There's a Sucker Converted Every Minute

Ponca City, We love you writes "Once the US converts from analog to digital broadcasting next February, those who receive their signals over the air will need a converter box for older, non-digital models. Government-approved converter boxes sell for $60 or less and a government-issued $40 rebate coupon is available for the asking but that hasn't stopped companies like the Ohio-based Universal TechTronics from offering supposedly free converter boxes. The gimmick: the box is free, as long as you pay $88 for a five-year warranty, plus $9.30 shipping. Universal TechTronics seems to specialize in 'high-tech' products of questionable value, marketing the Cool Surge portable air cooler, 'a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents, or freon are needed' that uses the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb. It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer. What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately?"

Comments

Tech scam?

[jeiler]

"We have to filter P2P to solve network congestion"--Bell Canada.

Re:Tech scam?

[A beautiful mind]

Mod parent insightful, instead of funny. Various people and some papers have suggested that upgrading network capacity is a better way to handle high traffic than trying to mess with QoS, because 1. it's cheaper 2. it actually works, which isn't really proven to be the case for QoS on a large ISP level network.

Tech Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD rewinders.

Kinoki Foot Pads

[MBCook]

I've seem some scams recently, but the most amazing has to be Kinoki Foot Pads. Let's ignore the fact that my understanding is the word "kinoki" is meaningless and the characters they use in the ad don't even read "kinoki".

I'm used to all sorts of pseudo science in TV ads, but this one is downright amazing. Did you know tree roots are used to dispose of chemicals, and that my feet are actually tree roots? I'm so glad someone told me. I especially love the list of conditions that these things can cure. Even if they weren't fake and actually would detoxify you, I seriously doubt it would even touch many of those conditions. I seem to remember reading someone wrapped carrots with the pads just to prove that anything will make them blacken from "toxins".

The ad id just amazing. I was dumbfounded the first time I saw it. Diet pill ads look like something out of the Mayo Clinic in comparison.

Re:Maybe the

[morgan_greywolf]

The real tech scam: you have to upgrade your PC every two years to run the latest and greatest versions of Windows and Office.

Re:Carbon credits

[wizardforce]

no. CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere without "destroying" anything. plant a tree, that tree takes in CO2, water, nutrients and with light can synthesize organic compounds locked up in the tree its self. no magical violations of laws of physics required.

Re:I like Vista

[tomhudson]

and now I have the ability to play games without the horrible FPS that came with Vista.

Vista comes with a First Person Shooter?

Let me guess - you score points by killing penguins with thrown chairs, you buy armour by making campaign contributions, and you power up by eating up all the ram chips lying around.

Best Tech Scam

[UserChrisCanter4]

Well, the cell phone antenna booster "stickers" were probably the single best tech scam. It combined laughably ineffective "technology" with the always successful price-so-low-it-doesn't-matter-if-they-don't-work.

More recently, I'm still astounded by the number of "BOOST YOUR MPG!" schemes that involve additives or random crap shoved in your air intake. I especially love the accusations from promoters that the auto manufacturers are in it with the oil companies. GM and Ford are both facing a very real possibility of chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the word is that Cerberus is quietly readying a giant hammer of doom over at Chrysler. If all it took was a $2 piece of metal to get 9 more mpg out of a Malibu, don't you think they'd have done it by now? See the cell phone boosters for the basic premise: if you only charge $40 for one of these things, people won't be too pissed when they find out that it doesn't work.

There are many MLM schemes that differentiate themselves from the regular Amway crowd by pitching websites that MAKE YOU MONEY. I was actually approached by two different classmates about five years ago regarding the scheme, and it was so comically bad to anyone with any kind of tech knowledge that you couldn't help but laugh. Picture MLM combined with an Amazon-style referral bonus for online purchases. Now charge someone $400 to participate, and charge extra for adding basic things to their company website. Now make sure the websites resemble GeoCities circa 1997. Now we're talking!

My other favorite is the speaker scam, which someone tried to pull on me about two weeks ago (I hadn't heard of these for years). It's not really a tech scam, just your basic grift that happens to involve technology: an "installer" got an extra set of speakers/surround sound system/plasma TV accidentally loaded in his van for a big install job. Last time this happened, his boss reamed him a new one for not noticing in the first place, then sold them and kept the cash himself. Installer figures he'd "cut out the middleman" and you look like the kind of guy who knows good equipment. Usually they're selling actual speakers or receiver (the plasma scams generally involved an oven door in a box with a window), and they often have some custom-made audio magazine with their brand of speaker on the cover and a great review inside. You end up buying $20 worth of garbage for $200. Dogg Digital and Kirsch were the big names in the white van speaker scam years ago. Google them for an entertaining and depressing look at human nature.

Re:Best Tech Scam

[mxs]

The OP is trying to make himself seem like the good guy in the story. Here is what happened :

Guy goes to eBay. Guy finds lots of speakers that he thinks are worth lots of moolah. Guy thinks to himself, hey, maybe I can bid low and rip somebody off (legally, $1 auctions have been known to net you high-priced goods whenever christmas and easter fall on the same day). Guy proceeds to bid on stuff with impunity without researching what he's bidding on.

Guy waits a day.

Guy actually wins an auction for an item. He didn't bother to read the description and model number the first time. He did not bother to research the item before he placed a bid. Guy thinks he's being scammed because, hey, he actually got an item for the price he bid. Guy is panicking. Guy wants out of this deal. Guy comes up with "They are SCAMMING ! This is not the item I bid on ! This is sub-standard quality gear ! I know, let's be a douchebag and offer to relist the item, I don't want to be held accountable to the bid I entered !"

Seller, meanwhile, gets annoyed. Since he does not want negative feedback (which is bad, bad stuff on eBay), he tries to work out a deal that is to everybody's satisfaction. Buyer offered to pay relisting, so seller takes the deal. Buyer does not believe the fee. Buyer is getting annoying and costing a lot of money in time spent. Seller offers buyer to pay whatever he deems fair as relisting fee. Buyer declines, frothing at the mouth. Seller initiates dead-beat buyer proceedings, as ANY reputable seller would, seeing as how they are the ones being scammed out of their listing fee.
Seller ultimately decides to cut their losses and not deal with buyer anymore, not deal with eBay in this matter, not risk negative feedback, and just moves on, writing this off as the cost of doing business.

Meanwhile, douchebag buyer thinks he's won and really shown them. He hasn't been scammed. The speakers were listed on the eBay listing. He could have researched. Since he feels he is in the righteous right, he posts unanonymized eMails and tries to pass these guys off as scumbags ... I have yet to see any evidence of that. If he had been delivered a box full of bricks, we might have a story. He hasn't.

Re:Why I wish I knew more science

[MMORG]

The freezer removes heat from the icepack and dumps it into the room (plus extra, because of the work done). Then you take the icepack out of the freezer, put it in the "room cooling" device, where it takes heat from the room and puts it back into the icepack. Net result, your room is hotter than it was before. In order to get a net cooling effect, you have to dump the heat into a separate system that you don't care about (like outside). That's why air conditioners have vents to the outside.

Bathtub Curve

[msgmonkey]

Retailers love to offer 5 year extended warranty because of the Bathtub Curve.

Basically if a product does n't fail within one year then the probability it failing within five year years is very very low.

This curve applies very well to consumer electronics with the added advantage that they depreciate in value quickly too.

Car runs on water

[bsharma]

You want a tech scam? Have it: Just type Car runs on water in Google; Sit back and enjoy! http://www.runningcaronwater.com/?gclid=COnhtJPKqZQCFRZZiAod_mOtzw http://www.runcarbywater.com/ http://www.youralternativefuelsite.com/?gclid=CLyItLbKqZQCFQwxiQodyUlR0A http://www.runcaronwaterkit.com/?kk=142 http://hybridfuelreview.info/?id=B227023 http://savemorefuel.info/?t202id=9163299&t202kw=car%20runs%20on%20water http://www.waterfuelx.com/?hop=tracassoc&gclid=CJne49_KqZQCFQL8iAodz2TG0Q http://www.trustmymechanic.com/run-your-car-on-water.html?gclid=CNjKkujKqZQCFSBciAodV1U90A http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/354/C8115/ http://www.squidoo.com/carrunsonwater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5EMoLMzB-Y http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/car-runs-on-water-inventor-to-be-kidnapped-by-exxon-177716.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84561 http://www.easywatercar.com/2books.htm

Re:Maybe the

[Ethanol-fueled]

Check this out: when I was working as a film-developing monkey for a large drugstore chain, we had a computer dedicated to downloading pictures from a VERY well-known maker of disposable cameras. One day, the tech had to come in to upgrade the computer so that it could dowload pictures from bluetooth devices. The tech opened up the computer and explained to me that he had to remove a piece of "epoxy"(which was a small blob of harmless rubber cement on the mainboard) which clearly obstructed nothing ad served no purpose whatsoever. Then, he put in a driver CD to enable bluetooth functionality. It was absurd! Why crack the box open at all? My guess was to rationalize an obscene price by making a simple driver install an illusion of a "ZOMG hardware surgery performed by a engineer".

Absurd.

Re:Carbon credits

[mazarin5]

Once the tree dies, its carbon goes right back into the air.

Is spontaneous combustion a big problem for trees in you area?

Audiophile Hardware

[Dr.Pete]

I'm going to get all the /. audiophiles offside with this, but whatever. Some of the stuff targeted at audio pimpers is truly ridiculous. See http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html For example:

• The CD stop light pen: A giant disregard of optics leads people to believe that the probe light "goes somewhere in the CD" and needs to be trapped.
• Audio-pimp cables: Yes, a good cable with decent materials and a well engineered, within spec connector will help with sound. Some of these audiophile connectors, however, provide no discernible or even measurable benefit. Certainly not for the cost required.
• My favorite, the volume knob: A turned wooden knob. Ha ha, knob. This may be aesthetically pleasing to some, but to claim it has anything to do with audio quality is just wrong.

These audiophile things offend me. I realize some people like to mess with their hardware to make it look pretty in their eyes (ricers, for example) but to claim such "behind-the-scenes" hardware mods do anything except drain the bank accounts of the ignorant is beyond the pale and simply a scam perpetrated by those who know better.

Re:Water-free water, pay only $9.99 shipping!

[Mr. Slippery]

Well, then I'm also selling water-free water for places that have water shortages. Just add 1 cup of water to the device and you will have an entire cup of water that you can drink!

I am not making this up: according to a recent Washington Post story, "Desalinated seawater from Hawaii, meanwhile, is being sold as `concentrated water' -- at $33.50 for a two-ounce bottle. Like any concentrated beverage, it is supposed to be diluted before drinking, except that in this case, that means adding water to . . . water."