway, she also read the Secret and got into Landmark. Fast forward a couple years and she's paying out the rear end to support her pyramid scheme and volunteering all her time to "training" others at Landmark. Her only remaining friends seem to be the other tools involved with said groups. Still works at a bar and last I heard moved back in with the rents. Pretty sad, actually.

I feel like there's some relationship between these types of scams and the phenomena of people latching on to conspiracy theories and the like. My guess is something to do with the allure of some secret knowledge that only you have (and that will make you money/let you know exactly when and how the world will end). I guess that or just plain stupidity. Who knows?

Landmark Education.

gently caress that noise.

I used to work at a print shop where one of the employees got into Landmark. None of the rest of us knew what it was until she invited us to come to her "graduation". It was like a tent revival. Flashy speaker on the stage, delivering lots of feel-good promises and BS, shills in the audience telling how Landmark brought their family back together, blah, blah, blah. They had bug guys at the doors to "encourage" people not to leave.

After the big session, they split us up into smaller rooms for the hard sell. No cash? Use a credit card! No credit card? Apply for one! For only $475 each, you too can find the path to happiness! Actually, that's just the first step towards happiness, you need the never-ending series of sessions to achieve happiness.

I walked out during the hard sell. I wish I had made some witty quip, but I think I just said "This is loving nuts" as I got up.

Worst part? Two of the VPs and a couple other folks at the print shop signed up and all became Landmark fanatics. I had to listen to that poo poo all day at work for a couple months until they all realized that there were still miserable, except now they were miserable and substantially poorer.

YeahTubaMike
Mar 24, 2005

*hic* Gotta finish thish . . .
Doctor Rope
My mom got involved with Landmark when I was a young teenager, to the point of bringing me to a free session which even as a kid I recognized as total horseshit, then after a few months I noticed that she had stopped mentioning it. I asked her about it, and she said that she was tired of them constantly trying to guilt her into attending increasingly expensive lectures.

Bast Relief
Feb 21, 2006

by exmarx
I have a pet theory about AT&T and I wonder if there's any validity to it at all.

So all last week I kept getting calls from AT&T to make a payment for my U-verse internet. Awhile back my credit card company had a security breach and gave me a new card, so I've been going crazy trying to keep all of my autopay accounts straight, and even though I was pretty sure I updated my AT&T, I thought perhaps that was the problem, but out of laziness I didn't respond to the automated calls, and who cares, I'm not in town most of the month so I don't care to pay for internet that I'm not using. The automated call asks that you gather a bunch of documentation anyway, so I figured I'll just take care of it online...some day.

I finally got tired of the regular phone calls at 3pm everyday so I checked online to see that my bill had been payed through autopay, and it was indeed the number of my new card. So what were the calls about delinquent payment about? The next time AT&T called, I tried to navigate their automated system, was never given the option to speak to a person, and then when I attempted to "pay" I was put on hold and then disconnected. All of the relevant "contact us" numbers shown online were the same number as the one that was calling me everyday.

I engaged in a live chat, and asked "Ryan" to see why I'm getting these annoying calls. He did whatever he did to make the calls stop, and then immediately asked me who I was getting my phone service through and how much I was paying. I was going to just end the chat, but I was curious. I told him who my cell provider was and that I was paying $30 a month, just to see what he was going to come back with, never mind I wasn't going to bite on anything ever. Oh! Well as it happens, AT&T's Uverse home phone plan is regularly $35 a month, but he can find a way to work it down to $25 just for me! Wow! This was the first time home phone was mentioned. Less people are interested in home phones these days, and maybe he thought if I was stupid I would just sign up for it not realizing what I was actually getting.

Anyway, my pet theory is that there was never anything wrong with my autopay, and that my account was just flagged for harassment until I sought customer service so they could pitch a sale at me. Fuckers.

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


As a call centre monkey I'd say it's a lot more likely that the automated system was broken and that Ryan there has to offer phone to everyone he talks to.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH
I recently received a flyer, professionally created, that offered a conference for "Adobe Photoshop Users" including such stunning sessions as:

"Customizing your Photoshop"
(meaning using keyboard short cuts and understanding the "least understood feature" of the history function)

"Taking the mystery out of layers"

"It's all in the selection"
(how to use the select tools)

"Ready to upgrade"

The pointless list goes on...

These are things that weren't a mystery in 1996 (barring layers) when I learned how to use Photoshop in college. Much less now.

They want $199 for a 7 hr time period, teaching people the very limited basics of using Photoshop. Things that are intuitive. I'm guessing that it's really a sales pitch for a private online school. I've seen vendors that my company uses doing similar things. Charge you for a conference that's really a sales pitch for additional products or training. Yay deceptive advertising!

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
I think those sorts of classes are intended for the 55+ crowd that doesn't really understand how computer technology works beyond like, 1995 technology, and don't realize that a lot of that stuff is not only simple, but can be looked up online free in much less time. Like how for years you'd see tons of "make your own website for $$$!!" classes aimed at middle aged housewives. Since then stuff like Facebook and Etsy have kinda taken the wind out of those sails.

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The Blue Pyramid
Mar 1, 2009

:poland: :poland: :poland:
Kiepski to nie
kaktus;
Pić musi!

:poland: :poland: :poland:
Someone mentioned Amazon a few posts back, and I felt it worth mentioning that the way Amazon handles reviews lately has been really scummy.

Next time you're looking at anything that has thousands of reviews or multiple 'color options', read carefully what they're selling. They'll group 5-8 vastly different models of a similar type into one listing, including the reviews. I picked something randomly to demonstrate- look at the listing for this laptop cooling pad. It happens to have two options, that are widely different models with different features. Someone not paying close enough attention finds this 2 fan model and notices it was 1362 reviews, must be good. Then you find the little sort button that shows only the reviews for the 2 fan option, and notice that the specific model you were looking at only has 18 reviews.

Alright, grouping a few different but similar models into one listing isn't the worst thing in the world. But you come across listings where different products from different manufacturers are grouped together. So you search for any of these products individually and they all show up with the same number of positive reviews.

Another thing I've noticed involves things sold on Amazon that are handled by third party sellers. I ordered something once where the seller was from New Jersey with a delivery estimate of one week. A few days after ordering, Amazon changed the seller without notice, so the item was now coming in from China with a delivery estimate of 5-6 weeks.

These are pretty minor things, but the deception involved just seems really scummy

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