[arnesto]

Two guys drive up to you in a beat up old van.
They say that they work for delivery at Circuit City and they have misordered some extra speakers.
They say the speakers are worth $2000 dollars and they show you a Circuit City advertisement that shows them at that price.
But they have to unload them and they will sell them for $400 dollars.

Ok, this is a true story and this happened to one of my friends. He is a little naive, I must say. He actually bought them.

Afterwards, he calls Circuit City to confirm that they actually carry them.
When he calls and ask for a price quote, he hears someone in the background at Circuit City say "hang up the phone." And they hang up on him.
He does a little more research and he finds that these speakers sell in the paper for about $100 dollars.

He tells me the story, then last weekend. I'm driving my car and two guys drive up to me and ask, "Do you want to buy a home theater system?"
I immediately remember the story my friend told me.
I give them the finger and say "Does this answer your question?"
They start cussing and calling me a "M%#$? F*&%$# F!@#4!!!
I smile and drive away.

I though I had to do this to teach them a lesson, but I wonder if I should have wrote down there driver's license, and I wonder what law they broke and how involved I would have to get in order to have them arrested.
Anyhow, I just thought I would share this story.

 

[mr_baseball_08]

Yeah, if you research the product name he got you're very likely to find tons and tons of similar stories on the internet. I forget the namebrand but they're super cheap items and they make you think you're getting a really good deal. Obviously, you aren't.

http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/...aker_scams.htm

The most common name I hear is Theater Logic L6 system. Supposedly a top dollar 5.1 surround sound system, which can be had for 200 bucks, but it's a rip. Check the link for more details.

 

[nelamvr6]

Hey, he's lucky he actually wound up with speakers. A lot of victims of that scam just end up with boxes with bricks in them.

That scam is way old, been around for ages.

 

[Jmmmmm]

A guy at my school was selling some speakers, and when I went online to read about them, all i could find was that story. I guess he (or whoever he bought the speakers from) had fallen for that scam. It's such a weird scam. I wonder if the speakers are actually any good.

 

[kg21]

LOL a person I used to hang out with was completely taken in by this although they didn't say anything about circuit city; of course we never let him hear the end of it. In his case they caught him walking to his car outside a mall showed the ad saying how much it's worth but this is the funny part they said they would take ANY amount because they had to unload them. If it were me I would say hey how about like 5 bucks? But he decides that not only is there nothing wrong with buying speakers out of the back of an SUV, he "felt bad" for them and says he'll go to the ATM to get more money which e does. He ends up paying 250 for some beautiful "theatrelogics" that we later see on ebay with a 25 dollars buy it now option. We forced him to hook them up one day and well they worked, of course I can't comment on the actual sound quality we were too busy laughing the whole time.

 

[braillediver]

It's only a scam if they're driving a "White Van". Do a search on White Van speakers.

All high-end speakers have the price printed on the box. Plus it'll be a name that almost sounds famous sort of.

There's a lot of these on Craigslist.


Mitch

 

[bundee1]

Yeah my brother got scammed for some Audiofile speakers $250 outside of the Navy Federal Credit Union on payday. I was so pissed off because they were preying on Marines. I also knew a guy who was selling this stuff door to door. He tried to get me to buy some. I tried to let him down easy and told him the truth about the speakers.

 

[Homeless]

Happend to me once at the gas station. The guy showed me the invoice and said that they just installed the system in a multi-million dollar home and that they had an extra set that wasn't on the store inventory...so why not both of us benefit? the store wouldn't miss them, he'd make a little on the side, and I'd save a few grand on "kick ass" speakers.

I didn't feel like getting into an argument with him so I just lied and told him that I didn't have an AV receiver and they'd be useless to me...

 

[kg21]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bundee1 Yeah my brother got scammed for some Audiofile speakers $250 outside of the Navy Federal Credit Union on payday. I was so pissed off because they were preying on Marines. I also knew a guy who was selling this stuff door to door. He tried to get me to buy some. I tried to let him down easy and told him the truth about the speakers.

I hope someday the scammer(s) run into the marines they scammed...

 

[warubozu]

Yup, similar scams have appeared a few years back at one of my local malls. This particular scam that had appeared at my local mall a few years back was like the one braillediver had described. Two people would pull up to you in the shopping mall parking lot in a white cargo van trying to sell you what they claim are high dollar speakers for dirt cheap. A few fell for the scam only to find out that the speakers were DOA and just crap when got home and try to hook them up to there system.

 

[stewtheking]

I got this in London once, but it was even less convincing than those. "we can't find this studio to sell this gear to, and we're late, do you wanna buy it?" "er... no!"

 

[kontai69]

This type of scam certainly has been around for a long while. I was approached a couple times by "white vans" when I was living in NC over 10 years ago. In both instances, I was confronted in a grocery store parking lot. The story was the same...the guys were to deliver speakers to a store, store refuses delivery, now they need to unload them for cheap.
Being pretty knowledgeble on stereo equipment, I actually was not a good person to try to rip off since never heard of the brand they were trying to sell. Only years later, after reading about it on the internet, did I realize that it was a widespread scam.

As far as ads on Craigslist for these speakers, I read that alot of them are from people who are trying to pass the speakers on to someone else after later finding out that they got ripped off.

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnesto Have you guys ever heard of this scam?

No, I had never heard of that scam!

 

[StevieDvd]

The scam is copied a lot. White van drivers usually.

One such copy is that they have just fitted high quality carpet in a building they are parked near and it was over estimated. Rather than getting in trouble they offer it 'cheap' but in fact they are just selling cheap carpet off as high-end stuff.

One of the cheekiest scams I heard of was a couple of guys ringing computer system manufacturers offering reviews in main stream magazines. When the van pulled up outside the magazine offices they were waiting outside and took delivery on the street as they were supposedly going to review them at another office (they even had fake email or letters to prove who they were). Naturally when the manufacturers wanted the gear back they contacted the magazine and discovered they had been scammed.

 

[spraggih]

Scams are sometimes as big (bigger?) than legitimate business. In Nigeria, the "Nigerian scam"* is one of the biggest businesses in the country where people have job descriptions, get promoted, work 9-5 jobs scamming people all the time.

But with the internet it has gone to new levels as the cost of communicating the scam is near zero.

I get phising (sp?) scams like this all the time.

Your Online Banking is Blocked

Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had to believe that, their might be some security problem on you account. So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security. Please click on sign in to Online Banking to continue to the verification process and ensure your account security. It is all about your security. Thank you. and visit the customer service section.

BTW - I do not have an account with this bank.


* - we have royalty or whatever and due to political issues our money is tied up - we just need money from you to release the funds)