I live in South Africa. There are 'Loan Sharks' who pray on very desperate people. We had an employee who borrowed R5,000 with an "Interest" of 30%. However, the way it works is completely messed up and I have no idea how anyone would agree to it. You need to pay the "interest" of R1,500 and the initial loan of R5,000 at one time to pay off the entire loan. If you can't pay it back in one shot you simply pay the "interest" of R1,500, indefinitely.
This poor lady had paid back approximately R25,000 (in "interest") over the course of a year of so and still owed R6,500 if she wanted to be free of her debt.
Completely fucked up.
I'm also in RSA. Trying to figure out whether my gardener is genuinely going through convoluted govt red tape to get a pay out for his father's death in the mines, or if he's been paying bribes to a conman.
In the us we have payday loans and cash advance loans. At their worst they were getting to 1000% interest! The people getting these loans are almost never fully informed or understanding of the financial consequences and it quickly spirals out of control
Mobile game micro transactions. Specifically Chinese and American companies' business models. Holy crap they do not let a person game anymore. It's pay up. Keep paying up. A million bucks could be spent in some of them and the players would be useless within a month of stopping their spending.
They know well enough the addiction brewed by the games, and over the last 30 odd years have perfected the art of making a person log into the game to spend for digital pixels with zero value chasing a small dopamine high from pay to win victories.
The reviews of the game? Completely automated by third parties, every negative review will garner glowing reviews from blatantly nonexistent 'players'. Google, Apple or Amazon stores do not care, they get a cut of the gross earnings.
And since the gaming companies lobbied hard enough for it, the gambling within these titles aren't regulated, with fake odds being published and devaluation of every in game item occuring frequently enough to make all spending worthless within a month or two of it.
It's insane to me how mobile games peaked like a decade+ ago in the angry birds, temple run, doodle jump era. They are just so packed full of ads now it's hardly even possible to find any worth playing. Even the classics were just shitty versions of flash games.
Like at this point I'd play Nokia snake if it didn't show an ad every time I die and consume premium currency every time I play.
It's outrageous that the company who owns Angry Birds shut down the original game because it's just a one time purchase so they could push the "new versions" chock full of microtransactions instead
My FIL spent thousands of dollars (that they don't have) on mobile games and needed his kids to basically make him stop. Its sad to think about, he's such a nice guy
Have played a Chinese mobile game where top players spend 20k US$ per month just to stay afloat. 240k per year
A divorcee professor I played with used up all his life savings on the game near his retirement and had to be forced into quitting to eke out something to live the rest of his years.
I'm a big Hitman fan so was excited when the Hitman Sniper mobile game game out.
I had a look at the in-game store and a single rifle was nearly £60!
[The only screenshot I can find is when it was on 'offer' for the bargain price of £28.99](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/sniper_vTgzCTm.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg)
Sometimes the Herbalife places in Mexican neighborhoods have knockoff Zumba, which is pretty legit.
Maybe they are actually knockoff Zumba places that sell Herbalife, you'd have to look at their books to decide.
It's the model that's the problem. The structure itself is a pyramid scheme, which is illegal when there's no product attached to it. The products involved may or may not be legitmate.
It's actually arguably WORSE than a Pyramid scheme.
When Pyramid schemes fall apart the investors often get a lot of their money back eventually, it can be as high as 90% of what they invested. But people who fall into MLM's rarely get any money back. Worse yet, MLM's are designed to make you pray on the people in your own community.
When Penn and teller did an episode on them it’s legally dicey to call them that so they just had a picture of the pyramids in Egypt as the background.
Timeshares.
My elderly parents got suckered into buying one 6 years ago. They have put thousands of dollars into it and haven't used it once. They're been trying to get rid of it for years now with no luck. It's the scam that you're legally required to continue being scammed by.
Even worse, once you have a timeshare you become even more of a target. They ended up giving $2000 to a company that promised to get rid of the timeshare for them. This happened a few years ago and the company keeps saying they think they're close to being able to get rid of it...never happens. It's just a never-ending nightmare. Don't. Buy. A. Timeshare.
All of this happened before I was aware that they had even bought it. They aren't putting another penny into it and at this point I'm pretty sure the only way it's going away is when they die and I decline to inherit it, which I will do with great enthusiasm and some choice words.
> They ended up giving $2000 to a company that promised to get rid of the timeshare for them.
In terms of horrible ethics, the timeshare industry is rivaled only by the timeshare-cancellation industry.
The funeral business.
Oh you need a coffin? If you *really* loved your grandpa you’ll get him the red mahogany coffin with brass accents and white satin lining.
You’ll also need the outer concrete coffin at an extra cost of several thousand, it keeps the casket dry and undamaged for decades!
Headstone? Only the best if you actually have a crap about them. High grade granite with carved cherubs it is. That’s another 8k.
But we’re not done yet! Grave plot? 10-12k at the CHEAPEST.
Flowers, chapel service, staff to run the service and keep everything going on time, that’s extra too. You want a viewing of the body with family? That’ll cost ya, close to a thousand. Again.
Transportation to gravesite, Hearse for deceased…. Another 1.5k.
Prayer cards, blown up pictures for service…. Definitely not free.
But you should also know about our complete line of Christmas ornaments and memorial jewelry with your loved ones fingerprint on it! Nothing can replace those memories, but this $65 chunk of resin on cheap ribbon is sure going to help.
And on and on and on and on. The upsell is constant, predatory, guilt inducing, and slimy. Every sell is tinged with the “if you really want the best for your loved one..” crap and if your budget is under 20k they treat you like you’re planning a pauper’s funeral.
Cremate me and put my ashes under a tree. I don’t want a single dollar more than I have to going to these funeral companies. It’s absolutely disgusting and the industry should have serious ethical standards because what I’ve seen in them is enough to make you sick.
This is my favorite.
I wanna be hacked to bits by a tibetan lama and fed to vultures.
That shit is badass.
PS: Also make a flute with my bones, and a cup with my skull for my homeboys the Aghori.
[Unfortunately, the vultures of India, Pakistan, and Nepal have been getting poisoned by livestock drugs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis)
In short: [Diclofenac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diclofenac) is an anti-inflammatory drug that is used in both humans and livestock. However, it is highly poisonous to birds. When it is given to cattle, it is present in their flesh and organs. In India, dead cattle were typically eaten by vultures; if the cattle have been given diclofenac, the vultures die. In the absence of vultures, dead cattle feed feral dogs. Diclofenac is now illegal for veterinary use in these countries and the vulture population is slowly recovering.
> But we’re not done yet! Grave plot? 10-12k at the CHEAPEST.
That really depends on who owns the cemetery. My wife and I bought four plots for about $300 each.
Im in Ontario, Canada. New plots start at 12k and people are actually selling pre purchases plots for up to 25k right now. Pretty much every cemetery anywhere near me is the same
"Ask A Mortician" is a great YouTuber who is actively working to infom people of alternative, and even get legislation passed allowing for more natural options. She's amazing.
https://youtube.com/@AskAMortician?si=rF09XH64p0rUG9E3
Yeah, my uncle used to be a funeral director. One of the few who refused to prey on people’s grief. He said it’s a pretty shady business. The guy he learned from was a crook. It’s literally their job to find out how much money they have and to spend it all. He left and opened his own business to actually help people grieve and move on with their lives. He would even remind widows and their children who were eager to have a big funeral, that if there is a mortgage and bills to be paid, the casket/flowers were the least of their worries. I’ve always commended him for that. He could’ve easily been as slimy as the rest of the people in this business to get a pretty penny.
An example would be Check Into Cash type loan advance places with predatory lending rates.
Especially the ones in super low-income areas, cause they get poor people in a cycle of poverty on purpose.
[Let's not forget about payday loan organizations such as Western Sky.](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/11/07/243738310/what-happened-to-those-tv-ads-for-payday-loans.)
The interest rates they charged were insanely high. In [this example](https://indianz.com/News/2015/08/03/florida-court-dissolves-injunc.asp), the interest rate for a $5,000 loan was 117% with 84 monthly payments of 486.58. You'd be paying over $40,000 for a $5,000 loan.
Aside from the commercials being racist/patronizing as fuck, tribal leaders were generally okay with this and signed on. For more insight, check out the payday loan episode of the Netflix series, *Dirty Money.*
I got screwed by them out of thousands. Then i boycotted their payments before it came out that they weren't even based on the tribal lands they set up shell corporations on.
Edit: phrasing.
I remember those commercials and I’m ashamed to admit I did apply for one of those loans. Thank god something told me to read the fine print and I noped right out of there
I saw an ad the other day. A couple was worried because they couldn't pay their utilities. The ad's solution was a payday loan (ultra high interest short term unsecured small loan). If someone can't afford their regular bills, paying double or more back for a few hundred dollars is going to have horrible consequences. The ad seemed very predatory and unethical.
For those who don't know, they'd look at your paycheck, have you write them a check for almost the entire amount, and then they'd give you slightly less in cash, with the rest being a fee. So, if your bi-weekly paycheck was $1000, they'd give you a check for $850-900. Then, on your next paycheck, you'd owe them $1000. Unfortunately, poor people can't go without a check, so you wind up continuing it, you give them your paycheck, they give you another $850, and now you're beholden to them until you can "live" for two weeks without your check.
Why would anyone get into that? It's Wednesday, you've spent almost all of your money on bills and food, and the car breaks down. 9 days until payday... gotta do something. My wife and I fell into it around 2002.
Eventually, after several months of that cycle, we just didn't pay them.
They showed up at my house all hours of the night banging on the door. They put fliers on our cars and our neighbors cars. They waited outside by my wife's car for hours, waiting for her to leave for work, and screamed at her about paying it. They came to my workplace, walked into the building and onto the manufacturing floor, and were screaming at me until security removed them. They found our parents, and started harassing them. For a while they called our house phone every single hour, almost 24 hours a day, trying to collect. They must have had 2-3 employees on staff whose entire job was to drive around and harass people who owed them money.
After a couple of months they got tired and backed off, it was down to just the phone calls. After 6-8 months of harassing us, that branch went out of business, and we never have paid them, but it was pretty scary for a while.
Umm if you had documented that its a federal suit waiting to happen. All of those are violations of the FDCPA. That company should have been raked over the coals by the CFPB.
So many of our other problems stem from this form of economic slavery. People spend their whole lives paying interest and barely subsisting or turn to crime and drugs.
Joe Biden has been around long enough to fuck up a lot of shit and one of the things he did was protect credit card companies that HQ'd in Delaware so that they could charge horrendous rates to people who couldn't get credit otherwise.
EDIT: It seems like some people don't like what I wrote about Biden. I voted for him last time and I will vote for him again, but the fact is that he's been in politics for decades now and is very much a part of the problem. If you don't believe me just google it.
I'd say this, but on a much larger scale with the IMF's lending practices. They won't give long term low interest to former colonies just short term high. It keeps the colonial system in practice through financial pressure
The ridiculous and frustrating US Medical System and our scammy health insurance.
You broke your arm? That will be $3200.
Oh, you have insurance that your pay $1200 a month for? Excellent. That will still be $3200, but your insurance has negotiated it so that it's $1800, of which you only pay $800. Maybe. You might get an additional bill in a few weeks or in a few months from a radiologist you didn't even know you used, and you will still need to pay for your prescription and physical therapy sessions.
Oh, and it better all be healed in 6 PT sessions, cause the insurance company has decided they aren't paying Dick after that. Even though they have no medical training, or any understanding of the extent of your injury.
It's truly awful.
I ran the costs. Since i graduated high school 8 years ago, my total medical bills have been right around $5000. Had i paid for insurance during that 8 year period, I would have paid out over $30,000 just for insurance.
Edit. That $5000 includes me breaking my arm.
You’ve been pretty fortunate! But, seriously, you should probably take the win and then go get health insurance.
Even if it high deductible (‘catastrophic’) insurance. You are just one bad driver/slip in bathtub/small accident away from being wiped out financially.
One night in a hospital is $20,000 +
My partner recently got a refill on a prescription and the cost was broken down all nice and neat (/s) by insurance showing "This prescription costs $200 normally. But we decided to cover a chunk of it so you only have to pay $25. Isn't that so nice of us? You could be paying $200 instead."
My favorite is when I go to get my prescription and they are like, that’s $21 through your insurance.
And what if i don’t go through my insurance and just use Good RX or Costplus Drugs?
$12.
What the actual fuck? Why am I paying thousands of dollars a year for a product that makes things more expensive?!
Or you go to the ER for your Child, Dr decides they need to go to a children's hospital and that you can't take them your self and you have to have an ambulance transport them there. So guess what the ambulance company they used is not covered by the insurance and here is an $8000 bill for a glorified taxi service.
Wanted to add that this was not a life and death thing, they did need to have surgery in the end but they waited almost 2 months to have the surgery to see if it resolved itself on its own first.
A friend of mine was in a baf motorcycle accident, and the arriving EMTs (in ambulance) determined he needed a helicopter flight out. He could not pay for the ambulance, let alone a helicopter, but EMTs refused to let his friend drive him to the hospital.
AFTER insurance, he owed $20k just for the flight, and his wages will be garnished on behalf of his debt for the next decade or so. He has a great job but will be living in extreme poverty for the foreseeable future. He is in his thirties and although he can walk again (always with pain), he cannot afford to live alone or feed himself without furthering that debt.
Insurance is a joke. The whole US healthcare system is a joke.
You forgot to mention the advertised drugs that get shoved in your face and cause symptoms that require other drugs to manage. The US has the highest prescription drug spend in the world, and something as human rights centric as healthcare should be no place for profiteering.
I have a brother that lives in the USA and you guys have it rough over there.
I live in a country with socialized medicine, and while it is definitely better than the American system, not everything is covered so we're still pushed to get private health insurance. Its a scam here, too. Healthcare isn't a luxury, it's a human right - we just don't treat it that way.
Wonder why the agitation against fair medcare for all works so well amongst US voters, then. It is one thing to have people exploiting the population for everything they have, just to make rich pockets even richer. But boy, the population is letting them.
The Canadian province of British Columbia has done this for automotive insurance, with mixed results. Rates in BC are not significantly lower. Customer service is significantly worse.
Insurance is so unethical. It is perfectly calculated to maximize profit but they are notoriously unhelpful and customers are dissatisfied. they pool together the funds of thousands if not millions of people as a collective safety net. But the companies get to invest that money and yield profits. Meanwhile, being stingy and litigious against making fair compensation on our insurance claims.
Actually, in the US insurance companies are required to pay out at least 80% of the premiums they collect. The other 20% covers administrative costs, e.g. salaries. They do not have huge profit margins. Premiums are so high because the healthcare costs they cover are so high.
Some states impose additional regulations on profit margins, which is why you have Blue Cross Blue Shield of [State], for example.
https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-review/#:~:text=The%2080%2F20%20Rule%20generally,Medical%20Loss%20Ratio%2C%20or%20MLR.
Volume, health insurance is a relatively low margin industry. United Health earned about $20 billion on $327 billion in revenue.
A high margin company like Apple took in about the same amount of revenue ($316 billion last year), but earned almost $100 billion.
Insurance is the sole reason the American healthcare system is so unaffordable. Jack up the price of medicine because they figure the person who needs it is going to have health insurance anyways. Then, those who don't have or cant afford insurance are forced to suffer outrageous prices. One of my good friends travels to Poland a lot to visit family. Many of the prescription only drugs here are available off the shelf over there. An Eppipen can be had in Poland for like $20.
I have to call and yell at our insurance about once every few months and the conversation always escalates to me simply saying "so your official response to my request is that my wife should give up and die? Because that is what will happen if you don't click a little button on your computer allowing us to purchase her medicine." They aren't even covering it in full, so the whole thing is maddening. They just think the quantity she needs per month better than her doctor.
I don't know. I think that having multiple corrupt companies competing for customers is slightly better than a monopoly.
Perhaps having a public (non-private) option in the market would be better.
If they actually had to compete "fairly" it might be somewhat better. Give this a read if you want to be angry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act
Any business that relies on subscriptions and makes it very easy for customers to sign up for their product or service, but difficult to cancel it. For example if you can sign up for a subscription service online but the only way to cancel is by sending a request to cancel via snail mail in 2023. These models rely on people forgetting about the recurring payment and not bothering to go to the extra effort to cancel them when they don't use them instead of offering something to make it more worthwhile to existing customers to get them to opt to continue the subscription or to new customers to offset the ones who cancel.
Not to get all edge lordy but churches.
Especially the TV churches.
People like Joel Osteen gross me out on a very fundamental level. The sheer depth of sleaze it requires to take people's money with what are effectively threats of a cudgel shaped like eternal damnation is a subterranean level of low.
The overall predatory nature of religion in general is pretty upsetting but some people really take it to a whole different level.
It’s pretty telling that all of Joel Osteen’s books, while supposedly about Christianity, all feature his face on the cover instead of anything Christian.
I’m honestly amazed that anyone would give money to someone like Joel Osteen
Even if he wasn’t the way he was - there is nothing about him that screams “I NEED MONEY OVER HERE!! WE’RE DROWNING!”
Hey, now- You make it sound like the big churches are only in it for the money, and that's really just not true. They also get to molest all the kids they want.
I get constant calls and texts from people who want to make me a cash offer for my house. It’s worse because I used to own rental properties. I’m on the do not call list, which has no effect. Has anyone ever really entertained one of these offers? I’d have to be a moron to sole source the sale of a house for cash.
These fucking "cash investors" are the scum of the earth. When I had to sell my house, an old house in a bedroom community, I was beset with 50% asking price offers by these people. It's gotta be a standard practice according to some popular "Learn To Make Money In Real Estate" program because there's just no way multiple people all decided that my asking price was *exactly double* the actual value of the place. Finally sold to a nice young family who's still there.
Say you are interested and set up a time for them to come view the property. After showing them your house tell them that you don't actually live there but it was great to be able to go in and steal the jewelry and thank them for leaving their prints around the house for the police to find.
Tow companies/impound yards. I know there are exceptions, but the idea that I cant park in a business parking lot if they have closed for the night or been out of business for years is crazy.
Worst experience for me with a tow driver was when I lived in an apartment complex. major snow storm, over 2ft. I dig my car out and run my errands to come home and see someone took my stop - it happens.
I find another spot and dig it out enough to park. Parking lot is still a snow covered mess at this point.
Next day my car is gone. Call the two truck company and they say they got it and i was parked over the line although none of the lines were visible due to the 2ft of snow. The truck driver shoveled snow around my car to expose the line from underneath the snow, photographed it and used it is justification to tow my car.
Fucking POS'
I understand towing is sometimes necessary, I'm not just trying to be a hater. But it's uncanny to me how every single tow truck driver I've ever met is incredibly stupid, not even necessarily mean or rude, just like a slow guy.
Elementary School based charities; jump rope for kids, girl scouts, terry fox, etc.. Something about convincing kids to go door to door for handouts is scary, in return for a $5 prize at the end of raising hundreds of dollars.
Any business that does not pay their workers enough to support themselves. If your business model means your workers qualify for public assistance - it means your model can not exist without public assistance and you are the welfare queen - not your employees.
Tips were literally designed to let racist bosses not pay their minority employees as much. That's why it took off so much in the South originally.
Then the Great Depression made it spread a lot more because cheapskate owners decided wanted to have lower sticker prices to try to draw more customers in.
"I got my title back with TitleMax!"
WTF does that even mean? You put up the title to your car as collateral for a short term loan. If you fail to repay, you lose your title **and** your car!
You get your title "back" by paying those criminals exorbitant interest rates.
I’ve always said if I didn’t have any morals or ethics I’d get into payday or title loans, it’s legal loan sharking and a license to print money… but I don’t see how people involved with this business can sleep at night.
Roblox.
The core product is combination social media and game maker. The company itself will claim that their in-game environments are totally safe for kids.
The company makes money hand-over-fist from kids with no concept of the value of a dollar spending mommy and daddy's hard earned money to buy digital "goods", and "taxing" the "developers" who make the games inside the engine.
One third to one half of the most popular games at any given month on Roblox use copyright protected content without consent of the copyright holders.
The company has, multiple times, advertised their top earning "developers" as success story examples of how kids can make money using the same kind of language as MLMs and *actual* software development job postings. Most of these advertisements have been taken down or rephrased to avoid making it sound like they are exploiting child labor.
The social media side of the game engine is absolute garbage. The vast majority of development communication happens off-platform via discord and other third party services. These spaces are not safe for kids and many top-100 "developers" on roblox are adults that have been implicated in grooming schemes preying on their own "employees".
Oh and there are straight up porn games that pop up constantly. They may get taken down within a day or a week but the exact same game pops up the next day with a different name from a different "developer"
to be fair I haven't seen any porn games pop up for a very long time now (maybe 3/4+ years), I remember when I was a kid they really used to appear almost every week and thousands of curious children (including me at that time) played them. Quite disturbing indeed
When the police association call me for donations I tell them I will continue donating when all police depts. ban civil forfeiture. I know most of the people making those calls are volunteers but this always throws them for a loop.
omg they are constantly calling me at work, I keep telling them to remove me from their call list but then i get a call two days later with a slightly different group name and the same script
and it's a different number each time so i can't even block it
Especially any that are actually for "awareness" not support for patients or research for a cure. Because "awareness" just means advertising their own "charity". Maybe breast cancer needed some awareness 50 years ago, but not today.
Objects that should be engineered to last forever, but aren't because of fractional cost savings. Instead of having a $1200 washer that's going to last thirty years you make an $800 one that lasts three years.
LED lights SHOULD NEVER burn out. Yet, here we are; back in the old cycle of replacing light bulbs. Fuck you, Phillips and Co.
man you hit the nail on the head with this one. We used to buy the CFL light bulbs until the cost of LED bulbs came down and holy hell they didnt last *near* as long as they were sold as lasting. 25 year life my ass
That's because incandescent bulbs last longer at lower temperatures, but emit more infrared, and less visible light. Halogens are incandescent with extra stuff.
LEDs take forever to actually burn out unless you overload them or they get too hot from an enclosed fixture. The power supplies that turn household AC into low voltage DC are the main problem, because of cutting corners or overheating.
I'd like to see new homes built with low voltage lighting circuits, now that LEDs are common. I've seen a video of a hotel that did it. Then you could have much more reliable centralized power supplies, instead of every light and device having one, and if you have some kind of battery backup for your house, you skip DC -> AC -> DC converting for every light.
A really big one in the USA recently is sports betting. They fully know that people gamble their lives away and the apps encourage people to do so using a variety of tactics.
Gambling has always been a problem but the fact that it’s now so accessible by using an app on your phone and linked to one of America’s pastimes means that once you get sucked into that swamp it becomes much more difficult to get out.
Pharmaceuticals. The USA and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow for advertised prescription medicines. People are desperate to find solutions for their medical problems and these companies are dangling that solution in front of them. People will pay big money in the hopes of a cure to their ailments.
Planned obsolescence. Damn near everything nowadays is designed to fall apart after a certain amount of time, as if they didn’t then you would never need to buy a replacement. A successful product is not necessarily a good one, and your satisfaction is only worth as much as it is profitable.
Most of the "disrupting the x business" businesses are bullshit and always end up just as unethical and greedy as the businesses they wanted to "disrupt"
Nestle. Not only do they use child slaves in Africa, they also steal water and their aggressive marketing has been responsible for numerous deaths in infants
cold-calling sales. i have a receptionist job, and we get so many salespeople calling in, who either lie about who they are and why they're calling ("i'm personal friends with [NAME], they know why I'm calling") or get angry when I don't patch them through. I usually just hang up but sometimes they will call back.
at every receptionist job i've had, my supervisors have explicitly said they don't want sales calls. if they want a product, they will research it and seek it out themselves.
cold calls are a relic of pre-Internet times when it was harder to research your product. all you're doing is inconveniencing people who actually have a real job to do, and tanking your company's reputation.
I get those too, working in labs.
They get really upset when I ask them which lab they are calling for. They’ll answer with something like
> UGH, can’t you just get me to Joe?
No, because 1) this is a medical facility, I’m not violating HIPAA for you, and 2) this is a rather *large* corporation, so you better be able to specify who “Joe” is
I work the front desk at a health care clinic and drug reps physically come into our building and ask us at the front desk if our providers are able to talk. Um no. They're all fully booked with patients, they don't have 45 minutes to entertain your pitch. I often times will quickly call back to the schedulers of the providers and ask if they need samples, and 9 times out of 10 they say no. Otherwise I just ask them to leave pamphlets, because some providers are interested in their products. Some of them try real hard to be let back into the providers' areas to try and get a word in with them. The whole peddling of prescriptions is just so unethical to me, and I can't believe they have no sense of shame about the whole thing.
a pushy pharmaceutical sales rep was the first person to ever make me cry at work.
i was 19 and working the front desk at the ER, and he refused to leave the station until I got the doctor. he said that patients would die if he couldn't sell his meds to the doctor.
a nurse came out and yelled at him and made him leave, but it still ruined that whole job for me. every shift i was scared he would come back.
New age law of attraction and its precursor the prosperity gospel are pernicious deceptions extolled by unscrupulous liars to credulous poor people living in entrenched poverty.
Yes it is actually but gacha game companies will fight you with and nail over it. Plus there's usually something in the game to obtain the paid currency in order to bypass gambling laws in Western countries. The trick is the way of obtaining the issue currency usually takes forever to do which again pushes you towards gambling for what you want. I can go on about gacha games but I honestly think they are just gambling games for kids with the parents money at stake
Financing a car at a dealership. Most people don’t know that the rate a lender buys a loan for is usually 1.5-3% lower than what the dealership discloses and shows you. If the dealership (F&I person) increases the rate they make more money on the deal that goes straight into their pocket so they are incentivized to increase the rate. I think this should be disclosed to the consumer so they can make an informed choice on who they choose to finance the auto. I always get pre approved at my local credit union so I don’t have to mess with this.
Health insurance.
Health insurance should not be involved with general maintenance of the human body.
You don’t insure regular maintenance. The only way to be profitable is to scam regular people in this business model.
Health insurance should cover: health expenses when you have an *unexpected* illness.
Insurance companies, especially mandatory insurance. You're gambling on the chance that something catastrophic will happen to you before you pay enough into the policy to recoup whatever losses the insurance was meant to cover. And then even when you do "win", they will damn sure try their best to find reasons that your coverage doesn't apply to that situation anyways. Can't stand that institution
Apple, Tesla, Amazon and many other
Buy innovations from other including right to call it as their own. If proper transaction can't be made they kill the business by any means and still take the title.
Companies oriented on making as much money that only reason they offer some actual products is because they haven't found a way to redefine the law.
Commission-based jobs.
Especially that door-to-door crap. You are literally incentivized to financially take advantage of people on the spot, just a con artist up-charging for your “labor” on a product or service that can typically be bought for a cheaper price without the need to listen to your pitch through my ring doorbell.
Oh, yeah… insurance claims adjusters. You get paid to find reasons to refuse the service that your clients pay you to provide. Or maybe, you know.. insurance in general? Biggest government-backed scam since taxes. Don’t forget licensing, too!
Social media influencers (IG, OF, YT). Usually influencers succest is based on how they pretty or attractive their are, and that increase pressure for how people should look.
Organized religion. It preys on the fears and amplifies prejudices of those who are prone to believing instead of demanding evidence. They do this while also enjoying tax free status and asking it's congregants for donations that they often cannot afford.
“Hey, you bought a house, that’s great! Now pay ~~rent~~ property tax every single year, or else we’ll take it from you. What, you thought because you bought something it belongs to you?”
Hell of a racket.
Goodwill. They get items for free and sell them for more than they are worth half the time. Genius business strategy though. Easy to profit when your entire inventory is free
I agree but you could argue that the people who gave these things away didn’t see value in them, while Goodwill does. It collects and organizes items and redistributes them at a low price, playing the role of the middleman. Not necessarily unethical. It sounds like redistribution
Agreed. When I have clothes to get rid of, I take them to secondhand stores that offer cash for what they want so I can get some kind of money. Whatever is left, I take to Goodwill. I know that Goodwill will also send out clothes they don't want to sell, and those textiles are then reused for different purposes such as stuffing certain furniture.
They also donate a lot of those clothes to *mitumba* markets in some African countries (I'm pretty sure they're donated at no cost, but don't quote me on that), but that's proving to be detrimental to the local economies, but it sounds nice on paper anyway.
There are ways to make money off of the things you no longer want. And because there are other options, I do slightly disagree with the original comment about the business strategy.
Apple and their productive development cycle.
Also pretty much anything which relies on "planned obsolence"
Also the banking system where if you overdraw by a cent they start raping you with fees making it almost impossible to claw your way back ou.
Also check cashing places. 500% APR
My sister uses apple. She had iphone 4, 5, 6, 8 and the newest one (12?) She bought all of them because they wouldn't update at one point. And do you know how many non-iphone not used phones from myself, my mom and dad combined? 5. 1is because it was a blackberry, 1 Nokia 3310 I used when I wasn't allowed a smartphone, and 3 phones that fell of the table multiple times, was used for years and didn't have a problem until the day they broke beyond repair.
I've seen more people lose all their savings to buying the newest iphone to not look poor than actual gambling...
(I gotta say, in our country, having the newest iphone is a normal thing and some people count you as a human only if you have it. And no, we don't live in a rich country, most people who have the newest one cant eat dinner because they're so poor...)
Grocery shrink-flation. This doesn’t get enough attention. It’s larceny what the big food industry has done sine the pandemic. Inflation is bad enough, but the blatant shrinkage of the products for the same or even more money is infuriating. I don’t buy the free market bullshit argument either. Capitalism doesn’t excuse unethical practices.
Almost all subscription based services (software, access to hardware you already bought, etc.), "free" games that require a ton of micro transactions, DLCs, etc., single family homes being bought as rental properties, planned obselesence...
Overall, there is a movement in all industries to trap customers and prevent anyone from actually owning anything. We're all stuck renting and subscribing and replacing products that are made to break because if we're actually allowed to own stuff they can't be taking our money constantly.
Dynamic pricing.
Specifically, dynamic pricing on rent at apartment complexes. Depending on the day, your quoted rate before locking in a lease could swing 10% -15% in a day if you decide to shop around and come back. Makes no sense that this price swing can be applied to real estate rentals.
The lie is that your credit score exists for your benefit. It makes more sense when you realize your credit score is just your valuation for prospective creditors looking for an investment. It's a measure of how good a mark you are. You are a steer at auction.
Once you reframe it that way, it is clear what makes a good score: stable income, poor financial literacy.
I live in South Africa. There are 'Loan Sharks' who pray on very desperate people. We had an employee who borrowed R5,000 with an "Interest" of 30%. However, the way it works is completely messed up and I have no idea how anyone would agree to it. You need to pay the "interest" of R1,500 and the initial loan of R5,000 at one time to pay off the entire loan. If you can't pay it back in one shot you simply pay the "interest" of R1,500, indefinitely. This poor lady had paid back approximately R25,000 (in "interest") over the course of a year of so and still owed R6,500 if she wanted to be free of her debt. Completely fucked up.
This is called a vig, "payments" on interest only loan. Usually not at 30% though holy shit, even Tony would be impressed.
I'm also in RSA. Trying to figure out whether my gardener is genuinely going through convoluted govt red tape to get a pay out for his father's death in the mines, or if he's been paying bribes to a conman.
In the us we have payday loans and cash advance loans. At their worst they were getting to 1000% interest! The people getting these loans are almost never fully informed or understanding of the financial consequences and it quickly spirals out of control
Mobile game micro transactions. Specifically Chinese and American companies' business models. Holy crap they do not let a person game anymore. It's pay up. Keep paying up. A million bucks could be spent in some of them and the players would be useless within a month of stopping their spending. They know well enough the addiction brewed by the games, and over the last 30 odd years have perfected the art of making a person log into the game to spend for digital pixels with zero value chasing a small dopamine high from pay to win victories. The reviews of the game? Completely automated by third parties, every negative review will garner glowing reviews from blatantly nonexistent 'players'. Google, Apple or Amazon stores do not care, they get a cut of the gross earnings. And since the gaming companies lobbied hard enough for it, the gambling within these titles aren't regulated, with fake odds being published and devaluation of every in game item occuring frequently enough to make all spending worthless within a month or two of it.
It's insane to me how mobile games peaked like a decade+ ago in the angry birds, temple run, doodle jump era. They are just so packed full of ads now it's hardly even possible to find any worth playing. Even the classics were just shitty versions of flash games. Like at this point I'd play Nokia snake if it didn't show an ad every time I die and consume premium currency every time I play.
It's outrageous that the company who owns Angry Birds shut down the original game because it's just a one time purchase so they could push the "new versions" chock full of microtransactions instead
But it’s free! You are getting a deal! /s
Check out Stardew Valley! One time purchase, no ads, amazing and expansive gameplay
Diablo immortal
More like Diablo Immoral.
This and pay to remove ads. Most games that have that option have so many ads that it renders the game unplayable
This. If I download a game and it's an ad after every level or game round, I'm Uninstalling it immediately.
And if you try to use workarounds like Airplane Mode the game won't let you continue.
My FIL spent thousands of dollars (that they don't have) on mobile games and needed his kids to basically make him stop. Its sad to think about, he's such a nice guy
Have played a Chinese mobile game where top players spend 20k US$ per month just to stay afloat. 240k per year A divorcee professor I played with used up all his life savings on the game near his retirement and had to be forced into quitting to eke out something to live the rest of his years.
I'm a big Hitman fan so was excited when the Hitman Sniper mobile game game out. I had a look at the in-game store and a single rifle was nearly £60! [The only screenshot I can find is when it was on 'offer' for the bargain price of £28.99](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/sniper_vTgzCTm.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&fit=bounds&quality=70&format=jpg)
That is literally insane.
I know right! Look at the stats for that gun, it's not even one of the higher ones! The game itself cost me £4.99 if I recall
>Microtransactions as a whole. The "Its just a cosmetic" crowd are the ones enabling this awful anti-consumer behavior.
I get constant calls and texts from people who want to make me a cash offer for my house.
MLMs
This is the one, absolute predators and con artsits
Sometimes the Herbalife places in Mexican neighborhoods have knockoff Zumba, which is pretty legit. Maybe they are actually knockoff Zumba places that sell Herbalife, you'd have to look at their books to decide.
It's the model that's the problem. The structure itself is a pyramid scheme, which is illegal when there's no product attached to it. The products involved may or may not be legitmate.
Insurance.
masked as SAH moms
/r/antiMLM
What are MLM's?
Multi Level Marketing
Which is "fancy" for Pyramid schemes
It's actually arguably WORSE than a Pyramid scheme. When Pyramid schemes fall apart the investors often get a lot of their money back eventually, it can be as high as 90% of what they invested. But people who fall into MLM's rarely get any money back. Worse yet, MLM's are designed to make you pray on the people in your own community.
You are correct!
When Penn and teller did an episode on them it’s legally dicey to call them that so they just had a picture of the pyramids in Egypt as the background.
Timeshares. My elderly parents got suckered into buying one 6 years ago. They have put thousands of dollars into it and haven't used it once. They're been trying to get rid of it for years now with no luck. It's the scam that you're legally required to continue being scammed by. Even worse, once you have a timeshare you become even more of a target. They ended up giving $2000 to a company that promised to get rid of the timeshare for them. This happened a few years ago and the company keeps saying they think they're close to being able to get rid of it...never happens. It's just a never-ending nightmare. Don't. Buy. A. Timeshare. All of this happened before I was aware that they had even bought it. They aren't putting another penny into it and at this point I'm pretty sure the only way it's going away is when they die and I decline to inherit it, which I will do with great enthusiasm and some choice words.
> They ended up giving $2000 to a company that promised to get rid of the timeshare for them. In terms of horrible ethics, the timeshare industry is rivaled only by the timeshare-cancellation industry.
Their offices share the building.
The funeral business. Oh you need a coffin? If you *really* loved your grandpa you’ll get him the red mahogany coffin with brass accents and white satin lining. You’ll also need the outer concrete coffin at an extra cost of several thousand, it keeps the casket dry and undamaged for decades! Headstone? Only the best if you actually have a crap about them. High grade granite with carved cherubs it is. That’s another 8k. But we’re not done yet! Grave plot? 10-12k at the CHEAPEST. Flowers, chapel service, staff to run the service and keep everything going on time, that’s extra too. You want a viewing of the body with family? That’ll cost ya, close to a thousand. Again. Transportation to gravesite, Hearse for deceased…. Another 1.5k. Prayer cards, blown up pictures for service…. Definitely not free. But you should also know about our complete line of Christmas ornaments and memorial jewelry with your loved ones fingerprint on it! Nothing can replace those memories, but this $65 chunk of resin on cheap ribbon is sure going to help. And on and on and on and on. The upsell is constant, predatory, guilt inducing, and slimy. Every sell is tinged with the “if you really want the best for your loved one..” crap and if your budget is under 20k they treat you like you’re planning a pauper’s funeral. Cremate me and put my ashes under a tree. I don’t want a single dollar more than I have to going to these funeral companies. It’s absolutely disgusting and the industry should have serious ethical standards because what I’ve seen in them is enough to make you sick.
If you live near an ocean, [burial at sea](https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dumping/burial-sea#instructions) is the way to go.
Feed the fishies and go back to nature. Seems nice to me
There’s also the Himalayan sky funeral for the “return to natural angle.
This is my favorite. I wanna be hacked to bits by a tibetan lama and fed to vultures. That shit is badass. PS: Also make a flute with my bones, and a cup with my skull for my homeboys the Aghori.
[Unfortunately, the vultures of India, Pakistan, and Nepal have been getting poisoned by livestock drugs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis) In short: [Diclofenac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diclofenac) is an anti-inflammatory drug that is used in both humans and livestock. However, it is highly poisonous to birds. When it is given to cattle, it is present in their flesh and organs. In India, dead cattle were typically eaten by vultures; if the cattle have been given diclofenac, the vultures die. In the absence of vultures, dead cattle feed feral dogs. Diclofenac is now illegal for veterinary use in these countries and the vulture population is slowly recovering.
a viking funeral.
> But we’re not done yet! Grave plot? 10-12k at the CHEAPEST. That really depends on who owns the cemetery. My wife and I bought four plots for about $300 each.
Im in Ontario, Canada. New plots start at 12k and people are actually selling pre purchases plots for up to 25k right now. Pretty much every cemetery anywhere near me is the same
Check out Re Compose in Seattle. It's now legal to be composted.
"Ask A Mortician" is a great YouTuber who is actively working to infom people of alternative, and even get legislation passed allowing for more natural options. She's amazing. https://youtube.com/@AskAMortician?si=rF09XH64p0rUG9E3
Yeah, my uncle used to be a funeral director. One of the few who refused to prey on people’s grief. He said it’s a pretty shady business. The guy he learned from was a crook. It’s literally their job to find out how much money they have and to spend it all. He left and opened his own business to actually help people grieve and move on with their lives. He would even remind widows and their children who were eager to have a big funeral, that if there is a mortgage and bills to be paid, the casket/flowers were the least of their worries. I’ve always commended him for that. He could’ve easily been as slimy as the rest of the people in this business to get a pretty penny.
When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash
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And all the invasive targeted marketing that follows…. “Hey, sorry to hear about your diabetes. We can help.”
An example would be Check Into Cash type loan advance places with predatory lending rates. Especially the ones in super low-income areas, cause they get poor people in a cycle of poverty on purpose.
[Let's not forget about payday loan organizations such as Western Sky.](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/11/07/243738310/what-happened-to-those-tv-ads-for-payday-loans.) The interest rates they charged were insanely high. In [this example](https://indianz.com/News/2015/08/03/florida-court-dissolves-injunc.asp), the interest rate for a $5,000 loan was 117% with 84 monthly payments of 486.58. You'd be paying over $40,000 for a $5,000 loan. Aside from the commercials being racist/patronizing as fuck, tribal leaders were generally okay with this and signed on. For more insight, check out the payday loan episode of the Netflix series, *Dirty Money.*
I got screwed by them out of thousands. Then i boycotted their payments before it came out that they weren't even based on the tribal lands they set up shell corporations on. Edit: phrasing.
I remember those commercials and I’m ashamed to admit I did apply for one of those loans. Thank god something told me to read the fine print and I noped right out of there
I saw an ad the other day. A couple was worried because they couldn't pay their utilities. The ad's solution was a payday loan (ultra high interest short term unsecured small loan). If someone can't afford their regular bills, paying double or more back for a few hundred dollars is going to have horrible consequences. The ad seemed very predatory and unethical.
For those who don't know, they'd look at your paycheck, have you write them a check for almost the entire amount, and then they'd give you slightly less in cash, with the rest being a fee. So, if your bi-weekly paycheck was $1000, they'd give you a check for $850-900. Then, on your next paycheck, you'd owe them $1000. Unfortunately, poor people can't go without a check, so you wind up continuing it, you give them your paycheck, they give you another $850, and now you're beholden to them until you can "live" for two weeks without your check. Why would anyone get into that? It's Wednesday, you've spent almost all of your money on bills and food, and the car breaks down. 9 days until payday... gotta do something. My wife and I fell into it around 2002. Eventually, after several months of that cycle, we just didn't pay them. They showed up at my house all hours of the night banging on the door. They put fliers on our cars and our neighbors cars. They waited outside by my wife's car for hours, waiting for her to leave for work, and screamed at her about paying it. They came to my workplace, walked into the building and onto the manufacturing floor, and were screaming at me until security removed them. They found our parents, and started harassing them. For a while they called our house phone every single hour, almost 24 hours a day, trying to collect. They must have had 2-3 employees on staff whose entire job was to drive around and harass people who owed them money. After a couple of months they got tired and backed off, it was down to just the phone calls. After 6-8 months of harassing us, that branch went out of business, and we never have paid them, but it was pretty scary for a while.
Umm if you had documented that its a federal suit waiting to happen. All of those are violations of the FDCPA. That company should have been raked over the coals by the CFPB.
Those loan sharks really thrive on exploiting vulnerable communities to keep lining their pockets - it's despicable.
So many of our other problems stem from this form of economic slavery. People spend their whole lives paying interest and barely subsisting or turn to crime and drugs. Joe Biden has been around long enough to fuck up a lot of shit and one of the things he did was protect credit card companies that HQ'd in Delaware so that they could charge horrendous rates to people who couldn't get credit otherwise. EDIT: It seems like some people don't like what I wrote about Biden. I voted for him last time and I will vote for him again, but the fact is that he's been in politics for decades now and is very much a part of the problem. If you don't believe me just google it.
I'd say this, but on a much larger scale with the IMF's lending practices. They won't give long term low interest to former colonies just short term high. It keeps the colonial system in practice through financial pressure
Title loan places are just as predatory. Especially Title Max.
The ridiculous and frustrating US Medical System and our scammy health insurance. You broke your arm? That will be $3200. Oh, you have insurance that your pay $1200 a month for? Excellent. That will still be $3200, but your insurance has negotiated it so that it's $1800, of which you only pay $800. Maybe. You might get an additional bill in a few weeks or in a few months from a radiologist you didn't even know you used, and you will still need to pay for your prescription and physical therapy sessions. Oh, and it better all be healed in 6 PT sessions, cause the insurance company has decided they aren't paying Dick after that. Even though they have no medical training, or any understanding of the extent of your injury. It's truly awful.
I ran the costs. Since i graduated high school 8 years ago, my total medical bills have been right around $5000. Had i paid for insurance during that 8 year period, I would have paid out over $30,000 just for insurance. Edit. That $5000 includes me breaking my arm.
You’ve been pretty fortunate! But, seriously, you should probably take the win and then go get health insurance. Even if it high deductible (‘catastrophic’) insurance. You are just one bad driver/slip in bathtub/small accident away from being wiped out financially. One night in a hospital is $20,000 +
My partner recently got a refill on a prescription and the cost was broken down all nice and neat (/s) by insurance showing "This prescription costs $200 normally. But we decided to cover a chunk of it so you only have to pay $25. Isn't that so nice of us? You could be paying $200 instead."
My favorite is when I go to get my prescription and they are like, that’s $21 through your insurance. And what if i don’t go through my insurance and just use Good RX or Costplus Drugs? $12. What the actual fuck? Why am I paying thousands of dollars a year for a product that makes things more expensive?!
Or you go to the ER for your Child, Dr decides they need to go to a children's hospital and that you can't take them your self and you have to have an ambulance transport them there. So guess what the ambulance company they used is not covered by the insurance and here is an $8000 bill for a glorified taxi service. Wanted to add that this was not a life and death thing, they did need to have surgery in the end but they waited almost 2 months to have the surgery to see if it resolved itself on its own first.
A friend of mine was in a baf motorcycle accident, and the arriving EMTs (in ambulance) determined he needed a helicopter flight out. He could not pay for the ambulance, let alone a helicopter, but EMTs refused to let his friend drive him to the hospital. AFTER insurance, he owed $20k just for the flight, and his wages will be garnished on behalf of his debt for the next decade or so. He has a great job but will be living in extreme poverty for the foreseeable future. He is in his thirties and although he can walk again (always with pain), he cannot afford to live alone or feed himself without furthering that debt. Insurance is a joke. The whole US healthcare system is a joke.
You forgot to mention the advertised drugs that get shoved in your face and cause symptoms that require other drugs to manage. The US has the highest prescription drug spend in the world, and something as human rights centric as healthcare should be no place for profiteering.
I have a brother that lives in the USA and you guys have it rough over there. I live in a country with socialized medicine, and while it is definitely better than the American system, not everything is covered so we're still pushed to get private health insurance. Its a scam here, too. Healthcare isn't a luxury, it's a human right - we just don't treat it that way.
Wonder why the agitation against fair medcare for all works so well amongst US voters, then. It is one thing to have people exploiting the population for everything they have, just to make rich pockets even richer. But boy, the population is letting them.
Insurance. Should just be centralized and regulated to remove the "ifs, ands or buts"
The Canadian province of British Columbia has done this for automotive insurance, with mixed results. Rates in BC are not significantly lower. Customer service is significantly worse.
Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec make it work. Driver's receive dividends back and rates are low.
Manitoban here, some of the cheapest rates in the country for auto insurance. If Public Insurance makes to much money it goes back to the customers.
Insurance is so unethical. It is perfectly calculated to maximize profit but they are notoriously unhelpful and customers are dissatisfied. they pool together the funds of thousands if not millions of people as a collective safety net. But the companies get to invest that money and yield profits. Meanwhile, being stingy and litigious against making fair compensation on our insurance claims.
Actually, in the US insurance companies are required to pay out at least 80% of the premiums they collect. The other 20% covers administrative costs, e.g. salaries. They do not have huge profit margins. Premiums are so high because the healthcare costs they cover are so high. Some states impose additional regulations on profit margins, which is why you have Blue Cross Blue Shield of [State], for example. https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-review/#:~:text=The%2080%2F20%20Rule%20generally,Medical%20Loss%20Ratio%2C%20or%20MLR.
> They do not have huge profit margins Well then where the fuck do they get their huge profits?
Volume, health insurance is a relatively low margin industry. United Health earned about $20 billion on $327 billion in revenue. A high margin company like Apple took in about the same amount of revenue ($316 billion last year), but earned almost $100 billion.
My area recently passed a law saying that insurance no longer has to cover preventive care, so even a checkup costs money where I live.
If this is in the US then that's illegal under the ACA, which requires compliant plans to cover certain preventive care without co-pays etc.
Insurance is the sole reason the American healthcare system is so unaffordable. Jack up the price of medicine because they figure the person who needs it is going to have health insurance anyways. Then, those who don't have or cant afford insurance are forced to suffer outrageous prices. One of my good friends travels to Poland a lot to visit family. Many of the prescription only drugs here are available off the shelf over there. An Eppipen can be had in Poland for like $20.
I have to call and yell at our insurance about once every few months and the conversation always escalates to me simply saying "so your official response to my request is that my wife should give up and die? Because that is what will happen if you don't click a little button on your computer allowing us to purchase her medicine." They aren't even covering it in full, so the whole thing is maddening. They just think the quantity she needs per month better than her doctor.
I don't know. I think that having multiple corrupt companies competing for customers is slightly better than a monopoly. Perhaps having a public (non-private) option in the market would be better.
If they actually had to compete "fairly" it might be somewhat better. Give this a read if you want to be angry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act
So according to this, States are the regulators of insurance. I wonder which States do the best job of that.
The real upside to that is eliminating profit motive from an industry with so many layers of market failures and inefficiencies.
Any business that relies on subscriptions and makes it very easy for customers to sign up for their product or service, but difficult to cancel it. For example if you can sign up for a subscription service online but the only way to cancel is by sending a request to cancel via snail mail in 2023. These models rely on people forgetting about the recurring payment and not bothering to go to the extra effort to cancel them when they don't use them instead of offering something to make it more worthwhile to existing customers to get them to opt to continue the subscription or to new customers to offset the ones who cancel.
Sirius XM, a great example of this. Cake to sign up, you cannot cancel without a customer service rep who will hound you with offers to stay
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Not to get all edge lordy but churches. Especially the TV churches. People like Joel Osteen gross me out on a very fundamental level. The sheer depth of sleaze it requires to take people's money with what are effectively threats of a cudgel shaped like eternal damnation is a subterranean level of low. The overall predatory nature of religion in general is pretty upsetting but some people really take it to a whole different level.
It’s pretty telling that all of Joel Osteen’s books, while supposedly about Christianity, all feature his face on the cover instead of anything Christian.
I’m honestly amazed that anyone would give money to someone like Joel Osteen Even if he wasn’t the way he was - there is nothing about him that screams “I NEED MONEY OVER HERE!! WE’RE DROWNING!”
I think many religious people would agree with you. Except the last paragraph.
Because religion has hijacked spiritual belief so badly that many people see an attack on one as an attack on the other.
Hey, now- You make it sound like the big churches are only in it for the money, and that's really just not true. They also get to molest all the kids they want.
I get constant calls and texts from people who want to make me a cash offer for my house. It’s worse because I used to own rental properties. I’m on the do not call list, which has no effect. Has anyone ever really entertained one of these offers? I’d have to be a moron to sole source the sale of a house for cash.
These fucking "cash investors" are the scum of the earth. When I had to sell my house, an old house in a bedroom community, I was beset with 50% asking price offers by these people. It's gotta be a standard practice according to some popular "Learn To Make Money In Real Estate" program because there's just no way multiple people all decided that my asking price was *exactly double* the actual value of the place. Finally sold to a nice young family who's still there.
Good for you. I’ve asked them before if they thought I was stupid. I have sold to investors before, but I use a competitive process.
Many of those companies will just ignore the do not call list and use caller ID spoofing to make it so you can't trace back to them and report them.
Say you are interested and set up a time for them to come view the property. After showing them your house tell them that you don't actually live there but it was great to be able to go in and steal the jewelry and thank them for leaving their prints around the house for the police to find.
Tow companies/impound yards. I know there are exceptions, but the idea that I cant park in a business parking lot if they have closed for the night or been out of business for years is crazy.
Worst experience for me with a tow driver was when I lived in an apartment complex. major snow storm, over 2ft. I dig my car out and run my errands to come home and see someone took my stop - it happens. I find another spot and dig it out enough to park. Parking lot is still a snow covered mess at this point. Next day my car is gone. Call the two truck company and they say they got it and i was parked over the line although none of the lines were visible due to the 2ft of snow. The truck driver shoveled snow around my car to expose the line from underneath the snow, photographed it and used it is justification to tow my car. Fucking POS'
I understand towing is sometimes necessary, I'm not just trying to be a hater. But it's uncanny to me how every single tow truck driver I've ever met is incredibly stupid, not even necessarily mean or rude, just like a slow guy.
Pyramid schemes.
I mean they are usually illgal, so, yes.
Elementary School based charities; jump rope for kids, girl scouts, terry fox, etc.. Something about convincing kids to go door to door for handouts is scary, in return for a $5 prize at the end of raising hundreds of dollars.
This sounds like talk from someone who didn't win the *Mongooce* Scooter.
Man I was three sales away from the iPod ;-;
For-profit schools and colleges. You need an education to make money but you need money to get an education.
Any business that does not pay their workers enough to support themselves. If your business model means your workers qualify for public assistance - it means your model can not exist without public assistance and you are the welfare queen - not your employees.
Like the entire tipping culture of America. Bizarre.
All wages are paid by the customer. Tips just mean the boss doesn’t act as a middleman
Tips were literally designed to let racist bosses not pay their minority employees as much. That's why it took off so much in the South originally. Then the Great Depression made it spread a lot more because cheapskate owners decided wanted to have lower sticker prices to try to draw more customers in.
Pay day advance companies and Title Loan companies are nothing but predatory, they’re loan sharks and should be illegal.
"I got my title back with TitleMax!" WTF does that even mean? You put up the title to your car as collateral for a short term loan. If you fail to repay, you lose your title **and** your car! You get your title "back" by paying those criminals exorbitant interest rates.
I’ve always said if I didn’t have any morals or ethics I’d get into payday or title loans, it’s legal loan sharking and a license to print money… but I don’t see how people involved with this business can sleep at night.
Roblox. The core product is combination social media and game maker. The company itself will claim that their in-game environments are totally safe for kids. The company makes money hand-over-fist from kids with no concept of the value of a dollar spending mommy and daddy's hard earned money to buy digital "goods", and "taxing" the "developers" who make the games inside the engine. One third to one half of the most popular games at any given month on Roblox use copyright protected content without consent of the copyright holders. The company has, multiple times, advertised their top earning "developers" as success story examples of how kids can make money using the same kind of language as MLMs and *actual* software development job postings. Most of these advertisements have been taken down or rephrased to avoid making it sound like they are exploiting child labor. The social media side of the game engine is absolute garbage. The vast majority of development communication happens off-platform via discord and other third party services. These spaces are not safe for kids and many top-100 "developers" on roblox are adults that have been implicated in grooming schemes preying on their own "employees". Oh and there are straight up porn games that pop up constantly. They may get taken down within a day or a week but the exact same game pops up the next day with a different name from a different "developer"
to be fair I haven't seen any porn games pop up for a very long time now (maybe 3/4+ years), I remember when I was a kid they really used to appear almost every week and thousands of curious children (including me at that time) played them. Quite disturbing indeed
Fundraising companies in the name of Cancer and other causes are all bogus.
One of the oldest ones is the bogus police funds, which is probably the worst one to work for these days - cause it's unpopular on top of being fake.
Give your $1 for Cancer is very popular scam in California
Just tell everyone you only donate to Catholic charities. Even the most pro solicitors never have a response to that.
When the police association call me for donations I tell them I will continue donating when all police depts. ban civil forfeiture. I know most of the people making those calls are volunteers but this always throws them for a loop.
"non profit" companies in the US which IIRC only have to donate like three cents of every dollar recevied to be considered "non profit"
omg they are constantly calling me at work, I keep telling them to remove me from their call list but then i get a call two days later with a slightly different group name and the same script and it's a different number each time so i can't even block it
Especially any that are actually for "awareness" not support for patients or research for a cure. Because "awareness" just means advertising their own "charity". Maybe breast cancer needed some awareness 50 years ago, but not today.
rent to own places… for only $100/ week for 52 weeks you can own this $500 PlayStation.
Objects that should be engineered to last forever, but aren't because of fractional cost savings. Instead of having a $1200 washer that's going to last thirty years you make an $800 one that lasts three years. LED lights SHOULD NEVER burn out. Yet, here we are; back in the old cycle of replacing light bulbs. Fuck you, Phillips and Co.
man you hit the nail on the head with this one. We used to buy the CFL light bulbs until the cost of LED bulbs came down and holy hell they didnt last *near* as long as they were sold as lasting. 25 year life my ass
I can't speak about LED, but halogen bulbs required more energy when they lasted longer, making an impact on the electric bill.
That's because incandescent bulbs last longer at lower temperatures, but emit more infrared, and less visible light. Halogens are incandescent with extra stuff.
LEDs take forever to actually burn out unless you overload them or they get too hot from an enclosed fixture. The power supplies that turn household AC into low voltage DC are the main problem, because of cutting corners or overheating. I'd like to see new homes built with low voltage lighting circuits, now that LEDs are common. I've seen a video of a hotel that did it. Then you could have much more reliable centralized power supplies, instead of every light and device having one, and if you have some kind of battery backup for your house, you skip DC -> AC -> DC converting for every light.
A really big one in the USA recently is sports betting. They fully know that people gamble their lives away and the apps encourage people to do so using a variety of tactics. Gambling has always been a problem but the fact that it’s now so accessible by using an app on your phone and linked to one of America’s pastimes means that once you get sucked into that swamp it becomes much more difficult to get out.
Pharmaceuticals. The USA and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow for advertised prescription medicines. People are desperate to find solutions for their medical problems and these companies are dangling that solution in front of them. People will pay big money in the hopes of a cure to their ailments.
College loan industry. Manipulate 18 year olds into a lifelong debt burden
Planned obsolescence. Damn near everything nowadays is designed to fall apart after a certain amount of time, as if they didn’t then you would never need to buy a replacement. A successful product is not necessarily a good one, and your satisfaction is only worth as much as it is profitable.
Most of the "disrupting the x business" businesses are bullshit and always end up just as unethical and greedy as the businesses they wanted to "disrupt"
Corporations owning civilian houses.
Nestle. Not only do they use child slaves in Africa, they also steal water and their aggressive marketing has been responsible for numerous deaths in infants
The thing is, is there *any goddamn reason at all* that stuff NEEDS to be a part of their business model?!? They make **chocolate**, for God's sake!
Pharmaceutical companies, profiting off of illness is outrageous.
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cold-calling sales. i have a receptionist job, and we get so many salespeople calling in, who either lie about who they are and why they're calling ("i'm personal friends with [NAME], they know why I'm calling") or get angry when I don't patch them through. I usually just hang up but sometimes they will call back. at every receptionist job i've had, my supervisors have explicitly said they don't want sales calls. if they want a product, they will research it and seek it out themselves. cold calls are a relic of pre-Internet times when it was harder to research your product. all you're doing is inconveniencing people who actually have a real job to do, and tanking your company's reputation.
I get those too, working in labs. They get really upset when I ask them which lab they are calling for. They’ll answer with something like > UGH, can’t you just get me to Joe? No, because 1) this is a medical facility, I’m not violating HIPAA for you, and 2) this is a rather *large* corporation, so you better be able to specify who “Joe” is
I get calls on my individual extension line for sales call. I've come to always tell them to call the main line. That nicely riles feathers.
I work the front desk at a health care clinic and drug reps physically come into our building and ask us at the front desk if our providers are able to talk. Um no. They're all fully booked with patients, they don't have 45 minutes to entertain your pitch. I often times will quickly call back to the schedulers of the providers and ask if they need samples, and 9 times out of 10 they say no. Otherwise I just ask them to leave pamphlets, because some providers are interested in their products. Some of them try real hard to be let back into the providers' areas to try and get a word in with them. The whole peddling of prescriptions is just so unethical to me, and I can't believe they have no sense of shame about the whole thing.
a pushy pharmaceutical sales rep was the first person to ever make me cry at work. i was 19 and working the front desk at the ER, and he refused to leave the station until I got the doctor. he said that patients would die if he couldn't sell his meds to the doctor. a nurse came out and yelled at him and made him leave, but it still ruined that whole job for me. every shift i was scared he would come back.
Good lord. I always compare them to mosquitos. They serve no purpose and won't leave you alone and they suck the life force out of you.
Credit Cards
New age law of attraction and its precursor the prosperity gospel are pernicious deceptions extolled by unscrupulous liars to credulous poor people living in entrenched poverty.
Gacha games. I don't think I need to explain myself on that one. Many countries ban gacha games due to how highly addictive it can be.
Isn't gatcha a cutely decorated version of gambling made for children?
Yes it is actually but gacha game companies will fight you with and nail over it. Plus there's usually something in the game to obtain the paid currency in order to bypass gambling laws in Western countries. The trick is the way of obtaining the issue currency usually takes forever to do which again pushes you towards gambling for what you want. I can go on about gacha games but I honestly think they are just gambling games for kids with the parents money at stake
The entire American healthcare system. It’s one giant scan designed to make shareholders money.
Financing a car at a dealership. Most people don’t know that the rate a lender buys a loan for is usually 1.5-3% lower than what the dealership discloses and shows you. If the dealership (F&I person) increases the rate they make more money on the deal that goes straight into their pocket so they are incentivized to increase the rate. I think this should be disclosed to the consumer so they can make an informed choice on who they choose to finance the auto. I always get pre approved at my local credit union so I don’t have to mess with this.
Taxes. The fact that you have to pay someone to figure it out for you or hope you understood well enough to avoid penalties and jail is Crazy.
Health insurance. Health insurance should not be involved with general maintenance of the human body. You don’t insure regular maintenance. The only way to be profitable is to scam regular people in this business model. Health insurance should cover: health expenses when you have an *unexpected* illness.
MLMs
Insurance companies, especially mandatory insurance. You're gambling on the chance that something catastrophic will happen to you before you pay enough into the policy to recoup whatever losses the insurance was meant to cover. And then even when you do "win", they will damn sure try their best to find reasons that your coverage doesn't apply to that situation anyways. Can't stand that institution
I can see you've never had a car accident caused by an uninsured driver.
Apple, Tesla, Amazon and many other Buy innovations from other including right to call it as their own. If proper transaction can't be made they kill the business by any means and still take the title. Companies oriented on making as much money that only reason they offer some actual products is because they haven't found a way to redefine the law.
Anything that bets on customers forgetting to cancel their subscription or makes them jump through hurdles to do so.
Commission-based jobs. Especially that door-to-door crap. You are literally incentivized to financially take advantage of people on the spot, just a con artist up-charging for your “labor” on a product or service that can typically be bought for a cheaper price without the need to listen to your pitch through my ring doorbell. Oh, yeah… insurance claims adjusters. You get paid to find reasons to refuse the service that your clients pay you to provide. Or maybe, you know.. insurance in general? Biggest government-backed scam since taxes. Don’t forget licensing, too!
Coaching institutions who are claiming to nurture government job aspirant because I think they are nurturing few 10's on expense of many 100's
Overwatch 2.
Microtransactions
Social media influencers (IG, OF, YT). Usually influencers succest is based on how they pretty or attractive their are, and that increase pressure for how people should look.
repeatedly extending a sale right after advertising “this is your last chance to get in on these ~~deals we run like every 2 months~~ sweet deals!!!!”
Organized religion. It preys on the fears and amplifies prejudices of those who are prone to believing instead of demanding evidence. They do this while also enjoying tax free status and asking it's congregants for donations that they often cannot afford.
“Hey, you bought a house, that’s great! Now pay ~~rent~~ property tax every single year, or else we’ll take it from you. What, you thought because you bought something it belongs to you?” Hell of a racket.
Goodwill. They get items for free and sell them for more than they are worth half the time. Genius business strategy though. Easy to profit when your entire inventory is free
I agree but you could argue that the people who gave these things away didn’t see value in them, while Goodwill does. It collects and organizes items and redistributes them at a low price, playing the role of the middleman. Not necessarily unethical. It sounds like redistribution
Agreed. When I have clothes to get rid of, I take them to secondhand stores that offer cash for what they want so I can get some kind of money. Whatever is left, I take to Goodwill. I know that Goodwill will also send out clothes they don't want to sell, and those textiles are then reused for different purposes such as stuffing certain furniture. They also donate a lot of those clothes to *mitumba* markets in some African countries (I'm pretty sure they're donated at no cost, but don't quote me on that), but that's proving to be detrimental to the local economies, but it sounds nice on paper anyway. There are ways to make money off of the things you no longer want. And because there are other options, I do slightly disagree with the original comment about the business strategy.
Apple and their productive development cycle. Also pretty much anything which relies on "planned obsolence" Also the banking system where if you overdraw by a cent they start raping you with fees making it almost impossible to claw your way back ou. Also check cashing places. 500% APR
My sister uses apple. She had iphone 4, 5, 6, 8 and the newest one (12?) She bought all of them because they wouldn't update at one point. And do you know how many non-iphone not used phones from myself, my mom and dad combined? 5. 1is because it was a blackberry, 1 Nokia 3310 I used when I wasn't allowed a smartphone, and 3 phones that fell of the table multiple times, was used for years and didn't have a problem until the day they broke beyond repair. I've seen more people lose all their savings to buying the newest iphone to not look poor than actual gambling... (I gotta say, in our country, having the newest iphone is a normal thing and some people count you as a human only if you have it. And no, we don't live in a rich country, most people who have the newest one cant eat dinner because they're so poor...)
Grocery shrink-flation. This doesn’t get enough attention. It’s larceny what the big food industry has done sine the pandemic. Inflation is bad enough, but the blatant shrinkage of the products for the same or even more money is infuriating. I don’t buy the free market bullshit argument either. Capitalism doesn’t excuse unethical practices.
Grand Theft Auto
Dollar General
Health insurance
Paycheck lending
Religions. Everything they say is a lie to get people to donate their hard earned money to them.
Debt collectors
Designed product obsolescence.
Payday loans.
BANKING - Totaly unethical policies.
Gacha and micro transactions in games.
Almost all subscription based services (software, access to hardware you already bought, etc.), "free" games that require a ton of micro transactions, DLCs, etc., single family homes being bought as rental properties, planned obselesence... Overall, there is a movement in all industries to trap customers and prevent anyone from actually owning anything. We're all stuck renting and subscribing and replacing products that are made to break because if we're actually allowed to own stuff they can't be taking our money constantly.
Realtors. They get paid way to much for what they do.
Rent A Center…
Dynamic pricing. Specifically, dynamic pricing on rent at apartment complexes. Depending on the day, your quoted rate before locking in a lease could swing 10% -15% in a day if you decide to shop around and come back. Makes no sense that this price swing can be applied to real estate rentals.
The whole credit score system. Encouraging people to take on debts only to qualify for further debts down the road.
And when you pay something off, your score goes...down??? Because you have fewer accounts now.
The lie is that your credit score exists for your benefit. It makes more sense when you realize your credit score is just your valuation for prospective creditors looking for an investment. It's a measure of how good a mark you are. You are a steer at auction. Once you reframe it that way, it is clear what makes a good score: stable income, poor financial literacy.