Have any of you ever been scammed?

b/Other publicado por u/SiphonicSugar August 02, 2016, 02:10:02 AM

Have any of you ever been scammed?

Please everyone, post any stories about how you or someone you know has been scammed!

So, I have not been on the forums for a while because the mobile platform is pretty hard to use and I don't have a working computer. I have all of the components for my computer besides the CPU, and here's why.

I don't have a debit card anymore, so buying the CPU on the website Superbiiz was going to be hard. My parents didn't want more of their information everywhere so they wouldn't create an account to buy the CPU on Superbiiz. My parents did have an Amazon account, so I found the same CPU for a slightly more expensive price from a foreign company called chienglin. We ordered it and after 20 days, it never got to us and they company removed their account from Amazon. We eventually did get a refund from Amazon, but that company still has money that we have them.

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u/Yuki August 02, 2016, 02:14:26 AM

Well, that sucks.

There's a few times I almost got involved in pyramid schemes, the hardest part is to tell them to gently c off.

u/SiphonicSugar August 02, 2016, 02:18:20 AM

Lol, now my parents don't trust to buy things on the Internet and I have to get a debit card again.

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 02, 2016, 02:57:45 AM

I had the same issue happening with Amazon marketplace when I bought a very rare CD collectible for $50. After 1 month it still hadn't arrived. I emailed them then they apologized and said they would try to ship another item to me but never did. I eventually got a refund from Amazon too.

@SiphonicSugar one rule of thumb when buying on Ebay or Amazon is to never buy anything from a seller that has a rating lower than 98%. This basically rules out Amazon, since nobody there has anywhere close to that score, but you could be lucky. And even at 100% be careful because if the seller only has 2 sales it might not necessarily mean he's good.

I personally haven't been scammed in a very long while, though. The last time was in 2007 when I submitted my music for sale on Blastmymusic, which worked similar to Bandcamp, but I don't know if that counts as scamming, because it was a free service. It was more of a intellectual property theft. Here's how it worked:

1) Sign up to the site and submit your MP3s for free. You also added your Paypal address so they can send you money
2) Then when you login, guess what happens? Password incorrect. No matter if you were 100% sure that your e-mail, password and username were typed correctly, the site login form wouldn't budge.
3) Then you clicked the Forgotten password link, but guess what? The password reset e-mail would never come, no matter the e-mail service you used. It was neither in the spam/trash folder.
4) Then you e-mailed their customer support. You would never get any reply.
5) Then you tried again months later. Still no reply.

Basically, they lured people into submitting their music, locked them out of their account then took 100% of the music profits. Thankfully they no longer exist, but it left a bad taste in my mouth and it took me until 2011 before I try venturing in the music industry again and to convince me that Bandcamp was not a scam.

By the way @Siphonic are you gonna get a new computer at all? It almost seems like you never will. In the meantime, if you have issues using CW from mobile you can always use Tapatalk. Else, let me know what issues make it hard for you to use the site.

u/Ivoah August 02, 2016, 04:16:53 AM

Imma just leave this here: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_when_you_reply_to_spam_email?language=en

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 02, 2016, 04:37:44 AM

I never tried replying to spam. I wanted to once, but I feared that my spam filter was a little too weak and that I would get flooded with 10K spams in a month or that my Gmail disk space would be maxed out.

What would have been hilarious is if by receiving e-mail that doesn't automatically land in the spam/trash bin we got ad revenues or some sort of revenues of the same kind, even if like $0.01 per 1000 email, because someone could just setup one of his popular e-mail inbox to receive all spam, subscribe to thousands of newsletters, submit his e-mail to spam lists and everything, then he would make money from spam

u/E37 August 02, 2016, 11:15:23 AM

I have 3 gmail accounts for that exact purpose!

I've really gotta try that now...

u/SiphonicSugar August 02, 2016, 05:17:04 PM

@DJ Omnimaga , I've been saving up on things for it and I am completely done, except the CPU, which I'm hopefully about to order again. Some summer school work and band camp have been holding me though.

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 02, 2016, 05:23:13 PM

Ah ok. I was worried since it has been half a year since you lost your computer. I hope your next one will last a while. I recently had to replace my GPU with a lower-end one because I couldn't afford a better one and needed one immediately (meaning I couldn't buy it online and wait 3 weeks to ship), but I hope the rest of my PC is fine. Also summer school sucks x.x

Quote from: E37 on August 02, 2016, 11:15:23 AM
I have 3 gmail accounts for that exact purpose!
I've really gotta try that now...

I don't get as much spam as I used to. But again, back in the days I had my e-mail listed everywhere including ticalc.org. I removed it because I got tired of people not reading my game readmes.

u/SiphonicSugar August 02, 2016, 05:29:43 PM

Yeah, my orginial plan was to have it finished before the end of school, but my parents were not wanting me to spend lots of money from my bank account.

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 02, 2016, 05:53:33 PM

Ah I see. I hope they let you get the CPU soon (and that it works)

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 04, 2016, 09:57:30 PM

Kinda relevant to this topic, but I noticed this happens a bit more often online now: Watch out for people who tries to sell retro games for much more than they're worth. I don't know if they're trying to make people think those games are valuable due to not being very known, but if you are an impulsive retro game buyer who happens to be very rich, then someone is offering Mia Hamm Soccer for the Nintendo 64 for only $885. Someone else is also offering it for slightly cheaper, at $7.

This reminds me that one person that charged $200 for Call of Duty: Mordern Warfare 2, even though it was worth $10.

u/c4ooo August 06, 2016, 11:45:44 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on August 04, 2016, 09:57:30 PM
This reminds me that one person that charged $200 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, even though it was worth $10.

I got it for free

the people who paid 10$ where scammed

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 06, 2016, 05:15:22 PM

Lol. In a store I'm sure it can be found for $3 though

u/Caleb Hansberry August 06, 2016, 05:36:15 PM

I don't think I've ever been scammed unless my auto mechanic did, but as I'm not an auto mechanic I can't really tell. He charged $700 to fix some coolant hoses and a couple weeks later a coolant hose was broken. He said it was a different hose so not covered, but before he had said just to be safe he repaired all the hoses. So whatever... But online, I'm very careful, I never buy from Amazon, and on eBay I never buy from chinese sellers or sellers with a less than 97% rating or sellers with few sales.