Cons and rip-offs you've come across

[bones]

Just for fun really but down the years I've come across many in many different industries.
Fire alarms: many companies especially Chubb pay their staff crap wages but offer staff commission for changing customers perfectly good smoke detectors.
Intruder alarms: I've known operators to change admin/engineers codes and then program the system to lock up on the day their contract runs out
White goods engineers: I cannot remember the amount of times people have asked me to look at their washing machines because the engineer has told them that the motor needs replacing(£180+ normally). Everytime it's been the motor brushes,very common this one as motors rarely die without plumes of smoke
Jpm mps2 power supply repair: I remember these after a couple of years started resetting. I think there were orange,yellow and green label versions. The problem just turned out to be the 5volt adjustment pot building up a contact resistance between the carbon track. I watched an engineer without opening the unit,spray a bit of contact cleaner onto the skeleton pot, vigorously turn it backwards and forwards then give it a minute and power it up and again getting his pot trimmer through the holes in the cage around it setting the 5volt. He was doing 20 an hour at £25 a pop plus postage lol.
Wondered if any of you guys had some humdingers to share.

 

[John Bennett]

My local co-op would take the out of date cheese off the shelf, unpack it and put it on the deli counter.

 

[qjuk]

Talking about intruder alarms, our new build house had one fitted by the builders. I did some decorating shortly after moving in and I unscrewed one of the PIR sensors to move it out of the way to make wallpapering a bit easier. As soon as I lifted the cover off the sensor it locked down the whole alarm system and I needed an engineer code to clear the “tamper” error. It turns out the alarm system was a version that’s completely tied to British Gas and they would not give me the engineer code to unlock my own system. They insisted on a £90 call out for the 10 second job of entering a four digit code to clear down the error code.

The house builder didn’t know the code, they contracted British Gas to install all their alarms (probably for next to nothing), no doubt in the hope that home buyers would sign up to a service contract.

In the end I ripped out the alarm pcb, purchased the exact standard retail version board from the US for about £30 and re-set it up myself. Now I have full control over my own alarm

 

[69er]

ready made slot machine business in your own town or area... advertised in the small ads of tabloids daily star or on notice boards in gyms and cafes doorway windows

the paid site finder or seller would travel and site a few machines in an area where they had a valid enquiry promising 50% of good earnings for ZERO outlay just site a video game """"" VERY POPULAR YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENCE """""" and leave them till the target buyer saved up his redundancy money or life savings , to BE BOSS OF YOUR OWN BUSINESS get rich just emptying cash boxes and counting the money ............................................................................

Video siting sharks Glo Leisure and Winfall Leisure would sometimes even 'lace' the coin box with £20 -£50 of mixed coins then drag some guy around his own town.... (where they had sited 3 0r 4 quite good machines with fairly up to date games)............. and sell the whole mini business on to the unsuspecting buyer for up to £3000 per machine (costing them maybe £500- £600) just a few weeks earlier ........show the buyer how this could be him........... this is what he does ..... lies he sells arcade machines to people for a 400% mark up all on pretence of future wealth.. he is off on holiday with your thousands while you try to get it back at a few pounds a week ..........

the games would initially do a 'reasonable' amount of play in a video hire library or chip shop or even memebers clubs or maybe a freetrade pub if really lucky? etc and the buyer would be shown what the seller implied was about a months money??????? could be it was up to £100 or maybe more genuine income but the seller knew it would be at least the money they 'laced' it with............. impressed the buyer was sucked in and signed the deal.

the hook was still in as the back up would be limited to maybe a lock or a button repair or buy a replacement cabinet at the reduced price of £2000 still a 4 figure mark up and by time you did a 50/50 split of takings with the site you would need each machine to take £5000+ just to break even at 20p 0r 30p per game............

only the wiser tech based guys who realised game popularity fade would survive as takings dropped off dramatically as 3 - 4 months passed........ those who could update with a newer JAMMA edge game swap maybe saved the site??????

possibly odd ones made money over time??? and may be still operating these now ?? but more likely the game CRT broke down . or the mech stopped taking the big 10p big 50p etc and pcb glitches from rapid on/off fraud attempts it died and got kicked out of the site (What ? the buyer need find a mate with or hire a van............ and find room at home for a dead carcase? )

maybe he realises jammaplus and ukvac members sell cheaper machines so he buys one... vans it to the site with hope in his heart ONLY TO FINF THE ORIGINAL SELLER HAS POACHED THE EMPTY or EVEN FAULTY MACHINE STOOD THERE site with a newer better game ........... the cash box once again secretly laced and the site owner not aware .. He is happy getting 50% for just turning it on and maybe giving a bit of change? the seller gets his lacing money back when he does the first sample empty TAKING AWAY A FAIR PROFIT above his laced money too............... i bet it never did as well ever again.....

as a sit operator we have had these cowboys try site poaching when we have had a tired older game on a popular bowling ally or club site ............. on seeing them arrive alongside tipping the cabinet they rattled like they had been on for 72 hours a day with a queue 10 players deep ..........bit of superglue on the start buttons they would be turned off with probably £5 + of refunds to pay back and not earning a penny above that as the plug would be cut off too... when the site owner was aware he never took another cowboy cabinet ........... our busness was safe

i know a guy in the next town who fell for this 25 years ago a nice footy referee with no skills bought 4 videos a pool table and a condom vender machine for £17.950 and 3 of the videos were in 2 local cafes and a local pet shop........ the airforce club where the pooltable a video and condom machine had had them in for about 6 weeks but under notice of closure for a town roundabout redevelopment..

poor guy lived in a terraced cottage with his mum but small 2 meter frontage garden (luckily or ) unluckily i drove past his mums and there was a pooltable and 2 video cabs accross it and a loose tarp blowing in the wind and rain ............ never moved again it took him about 3 months to contact me and ask advice as i knew him vaguely from his footy work............ he told me what happened so these are true facts............. a true con big style totla loss about £14000 - £15000 as the two viveos that lived on at least had two spare boards to switsh and swap for a while till he sold them on at a mega loss to a collector who pulled the lot making about £8 - £12 a fortnight each at the time thats £5 a week to your dream and loads of running round for that!!!!!!!!!

good thing its in the past now? but was common practice

69er2021-03-12 13:08:44

 

[69er]

Another quite nasty one a friend fell victim to ...........

been caught speeding???????? HOW TO DODGE PAYING FINES / POINTS or challenge police camera or speed gun notices includes special introductory PARKING TICKET supplement too !!!!!! that could be useful in future you think ?

already guilty you want to try this especially when you have 6 points or more on your licence... the comprehensive booklet shows how? .............. NOT

its costs about £40 ish and you happily send for it ........ its full of successful challenges and sample excuse letters so you buy your card and agree the terms and conditions because as you then agree their excuses booklet could be viewed as shady in defence if a law or some type of loophole you agree to ....................

great you would buy that its only £40 may get you to save a £60 fine penalty or even points or worse a driving BAN ???????? it arrives and is perhaps enlightning but not really anything your mates or parents will have advised? though some of the things are probably true and genuinely faught challenges after all you may have noticed its issue 10 or issue 26 and peolpe must be encouraging this HELPFUL? loophole sh*t booklet survive.............. till about 1-2 weeks later a second copy lands on the door mat .........

best advice here is cancel your card immediately ............... TOO LATE i am affraid they know this will possibly happen and have possibly taken advance payments on maybe 4 . 5 6 or more issues..... (YOU DID TICK I AGREE TO T&Cs ) they got you!!!!!!!!! they know what you have bought is possibly shady at least and most likely illegal and they will change their operating address and maybe their banks frequently to avoid disruption to their supply service they often take short terver shops or shops in high streets on a week by week postal address base only ......... (we had a loan shark in our village W**** **** finance ltd) he hired a cake closed shop and fitted curtains to the windows only collecting post every few weeks probably repay cheques

he lived in a huge house in Delamere and eventually went to prison and forfeited his ill gotten gain to proceeds of crime .. (big story round here )

i think my friend was a bit lucky he only got stung for 2 payments as he told trading standards he did not receive any further issues so got one payment returned, having also cancelled with the con people.. and he got on a speed aware course cost him another £60 i think but he avoided points on his clean licence essential to keep his job as a hospital patient personal transport assist (private taxi) between the north west and Papworth heart transplant clinics for after care of recipients.......

you may laugh but its a CON !!!!!!!!!!!! usually backstreet printing operation maybe print event tickets or posters and fill in time when slack turning out this DRIVVEL of confusing illegal and unhelpful paer at £40 or more a time just 2 - 3 a week or up to what limit? to the victims gets them £250 - £thousands CARD FRAUD just for printed paper and a few stamps and envelopes.. god bless credit card above debit cards here.......... some protection i think?

 

[bones]

Another one I suppose is LCD TVs,as far as I'm aware KG pretty much make 95% of the screens and I think Vestal make most of the power supplies, not sure about the CPU boards.
Anyway I know businesses need to make a profit to pay overheads etc but most of these sets that just stop working have a Vestal PSU board which is replaced at a cost of £90-£100 a pop. In reality and I've repaired many of these, it's just 6 capacitors that need replacing for around £5.00.
A few of the supermarket own brands tend to blow the plug fuse and the one's I've come across I've repaired by replacing shorted diodes with a slightly higher rated ones,but again a shop will charge £50.00. Got to make a living but for the price of a new one it isn't worth the cost of repair even though the parts and an hour to diagnose and repair would be lucrative at £30 in both cases.

 

[gunblade]

supernova zingy, nothing more to say

 

[qjuk]

supernova zingy, nothing more to say

I know exactly what you mean, not just Zingy but Supernova in general.