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So scam time, Argentina edition: I have some future in-laws in Argentina and have visited a couple of times (I live in the UK). Two of them just got contacted yesterday by a UK number, one was messaged on Whatsapp and the other was called directly by someone saying they were me (my name) although the caller was obviously Argentinian. They said I had lost my phone and were asking these guys to resend their contact details. I'm now quite confused on a couple of levels: 1) what do I do in response to this and 2) How the gently caress did these guys get this info? The UK number they used isn't one I know. Google doesn't show any suspicious logins or account accesses for any of my accounts, I have not replaced my phone in the last year. In both cases the scammer knew my name and the name of the person they were contacting but nothing else (the second guy he asked 'is this my son X?'). I don't think I've been hacked in part because of no suspicious activitity but also I don't actually have the second guy in my contacts so there wouldn't be any obvious way to get that info. The scammer was asking for more info to be sent rather than money. As far as I can tell they're the only contacts anyone has had.
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Apr 25, 2019 11:52
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 12:56 |
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Wow people in the US still get paid with an annual cheque you need to take to the bank? Employers don't just take your bank details and do an electronic transfer? Why?
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Jul 26, 2019 23:27
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tinytort posted:Last I checked, they don't even have payment terminals that can be brought to the table at restaurants. You expect them to have tap-and-go or chip and pin when they don't even have the ability to keep their credit cards in sight when paying at a restaurant? I am part of a scuba diving club in the UK. We are not professionals but we do pool payments and charge for courses etc. To keep things running and we have loving card and contactless payment systems. There are numerous companies that make money providing inventory and payment services for free (and take a small%) and I am astounded that the free market paradise of the USA cannot promote innovation that socialist Europe hellholes can.
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Aug 3, 2019 18:10
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Corsair Pool Boy posted:It's available, but why would a business pay for something like that? It's not inconvenient to them, just to the customers that will have to pay regardless of the mechanism to do it. (I'm being somewhat facetious here but that's basically why). Hell I know several places that only started taking cards at all a few years ago - I assume they realized they were actually losing business because nobody carries cash anymore. See I can kind of see lack of market demand if the technology really isn't being used by the banks but the other major reason for small retailers is that it hugely simplifies inventory management and sales tracking along with cash recording. I work in a business with a horrific pricing structure that doesn't really work neatly with these systems but if we were able to automatically record sales into our bookkeeping it would make love much simpler. So sounds like that is an option in the US there just isn't quite enough demand and businesses are naturally averse to chasing practices. Free market baby! That said I've run into older people here (and just those outside London) where cash is still their preferred payment system. There are businesses now that have gone card only (partly for the simper admin and partly to not be targets of robbery) and they get frustrated the other way when they don't have a contactless card.
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Aug 6, 2019 14:37
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Corsair Pool Boy posted:How does a different piece of payment hardware simplify inventory management or sales tracking? Either way the SKU goes into the computer and inventory updates with -1 of that item. I'm thinking more small start ups or food truck type places that would otherwise be cash only. Not needing anything more than a dongle and a phone app provides features that banks traditionally charge for because of infrastructure requirements. That's sobering I can see as a basis reason for a business not upgrading to contactless/chip and pin type payments but there's 0 reason for big stores not to already.
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Aug 8, 2019 23:42
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Nah, even then with an observant pit boss you'd probably identify the constant minimum bet as suspicious as soon as you get someone come in on big successful bets for the second or at least third time. Casinos expect people to be losing so if your big bets are all winners they'll start watching very closely for any kind of signals or cooperation.
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Sep 17, 2019 14:57
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Inceltown posted:You need better shoppers rights. If it's mispriced then it is on the business for being stupid. Take your bargain and sell it right back to them while laughing. I don't know, in the UK it's certainly the case that a listed price isn't a legally binding contract and isn't false advertising (in terms of a price by the item or price tag, which isn't advertising) so the business isn't required to honour that price. Same as if you saw something advertised much cheaper elsewhere. Now if you discuss a cheaper price when buying it and they charge you much more and you pay that, you have grounds for demanding they return the difference. Probably a much idea not to pay the increased price though.
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Oct 18, 2019 00:26
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It's also quite likely company policy. As has been mentioned, people realising that the listed price isn't a legal requirement for the item to be sold at that price could start people trying to haggle. Likewise getting people angry at being 'tricked' frequently is probably not worth it for bad publicity and scenes being caused. There isn't and I don't think ever has been a legal requirement for it.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:30
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My mum got caught a year ago with a fun ATM scam. She was withdrawing money and a guy came over to her to tell her it was it of order. She continued with the withdrawal and he kept saying 'it's not working, don't bother'. Knowing her I'm sure she asked him to go but not overly forcefully. Once she'd put the cash amount in, he put his hand over it and kept saying the machine is broken, you need to go inside. Whole doing this he had one hand in front and with the other he pulled the notes out of the machine. She told him to leave her alone again and he walked off. At this point her card comes out, she picks it out and waits around for the money. After a few minutes she figured it was actually broken and went in. The bank people figured out what had happened pretty quickly fortunately but it was a slick sleight of hand
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Nov 23, 2019 01:02
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Weatherman posted:I don't even know what you're trying to get at with this. I think that's a comment on the PUA view of women, that saying the right set of phrases on the right order will activate their biologically built in networks and cause them to become Hornby and attracted to you. That was an odd phone autocorrect but I'm leaving it in because I enjoy the idea that a PUA might gently caress up his lines and his target turns into a model train set that proceeds to try and gently caress him. 
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Apr 11, 2020 08:44
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Want Sears killed and stripped for parts by Steve Mnuchin? He's basically the one you want to blame for it having that level of service now. For content my fiancee got a fun one a few months ago. We live in the UK and she moved here on an Italian passport a couple of years ago. She got a call from 'Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue' with an Indian woman telling her that as a European living in the UK she had to pay an entry charge. If she didn't pay the £1,000 over the phone right now she would be liable for arrest and deportation. The woman then started saying very strongly, almost to the point of yelling that this was a very serious case of tax evasion if this wasn't paid and that my fiancee was in the country illegally if she didn't pay this fee. Now first off EU citizens (for this year) have an absolute right to live and work in any European country, they can levy that kind of bullshit charge. Secondly I've dealt with HMRC both for personal tax issues and on behalf of a business and actual tax agents are people doing their job who have a measure of sympathy. They definitely don't take payments over the phone and I've never had one get threatening. Luckily I was at home and could tell her just to hang up but looking it up afterwards, it's apparently pretty commonly run on foreign residents.
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Jul 14, 2020 07:33
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Yeah in a lot of places that level of overcharging it's going to be at best grey area legal. It's an excellent point as well that typically the reason for doing scams like this rather than just rob people is to avoid police attention or committing crimes, so they're probably not going to beat the poo poo out of you for leaving, especially if you've left some reasonable payment. Of course all this is caveated with there are definitely places in the world where you'd walk out the door to get grabbed by the guys cousin who is the local policeman and given the option of paying twice as much again or going straight to jail.
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Aug 31, 2022 09:25
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namlosh posted:So, the person at the top of the pyramid never has to buy dog toys again? Did I miss something or is there no cash involved. These things mathematically cannot go on forever so there will at some point be a load of people who buy gifts and never receive anything themselves while the person who started it never buys anything and gets a full suite of gifts. In this particular instance, sounds like people in the middle aren't getting scammed but are obviously playing a part in someone further down the line getting screwed.
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Dec 8, 2022 09:10
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Was a pretty popular scam in Argentina in the 90s/early noughties. Call a reasonably well off family at 2am and tell them you've kidnapped their child and then let them supply all the information needed to make it convincing (e.g What? You've got my Jessica?!)
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Apr 29, 2023 21:19
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 12:56 |
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I had an email through to my personal email purporting to be from my CEO saying they needed to get in contact urgently. Nearly fell for it because I work in a small company, it's entirely possible the CEO might actually contact me directly and I was on holiday at the time. I've also been having some negative performance stuff that's recently been turned around mostly due to a management change but the company also had two high level people resign, creating some worry about whether there was an underlying problem it's facing. The icing on the cake for me buying it initially was when I went to check my work email, I got a message that my work profile had been deleted. This was essentially a perfect storm for me to think maybe I was being fired in a really lovely way. I did answer that I was available to talk and got a response saying he wanted to send rewards for some colleagues, at which point someone else on the trip pointed out this is a classic scam. The email address was some nonsense thing but I hadn't even thought to check it. Now it's entirely possible if he'd asked me to buy Amazon cards or something I would have started to get suspicious but I can also imagine I'd have been at relieved to still have a job I'd have prioritised getting this task done to show how dedicated I was to who I thought was the CEO. Very much perfect storm conditions.
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Feb 26, 2024 11:13
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