|
Buyer Beware
All our
lives we’ve heard the phrase….’caveat emptor’ or ‘let the
buyer beware’.
You would think that every scam or ‘good deal’ would have
been ferreted out by now and all of us would be wise to them
and just ignore any attempts to snatch our hard earned
money.
I submit to you that the bad guys are still out there,
plugging away at trying one thing after another to get those
bucks out of your wallets and purses.
Let me give you a few examples.
The past few weeks, I’ve been seeing advertisements in the
local papers for ‘free state quarters”. You know… those new
quarters, which have been minted for each state. Here’s the
deal…you send in so many (I think three) postage stamps (to
cover the cost of shipping and handling) and they’ll send
you a brand new, uncirculated quarter. Sound like a good
deal? Think again.
I sent in 3 old used, stamps and never heard a thing…..they
want new, unused….or it’s no deal….so you send them $1.11 in
unused postage stamps that they can sell, and you get a
quarter in return. Let’s say the cost of the quarter; their
return postage and packaging costs are something like $.61
total, then they made $.50 for each quarter they sold. Not a
bad deal if you ask me. You wonder how many people fall for
this.
Last night I sit down and am reading the paper, when I see
the latest…someone has a huge advertisement giving away
two-dollar bills. That’s right, free two dollar bills, yours
for the asking. These are from some vault somewhere and have
just been found and are yours for the asking. You can get
five, brand new, uncirculated, crisp two dollar bills which
are sure to ‘become collectors items’ just by calling in the
toll free number and then being charged $9.00 for ‘normal
processing’ along with a ‘nominal shipping and handling
fee’.
This looks like same song, second verse to me.
First off, two-dollar bills aren’t rare, you can get them at
the bank, you just have to ask for them. They just aren’t
popular. They are still out there.
Second, I’ll give you ten dollars any day of the week if
you’ll send me $15.00 to pay for the ‘processing and
handling’ that I charge to send the ten dollars I owe you
back to you in the mail. I’ll even give you a brand new,
uncirculated ten-dollar bill hot off the press at the mint
if you want one, for only fifteen dollars in handling and
processing. Let me know how many you need. I do offer
discounts for large volume customers. Perhaps I could start
a ‘bill of the month’ club or something.
The last scam I want to discuss is the current deal on zero
interest car loans. This morning I heard some local dealer
yelling at me on the radio about a super new deal on a new
truck for zero interest for 72 months. Folks that’s six
years.
Who keeps a truck or a car for six years? What’s a truck or
car look like after this much time?
If you drive an average of 20,000 miles a year like most of
us…then you’d have vehicle with over 140,000 miles on it by
the time you got finished paying for it…. you looked at the
resale value of anything with 140,000 miles on it lately?
Save yourself the time. Don’t do it.
So what do you think happens? Well, I’ll tell you, by the
time you’ve had the truck or car for about three or four
years, you’ll get tired of it and want a new one. Then when
you go to trade it in, you’ll find out how much more you owe
on it and how little it’s worth at that time. The new car
dealer will add the difference into your new car loan and
there you go for another four or five years. If you keep up
this pace, it appears to me that in about ten years that car
you want to buy for about $15,000 will cost you close to
$45,000 since you kept rolling the payments on the unpaid
balances forward.
What a deal.
In addition to that, you might get them to throw in five
brand new two-dollar bills. You’ll probably have to shell
out another ten or fifteen dollars in shipping and handling
costs to have them mailed to your house.
Beware; the sharks are still out there looking for you.
|
