Have you ever fell for a scam you thought you were too smart for ?
Posted by stevielfc76@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 32 comments
I have just fell for a scam, thought I was smarter than this!! Seen an ad on here for a “Lacoste” t-shirt offer, I needed T shirts for my hols so thought even if they’re shit quality they’d do for knocking around in but this t-shirt (not the 5 advertised) was absolute dog shit, embarrassingly bad. Have you ever fell for a scam like this?
VolcanicBear@reddit
I was desperate for a TOR marketplace, and found a link without verifying it. Lost £200 or so.
It was a perfect man in the middle attack, and whilst I 100% understand how it was done, I was just too impatient to verify the security keys for the site I thought I was using.
Honestly didn't mind losing the money as it was technically interesting.
ReputationApart5983@reddit
You mean tor as in dark web? To buy what?
Amazing-Heron-105@reddit
Nice try Officer
ReputationApart5983@reddit
Seriously I dont understand what hes getting at here, was he trying to buy drugs online or something?
ShinyHeadedCook@reddit
Not technically a scam as its legal...
I.was involved in a bad car crash. Idiot flew out of a junction he should have stopped at, hit me at 50mph and wrote my car off. I was in shock. I called the police who said to call my insurers as they would sort recovery... I googled their number. Too search result on Google, I saw their name and a number. I called it, a recovery truck came and took my car. A guy called and said tgry would get a courtesy car to me immediately, it came.
I got the incident number from the police the next day and rung my insurers to give it them. They had no record of me reporting a crash!!
Some random company had made it look.like they were my insurers on Google. They had my car. I found out who thry were, Google was full of terrible reviews and experiences of dealing with them. I called them and they had sent my car to copart. It took ages to sort out. Luckily I returned their courtesy car after 1 day as soon as I realised it ain't my insurers.
I lost about £400 from my claim in the end, but still got about 8k back for my car which I'd paid 9k for but the stress it caused after a bad crash was awful
hhfugrr3@reddit
How is impersonating an insurance company to scam money out of people who don't realise they're not dealing with their insurance company legal?
ShinyHeadedCook@reddit
Because they do it all very carefully. But there is motions to stop it . Thry look legit like your insurance company when you search on Google, and include the name of your insurance and a phone number. You call them and say I need to claim and they say we can help you with that, they dont specifically say on the phone they are your insurers, but as you called the number believing it to be them, you go along with it. As in my case I was in shock and injured. Was absolutely terrible once I spoke yo my actual insurers
Should be made illegal full stop
ohshitohgodohno@reddit
I worked for a company that worked to settle with ACMs on behalf of insurance companies. They’re totally unregulated, they don’t fall under any particular jurisdiction, just a real hodgepodge of case law. Part of my job was proving to these management companies that the defendant wouldn’t hire a car of that particular class if they were left to their own devices - perhaps that could be proven if there’s another vehicle in the household, or they’re on a great bus route - but sometimes we’d be forced to request bank statements where we’d judge if you spend too much money elsewhere that you wouldn’t hire a Merc, to satisfy the management companies.
Ghouls.
hhfugrr3@reddit
I mean it sounds like fraud to me, but if it somehow isn't then it should definitely be banned ASAP.
ImpressiveStorm8914@reddit
If they took your car, why did you return theirs so quickly? Why not keep it until yours was returned. Especially with the stress etc they caused you.
ShinyHeadedCook@reddit
Because the Google reviews said they charged ridiculously high fees for the hire car. It was made to sound a courtesy car but they arent. So I figured that out and gave it back to enterprise who it was from, organised by the company that spoofed my insurers Google post. Some people end up with many thousands in charges
ImpressiveStorm8914@reddit
Ah okay, if you were concerned about potential charges then it makes sense. Thanks for the answer.
ShinyHeadedCook@reddit
It is part of the racket. They get a very expensive hire car delivered to you, you believe its a courtesy car, thry rack up thousands of pounds of rental charges and then try and get it off your insurers who will say no, leaving you have to pay. I read stories of pepple eho had kept the rental cars for a couple of months. I had it one day and they charged me £120.
The company only released my car to my insurance company once they had been paid for that hire car and recovery which was £300. My insurance paid them and deducted it from my payout. I still got 8k for a car I'd paid 9k one year before. It was my first car so had been driven quite not smoothly so I was relieved I got a decent payout. But let me tell you it was a huge amount of stress
ImpressiveStorm8914@reddit
Thankfully I've never needed to hire a car, or have a courtesy one but I have heard about this type of scam on a consumer programme before. The one I saw focused more on companies that would give you a car, then claim false damages on it when it was returned. Complete and utter scum. Sorry you had to deal with the stress of it all.
ohshitohgodohno@reddit
This sounds like credit hire / accident management! Absolute ghoul companies.
ShinyHeadedCook@reddit
Yeah exactly what it was ! Turned a straight forward no fault on my part claim (police charged other driver and said it was his fault and he admitted fault) into a multi months long shit show
Suddendeath777@reddit
As a former car insurance worker, these companies were the bain of my working day.
They exist to convince someone who's just written off their Toyota Yaris to take on a £60,000 Mercedes as their courtesy car on a credit hire basis. Then they'd try and bill the actual insurance company for it, obviously get it declined for egregious cost and the customer ends up with a court order for £8000 worth of hire fees on a vehicle they drove for 2 weeks.
Then pass your accident data to another company who'll convince you to put in an injury claim promising all sorts of compensation. It's an entire racket.
ShinyHeadedCook@reddit
Yeah man, I luckily figured it out fast. Still got hit with £300 for recovery n £100 for 1 day of hire car (luckily I got a corsa so nothing too expensive).
PurpleOctopus6789@reddit
Why would you want bootleg shirt if it's crap quality when you can get plain cotton t-shirts of decent quality for far less. Like, is it because of fake label? Don't get it.
And no, I have not fallen for a scam like that. I don't think I have ever fallen for one.
811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit
The quality of bootleg gear these days is shockingly good
hhfugrr3@reddit
There was a tee-shirt i wanted a few years ago but they'd stopped making the real thing so my gf bought me one from a random company on the Internet. It arrived and I had no idea it wasn't real. I've now got a couple of the real ones and there is no difference on quality whatsoever.
banwe11@reddit
Clever you
ReputationApart5983@reddit
Not me but my friend fell in with a bad crowd. So they convinced him to buy an old banger and they managed to get it insured for £1200 somehow, I dont know how I dont drive. So maybe very shortly after, hell it might have even been that day, they took it to a rural road with no cameras, crashed it. Then tried to make a claim, well I didnt know insurance companies can do this but if they suspect fraud or something, they can refuse to payout and you have to take them to court to fight it but in this case it was fraud. So then because his "new friends" had insured the car for him, they extorted him for £1200. They did some shit like go up to his parents and family members asking for the money. I really think he should have gotten the police involved but he had some sort of good job and they would have probably charged him with fraud so he ended up paying. He probably would have attacked, robbed or maybe even killed for that. This happened few years back in my younger twenties.
cragglerock93@reddit
Yeah I entered my Outlook username and password onto a website I clicked a link in an email to get to 🤦♂️
In my defence, not only did it come from an email address I trusted (their account was compromised), I was expecting documents from them at some point, and it looked really professional and Microsoft-looking. What isn't in my defence is that I never considered why I would need to enter my password to access a document when I was already signed in. That was dumb. The IT department were nice about it.
Agitated_Ad_361@reddit
*fallen for
QSBW97@reddit
Fell for a phishing email at work once, it was about expenses needed to be resubmitted, I just so happened to submit them a few hours before
moon-bouquet@reddit
Looking for a job, agency on Linkedin touted a job but recommended a CV polishing company to get the targeting right…
shogatsu1999@reddit
Bought "ray bans" back when from an ad on Facebook when people still used Facebook. Arrived and we're so ridiculously bad I felt like an idiot. I thought at least might be good knock offs, but no probably costs 30p, and looked nothing like ray bans
Purepoise@reddit
Task scams. Thought it was too good to be true, but did it anyway, should have quit whilst I was ahead 400 GBP but got "locked" and couldn't justify it.
scriptkiddie1337@reddit
I got £18 off a task scammer telegram group once. Naturally I sent them taunting messages afterwords with some nice words about their mother. All I got in return was a 'fuck you.'
Sburns85@reddit
Buying a new battery for a niche device. Battery was half the price of a similar one. Usual story lost the money. Currently not sure if i was scammed or something else. Did a networking job for a business in a neighbouring city. Guy said could he pay me after December. Agreed with an agreement for him to pay extra. Signed by both in front of a lawyer. Guys since gone radio quiet. The business has been shuttered and now having to take him to court
AutoModerator@reddit
Please help keep AskUK welcoming!
When replying to submission/post please make genuine efforts to answer the question given. Please no jokes, judgements, etc. If a post is marked 'Serious Answers Only' you may receive a ban for violating this rule.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.