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Getting Ripped Off
ryuprecht
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was talking with some of the people I work with about getting ripped off, and I thought maybe it might be fun to share some stories. I told two today that were personal annoyances of mine, where I was ripped off and not happy.
1) I had a GBA game once that I got, never opened, and decided I didn't want to play it. I lost the receipt though, so I thought it might be tough to return it. I called my local EB and they said it was ok, I could exchange it for store credit, and I went on down there to get something new. When I brought it in, the guy took a knife and cut open the shrinkwrap, checked to make sure it was all there, then told me he would give me $11 for it, which was the used trade-in value. When I pointed out it wasn't used, he gave me a dumb look and said "but it's open already". This was probably the one time I've ever lost my cool in public, and I went off on the guy. I used a lot of bad words. He took the box into the back and re-shrinkwrapped it for me and told me I should take it somewhere else for full credit. The shinkwrapping was pretty amature, so no other store would take it back.
2) I bought a series of books online two years ago for my dad for Christmas. I got them off ebay, an entire set of Time-Life books that he would have liked. The package arrived 10 days later than it should have, and was missing all but 7 of the books (it was a 20+ volume set). Upon closer inspection, I noticed the following:
- the box had been ripped open and resealed to be about half the original size.
- the extra space in the box was filled with newspaper.
- the box originally shipped from Minneapolis on Dec 3, 2005. The newspaper was dated Dec 7, 2005 and was from a Northern California newspaper.
The shipper felt bad for me and refunded the value for the missing books. I bought my dad something else. To this day I have the 7 books on a shelf, part of an incomplete set.
So who else has been ripped off?
1) I had a GBA game once that I got, never opened, and decided I didn't want to play it. I lost the receipt though, so I thought it might be tough to return it. I called my local EB and they said it was ok, I could exchange it for store credit, and I went on down there to get something new. When I brought it in, the guy took a knife and cut open the shrinkwrap, checked to make sure it was all there, then told me he would give me $11 for it, which was the used trade-in value. When I pointed out it wasn't used, he gave me a dumb look and said "but it's open already". This was probably the one time I've ever lost my cool in public, and I went off on the guy. I used a lot of bad words. He took the box into the back and re-shrinkwrapped it for me and told me I should take it somewhere else for full credit. The shinkwrapping was pretty amature, so no other store would take it back.
2) I bought a series of books online two years ago for my dad for Christmas. I got them off ebay, an entire set of Time-Life books that he would have liked. The package arrived 10 days later than it should have, and was missing all but 7 of the books (it was a 20+ volume set). Upon closer inspection, I noticed the following:
- the box had been ripped open and resealed to be about half the original size.
- the extra space in the box was filled with newspaper.
- the box originally shipped from Minneapolis on Dec 3, 2005. The newspaper was dated Dec 7, 2005 and was from a Northern California newspaper.
The shipper felt bad for me and refunded the value for the missing books. I bought my dad something else. To this day I have the 7 books on a shelf, part of an incomplete set.
So who else has been ripped off?
ryuprecht on
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Man, don't buy a BMW. Even for a car damn near 15 years old it still costs a kidney for "Authorized Parts."
The girlfriends car went in to get detailed. We removed everything except the full (unopened) pack of cigarettes buried in the console... Half the pack was gone by the time we left and the wrapper stuffed inside.
Classy.
Oh, and I left my window open once during broad daylight for 10 minutes while I grabbed shit in my apartment upstairs. Came back down and my glove box was open, yet all my CDs were there. Took me a few minutes to realize the fucker snatched my entire ashtray out from in front of the gear shift with exactly two quarters and about twenty pennies in it.
What a dick.
By this point, I was out of a car for a month. The rental fees on the car I had were around $800. They refused to pay for all of them, claiming that my mechanic was the one who had taken a long time to respond to them. I know for a fact that he called them daily and they had no idea what the fuck they were doing. Eventually I just gave up and wrote it off as a loss.
God help them if I ever find myself bored in Nebraska.
Lesson: when doing business abroad, prepare for legal issues and don't trust people who's financial interests are better served by taking you out of the picture
Sorry, OP
Sweet zombie jesus. I really. really hope karma does it's job on him/her.
As for me I lost 200 euro's of loan to a female friend. Protip: Unless you are prepared to lose the money always be VERY VERY careful with loans to friends (especially if you like the person in question).
One day I went up there to get an allignment fix. Sadly they said their machine was broken but they pointed us down the road to another place. We dropped it off and came back the next day. My dad said he'd take care of it(just an alignment - no parts ya know, cheap stuff). So how much did it cost? A thousand bucks. My dad flipped on the guy and they he explained "oh, we put a new suspension in - looked bad" I got a good deal on this car and it only cost a thousand. I never saw my dad so hot.
Yeah don't loan money to friends - better to pay their bills directly and consider it a gift rather than doing it as a loan.
Agreed.
It was then that I found out how expensive airport bars are, so I got ripped off twice.
Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to pour new cement in your basement at 2am?
You really do need to provide details...
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Also, I bought a "low quality" 6 foot component cable from Radio Shack for $35 once, but returned them once I found the $4 cables from monoprice.com. I didn't know it was possible to gouge that badly.
Well I don't really want to rehash what was basically the most stressful 9 month period of my life, but if you really really want I can include the details of how the business and legal shit went down so that others may learn from my mistakes.
As far as I can remember, the worst I've had is a pretty well known auto shop trying to charge me $1200 to replace the power steering rack in my car when it broke apart on a 500k trip back to school. My Dad ended up towing it home and we replaced it ourselves for around $250 total cost. The rack cost me $140; they tried to charge me $900.
Also, my former landlady tried to scam me out of my damage deposit ($750) by refusing to send me a copy of the move-in inspection report and then "losing" 2 pages from it when it came time to move out. I'd taken pictures of every square inch of the place before I moved in and mailed them to myself, so all I had to do was show them to the property manager. I should have sued that evil bitch.
I parked my on the street at an old apartment. I left it for about three days because I didn't have to go anywhere (I was working from home at that point). I came back after the three days and it was gone, and the city had painted a red zone AROUND my car and gotten it towed earlier that day.
I don't recall any signs warning of the upcoming change (I think I would have noticed) and the street corner still has a spot where they couldn't quite fully paint due to my car being in the way. I didn't have to pay the tickets for it but was saddled with a $140 towing charge (for 4 hours in the lot). Pissed me off to no end.
Someone broke into the same car later for a $25 CD player and some CDs I'd left in there once, overnight. I compensated by buying an iPod that always had battery trouble. (replacements didn't help) Roommate had his stereo ripped from his car, fucking up the electronics, on the same block.
God that neighborhood sucked for being right by a church and a school...
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I paid $59.99 for the Sony HDMI cable, but returned it when I found the $4.99 Link Depot HDMI cable on newegg.com The cables weren't even slightly different, they were exactly the same in every possible way.
Anyway, being 16 y/o, I was checking my pocket compulsively every few seconds...it was there when I went in. So I tried on the pants, they were measured, etc. and I went back into the changing room in the back to get my normal pants. My wallet was gone. I immediately searched the floor, nothing.
No other customers had entered while I was there. It was me, my uncle, and the employees. I asked the cashier and the fitter (neither had left my sight) if there was anyone else working. Yes, one person in the back.
Long story short, denied. It magically disappeared.
I don't mean to aggravate you, but as someone who will be starting a business in a years time, I would like to know how it all went down.
After a few phone calls, it turns out that the doctor never filed a claim in the first place. The claims weren't missing. They didn't die in a catastrophic computer failure. The doctor was just too "busy" to file for my insurance. He also refuses to "re-file" because of the "cost involved" and won't "investigate" unless I give him 25% of the bill. Since this guy didn't do part of his job, I'm not giving him a dime.
Seeing as how I'm no longer with the insurance company, there was a distinct possibility of getting boned or fighting the doctor in court. Luckily, I sent a very nice letter to the insurance company and they are currently working on seeing how they can get the doctor paid. After this gets resolved, I'm sending a very nice letter to the AMA about this dude.
Urban schools are trouble zones, not safety zones.
I mean, it still sucks, just sayin'
Basically, I had shipped out two turntables and some vinyl to a dude in Texas who won my auction. The transfer was smooth but in my haste, I neglected to do anything like delivery confirmation or the like. Just plain 'ole shipped it out and went on my way.
Long story short, he claimed they never came and I felt bad so I refunded him. I attempted to track the items myself but without the info, the post office can't do a whole lot. At this point I realized I had probably been scammed and decided to just take my loss.
Moral: Pay for delivery confirmation!
Also, Ninto:
Well it's a long story, but here goes. It's a complex situation so I'll start with the backstory to make things a bit more comprehensible, hopefully.
I lived in Costa Rica as a teenager with my family, and went to high school for a year and half there where I met my now ex-wife. I went to the public school there and did everything as Spanish immersion, so ended up speaking the language very well. Long story short, I lived there, came back, finished school here, bit of college, work and then she came to visit, we got married and she stayed.
After a few years of being back in Canada and living, working etc we meet a Costa Rican guy (Ulysses is his name) and his wife and kids. They're in Canada officially as refugees due to her father's attempts on Ulysses' life, supposedly. He's really hard working, makes reasonable money doing 2 full time jobs and has great sales skills and a lot of enthusiasm.
After knowing them and being close friends for 9 months or so, we learn that their whole family is being deported due to the refugee status claim being denied. The official grounds for this is because despite the threat supposedly being credible in their eyes, they believe Costa Rican law enforcement to be able to handle the situation. Everyone thinks this is BS, but what are ya going to do? They've been living in Canada for years, are productive members of society in every sense of the word but they're getting deported. Due to being close friends and respecting Ulysses and the statement from the immigration office, I never looked too closely into the history of their original refugee claim.
There's lots of drama and stress over this, but the bottom line is that he has a bit of time before he has to leave the country. In the meantime he proposes the business idea to me, as he's getting a bit desperate for obvious reasons. He has no savings to speak of, all they own is the car and the household stuff, no real education but great attitude and desire to get things done. My first impression is skepticism, as ideas born from desperation tend not to be very good ones.
The basic business idea seemed a sound one, however. After a while of thinking about it, I agreed to help him write a business plan and get some good numbers together and see how realistic things were, mostly out of curiosity but also to try to help as he wasn't the smartest guy on the block. Great salesman, great energy and attitude and work ethic but not too sure about the business side of things. The business plan surprised me. We were looking at some huge potential, but unfortunately we needed money to start things. I didn't have a lot, he only had his new van that he just bought and things were looking interesting, but grim. It wasn't going to happen because the startup costs were too high. Not high compared to just about any other business out there, but still beyond our means and there was no way we were going to be able to get a loan to do business in Costa Rica.
As we were planning this, I was at a family gathering talking to my parents about the situation, talking about the business idea etc and Ulysses in general, and they offer to help with the starting capital. I was shocked, but at that point I was sold on the idea so we started making it a reality.
We (Ulysses and I) visited a business loans financial officer at a World Bank office in order to get a business plan assessment done to make sure that we hadn't missed anything. We then formed a corporation in Canada together which was loaned money by my parents. I had a separate agreement with them that I would pay them back personally if for whatever reason things went to shit. (which I ended up doing)
Ulysses financial stake in the business was to come when we arrived in Costa Rica (using his van to drive there) at which point he would sell the van and we would use that money for operating capital while we got things running. Bit of risk here but we worked it legally so that his ownership stake in the company was dependent on this investment on his part.
So, lots of work involved here but the gist of it is that we bought equipment in Canada, packed it into a container along with all our worldly possessions, shipped it to Costa Rica and started driving.
10,000 Km later, we're in Costa Rica and the real drama begins. The way business works in Costa Rica is that in order to have a business of any kind you need to have at least 50% ownership of the business be Costa Rican. That was fine with me, as we would be doing business with a 50/50 stake as soon as he ponied up his share from selling his van (worth about $35,000 USD). My family investment was more than that (the aforementioned $65,000) but as it was a loan that was going to get paid back directly by the business, I was ok with that.
Basically my stake was for starting capital, equipment, signage, legal fees, transport, bribes, etc etc etc etc fucking etc, and his was for operating expenses, wages and the ongoing things while we got the business profitable. Both ends were padded by quite a bit, as nobody wanted the business to fail due to running out of money before the ball really got rolling.
Anyway, we scout out a location and start the legal process in CR, and he starts trying to sell his van. We got a great spot fairly quickly, as it was a pre-existing business with an existing customer base, although badly laid out and not marketed very well - it was breaking even, however. The real estate was owned by a lawyer who offered us a good deal on both the lease and legal fees for getting the corporate paperwork done.
So, as things are going we have the business with me as the majority owner, not able to actually take customers yet as the 50% costa rican ownership isn't fulfilled yet. The equipment had showed up (long story dealing with customs, bribery etc etc here) finally and everything in place, but Ulysses didn't have his share of the money yet as he hadn't been able to sell the car. I thought this was a little odd as it was in great shape, practically brand new and the asking price was reasonably below market value.
So I'm getting a little anxious, as every thing's ready to go but we're not legally able to do business yet. At this point we had enough money to keep us going at a total loss with 0 customers for a couple of months at least, and the preexisting customer base was enough to cover ongoing operating expenses, so I decided to let Ulysses in at 50% stake so that we could get going. I made him sign a contract obliging him to either pay $30,000 into the business directly in the next 6 months or have to pay it back over time through less profit-taking from the business. We were going to pay back the loan directly from the business anyway, I thought.
Along the way as we got going, in order to get various supplies on the cheap locally we had to open contracts with local wholesalers to buy in bulk for cheap. This we did, but the deposits and initial outlay with our suppliers ate into the rest of our initial capital. This made me nervous as hell as any slowdown or delay in getting sales going would have us fucked. Payroll and tax issues put us at 0 right damn quick.
So everything is taken care of and we get going. The business takes off better than expected, tripling sales in 4 months and everything is going according to plan. During these 4 months is when I got separated from my wife, but that's another unrelated story. It had been building up for a while, it wasn't just the business stress and change that caused the problems.
So along the way, we're still in debt and having to pay back the loan. Our accounts with suppliers are growing really fast so accounts payable is growing, much bigger than our initial deposit amounts. We're paying these as we go just fine on monthly basis, but it's relevant in how stuff happens later.
So at one point, 6 months have passed and the business is doing well, but Ulysses still hasn't sold his car or paid into the business at all. I start to get annoyed, and so we sit down and hash things out. At this point he confides in me that he doesn't own the van, that it was just a lease and that he hasn't been able to sell it because we didn't pay the taxes on it when we got into the country. So I learn that my business partner stole the fucking van, won't be paying any money to invest in expansion or to have any kind of security or buffer, and I get fucking pissed off. The next day I get a phone call from one of our suppliers saying that we were on a cash only basis from then on because one of our cheques bounced.
So I have a look at the bank account, and it turns out that the cheque bounced because of some mistakes that Ulysses made in ordering quantities. Basically he bought too much of something from a different supplier, by a factor of 10. I remembered the order seeming a bit large but things were happening so quickly I didn't take much notice. I went to the supplier and paid for the goods and went to buy some more to keep things going, and I find that the price for cash only customers is almost double what we were paying before. Lovely. I have no choice, however. The finances are changed completely, however, as that particular supplier was one of our biggest costs in doing business, and now it's doubled.
So all these things (along with many many minor issues) combine to make me think that I'm not feeling too comfortable with having Ulysses own a full share in the business. I talk to our lawyer/landlord to see if I have any options. He tells me that the 50% CR ownership requirement isn't flexible, but that there's nothing saying that a 50% stake has to be all in one person. The problem is that it would require that Ulysses sell part of his ownership in the business, which I'm fine with but Ulysses might not be so keen on.
So, I don't really trust anyone at this point, so I decide to stick with the status quo as I know trying to get Ulysses to sell anything isn't going to happen. At least I know he has a long term emotional stake in the business's success and he's done a lot to make it happen, although I think he might be going to jail soon. I'm trying to figure out how to avoid being legally involved in that myself, actually.
Anyway, the business is going along fine and all the turmoil behind the scenes seems to be quieting down when one day I show up and the locks are changed and the cops are there.
What the fuck?
Turns out Ulysses sold his stake in the business to the lawyer, who then used his new stake and ownership rights to issue stop payments on the rent cheque to himself (the bank allowed this? grrr), which he then used as non-payment of rent to be a breach of the lease. The lease had penalty clauses in it, causing the business to now owe him the rent and the full extent of the penalty clauses. Well, with payday having happened the day before and the recent expenses with the suppliers causing a large outlay of cash and with the business being effectively shut down, we can't get credit from anyone or pay the rent, so he now has the right to seize assets to pay himself for the fucking penalty to himself.
Needless to say, I got another lawyer and spent a bunch of personal money to hear that basically I had to invest more personal money into the business in order to pay the bills. With my lovely new partner, I was not willing to do that. I was looking at tens of thousands more in investment with him holding all the cards. Due to the lease issues the previous lease was cancelled, so we were going to have to write a new lease and he wanted more than triple the previous rent, which was going to make the business unprofitable and thus bleed me dry. He was perfectly willing to let it sit there until I ran out of money to live on. In the end I decided that the money wasn't worth it, that my choices were either to drop it completely, or start fresh with a new partner and go into competition with the lawyer. If I could have done it on my own, I might have, but the prospect of another %50 partnership wasn't really floating my boat.
Oh and the kicker is - there was no way to enforce the loan in Canada on the business in Costa Rica. It was to the company that Ulyssess and I had formed here, and he had fucked off to who knows where, leaving me alone to pay for it.
But hey, I got to fuck lots of latinas and learned a lot, so it's all turned out for the best.
--LeVar Burton
Yeah my story was long enough already, but there was a fair amount of this kind of BS going on in my deal too.
Wow. Well at least you know something about business now and could potentially start one up, perhaps in a country with laws. Nice laws. That protect the innocent.
Can we ask what kind of business this was?
Wasn't really relevant, but it was a detailing/car wash business.
Took three months to get straightened out.
I bought two graphic cards off of Ebuyer.com once, one for me and one for my friend (He was paying me). They were some nice high end cards at the time, like Geforce9600 or something, only a year or so ago, 256MB, AGP at about £230 each. I ordered, paid and recieved my shipment.
Two brand new graphics cards. Only they were PCI-E and 2 models down from the cards I ordered. I ordered an RMA to pick them up which meant me then waiting around all day to make sure the guy got them since if I missed tehm then I'd have to pay to have them taken back.
The cards then got back and for the next 3 months, I was ringing up every other day to find out why the hell my cash still wasn't back in my account. Seriously. They had the cards but hadn't processed them and were cocking about. Add to that the 15-25 minute call waits and the fact the calls were actually charged, it probably cost me money to get fuck all. Eventually I got my bank involved and the money was back within the week.
So if you have a good bank, sick them on the fuckers.
Wha?
Story, please!
Now, it turned out that there was nothing the manager could do. I'd called my bank first thing Monday morning, explained to them that they needed to put a hold on the account until it got fixed. The bank person was like "$300 at Taco Bell is obviously an error, we'll put a hold on it." I spend the rest of the day doing a back-and-forth with the franchise manager and my bank, and we finally get everything sorted out.
About three days later I go up online to make sure everything got fixed. No, I'd overdrawn by about $15 bucks.
I immediately call the bank back. They tell me that they'll have to fax me a dispute form and that the process could take up to 90 days to complete. I fly off the fucking handle, explaining that I am a college student without access to a fax machine, that I now have approximately $5 to my name (in cash, which, during the course of the conversation, I spent on a pack of desperately-needed cigarettes), about two days' worth of food, no beer, and a frightfully short supply of clean underwear. I remind them that I had requested a hold put on the account and that there had been three faxes sent to them by Taco Bell saying "don't bill this, we fucked up." I was informed that it didn't matter, that I still had to file a dispute form and that it would take 45-90 days to resolve, whereupon I informed them that they were fucking jackass cuntmonkeys worthy only of contempt, and that if given the opportunity I would gladly shit all over him, and oh, by the way, I had sex with your mom, your sister, your daughter, your wife, and your dog last night, dickcheese, and they all screamed for more, and then I hung up. Or something to that effect. I was displeased. I am still displeased. This may or may not still be evident due to the tone of my post; I'm not entirely sure.
(But I digress.)
So I call up the Taco Bell franchise manager again - cool guy, awesome throughout the whole thing - and tell him what went down, and that rather than trying to deal with this stress on top of pledging a fraternity, breaking up with my girlfriend, and struggling with classes, I'm just going to keep the cash.
Dude then - in, presumably, an effort to make sure that the bank didn't realize that they had in fact fucked up and credit the money back to my account - billed me another $291.11.
I screamed like a ten-year-old girl.
Throughout this whole thing, both of my parents were unreachable. My dad, upon returning to the country from France and finding out about it, went to the bank and, as I understand it, threatened someone with bodily harm if they "did not fix this fucking bullshit mistake on your part, and pull it off both my and my son's credit report." (It was a joint account.)
So eventually I get back home, deposit the money, and leave something like $.16 in an interest-free account with no minimum balance before opening a new account with a new bank. I wonder how much it costs those fuckers to audit that account while it doesn't make them a dime.
For about two years I was working shitty retail jobs and going slowly into debt. I had a feature on my account that pulled money from my credit card (from the same bank) if I went over. And go over I did. I'll admit I probably spent a bit more than I should have, but most of it went to food and lodging. I knew it was pulling off my card and just decided to deal with it when I could, hoping for the day I finally got a better job.
Unbeknownst to me, someone at the bank, somewhere, fucked up, and my account somehow got linked to SOMEONE ELSE'S CREDIT CARD. (I should have noticed, but I was young and lazy and didn't read account statements). It got up to about 800 dollars total.
Eventually the bank caught on to their mistake, and instead of calling me about it, they just removed the 800 from my account (which had about 700 in it at the time) two days before my rent was due. Oh, I did get a letter about it three days later, by which point I had figured out what happened. My rent ended up going onto the card as well (after harassing the bank into increasing my limit) but I ate ramen for a good long while after that. I switched banks shortly thereafter.
Fuck Bank of America.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I've heard nothing but either bad or frustrating experiences from family (including my parents) of mine when dealing with Bank of America.
It's comforting to know that I deal with a reliable local bank in my town.
My hand to god, I would off someone if they tried to do that to me.
That's an extra mortgage on my parents' house just as they are approaching retirement age. It will have long-term negative consequences on their, and possibly my, life. It's the only thing in my life I have not found myself able to forgive. Hopefully that will change. We'll see.
--LeVar Burton