I say pay these scammers with counterfeit money! No?
Yep, we have this over here as well its not really a scam just overpriced, they are crap speakers (tvs, dvd players etc etc) they sell them at a greatly inflated price for an "awsome price" and have basicly no costs though if they are great quality they could be hot though you are more likly to be offered hot goods in a pub than out the back of a van you could but fraud usually carrys pretty severe punishment, you would be better off just stealing the stuff
We have a sort of same scam around in Paris. Italians usually driving rental Fiats horn at me and speaking in an italian french they say " sorry , i was at the Fashion show in Paris but i spent all my cash with friends and dont have enough to go back to Torino , i have some nice coats i can sell you for 150 they are worth 4 times that..." They have been scaming pple since the 80's when we arrived in France . I have ran into them 5/6 times. Now i just laugh at them and they laugh back and drive away.
This has happened to me a couple of times, most recently a couple of weeks ago in Houston. Two Rick Springfield lookalikes in a black van motioned for me to roll down my window at a stoplight on Shepherd. I figured they were going to say something about the car so I ignored them but they were relentless so I rolled down and said "what?" The guy starts in about the speakers and I just rolled my eyes and said I know what you guys are up to, thanks but no thanks.
A more witty answer would have been: "I don't need speakers, but I sure could use a couple of boxes of rocks. Got any?"
Had to revive this thread as I was just approached by two of the shadiest looking guys in a white van. I was walking up to the local TGI Fridays for some lunch and these guys "Had some extra speakers in the back that they would give me a great deal on". I Just smiled and continued on my way. I can only imagine what was in the boxes.
They usually are doing something illegal because they are selling without collecting sales tax. Otherwise it isn't illegal, just really cheap junk that is overpriced. I've read about these operations and there are actually manufacturers making these speakers specifically for this type of operation; cheap chipboard construction with tiny magnets and lousy cones, etc. They're probably cranking out a large pair of speakers for about $30-$40 wholesale. So these scammers are getting them for maybe $75 or so delivered to them. If they can con even 2-3 people in a day for $300-$400 they can do all right since it is undoubtedly tax-free profit. I've hear of people paying as much as $1,000 for a pair of these since "they are left over from a huge custom-installation at this millionaire's house and they retail for $4,000". Last year I found a pair of these speakers sitting right in front of my garage door still in the unopened boxes. Big boxs, about 40 inches high. I left them there for two days figuring somebody left them by mistake, but they weren't picked up. One of my kids thought they looked cool and uses them for end tables in his bedroom. Just last week two guys in a van pulled up next to me in a store parking lot and the passenger gave me the opening spiel; I looked and him and smiled and said "Yeah, right". He didn't say another word, he just smiled back, gave me a thumbs-up and they drove off.
Next year it will read like this: Two guys pull up next to me and say that they are former United Airline retirees who had to go back to work selling speakers because they lost their pensions. This last load of speakers was destined for the former CEOs mansion but the bankruptcy halted the sale. You can have them for $199.99 today. So you just tell them that you will endorse the back of your Delta Airlines pension check as full payment!!! Or maybe they will swap for Enron stock.
If it's not stereo speakers, they are recently pushing home theater systems. One thing I've noticed when solicited a few years ago was that the brand name on the box was very similar sounding to recognized brands. In this case, the guy was selling "Linear Phase" speakers. At the time, I thought the "Phase Linear" people might have a problem with that. KevFla
You ain't the only one! The "white van" people started their sales pitch to me in the parking lot of Discount Tire yesterday. The guy was giving me some line about the Corvette and I must like the finer things in life blah blah blah. I told him how much I just spent on tires and that I had no money and he went away.
So Mark, Where's the tire popping, 5 minute burn out video, depicting the glorious death of your old set?
Didn't get it on video.... just did a bunch of burnouts and donuts in a big parking lot. Tire pics in the random thread shortly....
Well, we didn't buy any speakers, but, finally, I get to bore you with my tale of the 2nd greatest salesman ever... 2 uncles of mine and I were leasing/running my grandfather's store - (my stake was less than theirs, as my dough was strictly in beverage dept.) This guy in the white van we hadn't bought speakers from on previous occasions over the years was glowing like Jesus as he hurriedly told us about his unbreakable drinking glasses. To prove how unbreakable these glasses were, he demonstrated by showing us a clear, glassy (I mean, it looked and felt like GLASS) unbreakable glass throwing a "glass" as high as he possibly could (and I mean HIGH) - have it come down on the asphalt, do it AGAIN, present it to us without a single defect. It was perfect. Not a mark. It looked & felt like, like glass. Seriously. Didn't buy any. Next time, we said, next time... Never saw him again.
Yes.... I can't believe people fall for this. I was stopped at a mall by two shady fellows smoking and blaring music. They asked me if I wanted to by a laptop computer and I am a computer junkie so I said "What do you got". They must have been running this scam for awhile because they could repeat all the information labeled on the box, which was a POS Sony. This was a white sedan, not a van, and the guy has his trunk open and I looked at the box and it was clearly wrapped in plastic food wrapper! I also was approached by someone on the street selling knives (CutCo, obviously someone who fell for the Vector Marketing scam) anyway, pulled out a smaller knife and scared the crap out of me.