There is a common sentiment among PayPal’s detractors: if you haven’t had any problems with the online payment processor yet, just wait awhile, and you will.

Count me among them. I’ve been an account holder since at least 2002 (probably earlier; I don’t recall anymore), and until the beginning of this year, I never once had a problem with the service. Then things turned sour really fast. Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: PayPal Rants Scams

On Fridays I help out at a local business (in Melbourne, FL), and among my duties is answering the telephone when calls come in. The shop gets a lot of telemarketing calls; AT&T is by far the worst offender (they call daily, even on days when the shop isn’t open; on days where someone does answer, they will call up to three times per day), but occasionally others trickle through, too.

Bad news for them. I hate telemarketers. A lot. I am a merciless asshole on a telephone with a telemarketer. I am fiercely proud of this, and I make no apologies for the way I treat telemarketers. I am never rude, never raise my voice, never curse, and in fact I don’t even interrupt. I do, however, ask questions, and get more and more inquisitive as the conversation progresses. I ask the right questions (“who are you?”, “who is your actual employer?”, “what phone number can I call to contact you, or another agent if necessary, to further discuss this product/service?”, “what mailing address can I write to contact your organization with questions or comments?”) so I can figure out who’s being ballsy enough to ignore the Do-Not-Call registry to pester me to buy stuff I don’t need/want, and actually go after the bastards. Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Ripoffs Scams Stupid People

If I just sighed and shook my head in disbelief, you wouldn’t be too surprised, since this kind of thing always provokes that kind of reaction out of me. Still, let’s all point and laugh at “blessed” water in a 16.9 ounce bottle, yours for just $2 (not available in stores). The folks over at FARK are giving this the once-over, too, and are probably doing a better job of it than I am, but I thought this scam needed just a bit more limelight cast upon it. Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Religion Scams Stupid People

Paying attention, fraudsters? Your buddies/role models over at Enzyte just got fried. A guilty verdict just came back on the company’s founder for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Bob’s not smiling so much now, is he?

From the article:

Some former employees, including relatives of Warshak, pleaded guilty to other charges and cooperated with prosecutors. They testified that the company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer-satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

What? You mean an male enhancement product that everyone says works great really doesn’t work? Naturally, we can assume that the purveyors of every other male enhancement product out there would never stoop to such shameful depths to sell a crummy product.

Sigh. Who am I kidding? Of course they would. These guys just got caught. Still, chalk one up for the good guys with this guilty verdict! This guy will be exploring “natural male enhancement” for years whilst in prison. I hope he enjoys it.

Technorati Tags: Funny Scams Serves 'Em Right

I understand now why America is in such bad shape. There are Americans stupid enough to fall for this horseshit. This “detoxification” scam invokes some of the best (that is, most hilarious) of the classic and modern-day pseudoscience terms, like “reflexology,” and “ions.”

What’s the scam this time? For twenty bucks, they’ll send you a “two week supply” of foot pads. Wear them all day, and they turn black. After that initial purchase, you get “unlimited free refills” for life! It only costs you $12.95 in shipping and handling for each shipment [1]. The product claims it will detoxify your body as you walk [2]. It also claims it will absorb “chemicals,” “heavy metals,” “metabolic wastes,” “toxins,” and even “cellulite [3].”

[1] Yeah, we’re talking about a pound or two of little foot pads. It can’t cost more than a dollar or two to ship, and even if they’re using union workers (heh, yeah right) to package and process these, actually sending one out shouldn’t cost more than a dollar or two.

[3] Cellulite is a simple “dimpling” of the skin in the lower limbs, abdomen, and pelvic regions. It is not a “particle” that flows through the body that is excreted through the feet, or any other part of the body. Read the full story...

For years, I’ve participated in a barely-legitimate, yet remarkably popular (and probably well-known) spam-for-pay “program” wherein advertisers pay some pittance to the organizing company, which in turn sends me spam that, oddly enough, I’m supposed to filter into a special folder so I can give each and every one enough attention to click the “redemption” button that gives me “tokens” (that’s not the word they actually use for them, by the way) that I can later redeem for gift cards and such.

In terms of “something for nothing,” now that (thanks largely to GMail) I’ve gotten this thing nearly completely automated, it’s paying in spades. I’ve probably been sent over $200 in gift cards from these people in the past 5 years or so I’ve been a member and I’ve never spent a fucking dime at any of the sponsors’ web sites.

You’ll note I’m not mentioning their name, linking to their web site, nor using terminology that could uniquely identify them. First I don’t want anyone thinking I’m trying to score “affiliate” brownie points with them by sending referrals, but second I don’t want them to sue me or cancel my account — I like getting ten bucks worth of free gas every few months even though that amounts to three gallons or less now). Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Advertising Internet Scams

Well, it’s been awhile since anybody’s sued me for calling their bullshit what it is, so I figured I’d trot out this ridiculously overpriced 128MB SD card with a pretty “sporting goods” brand label on it (they want $20 for this thing!). The site even helpfully offers this “advice” about your new technological acquisition:

To avoid missing any trophy shots it is helpful to have two SD cards. Once you are ready to check your pictures, simply replace the full card with a blank card; you can rest easy knowing you are not missing any pictures while you check your photos.

You’ll need this advice with any reasonably-modern camera with this $20 128MB SD card in it — with my new camera shooting pictures that, on the “highest compression high resolution” option, chew up 800KB a piece on average, you’ll only get about 150 pictures or so on a card before it’s full.

Or you could just take that same $20 and buy a 2 gigabyte card — holding 2,560 images at the same settings on the same form-factor card, for the same money. Read the full story...

You’ve just got to laugh at the recent “Pear Cable” fiasco, wherein a purveyor of $7,400 audio cables (you read that right) initially said it would take on the James Randi Educational Foundation’s $1,000,000 challenge to prove that their cables actually were better than the regularly priced stuff, then backed out rather quickly, making lots of excuses and doing lots of name-calling to distract everyone from realizing they’ve just proven Randi’s point (that their claims about their cables are unprovable).

It saddens and amazes me that this stuff can still happen these days. Audiophiles would seem to be victimized more than other dedicated hobbyists, until you realize people are also selling $3,000 rims for Honda Civics, $3,000 mattresses, and don’t even get me started on the “alternative medicines” and “dietary supplements” industries, which have made mockeries of what could have been legitimate “unconventional but reliable” industries by snake oil salesmen. Read the full story...

There is a certain class of “scam” that only perpetuates because enough people fall for them that they’re profitable to the perpetrators. I’ve written about plenty of these in the past (the 12dailypro thing comes to mind), but it’s time right now to focus on a new one, or, rather, a whole group of them all operated by the same company — Trilegiant.

Trilegiant is a marketing firm. Their goal in life is, like so many other marketing firms, to fill your brain (and mine) with as many name brand partners as they can (among a list of name brand partners who’ve paid them for this privilege). Read the full story...