Some years ago on the way back from a training course in Cheshire, I stopped at Frankley Service station on the M5. As I walked across the car park to the main cafeteria building, I was approached at by a couple of wide boys who wanted to sell me a watch. Their pitch was that they had been at the motor show on the Porchë stand and they had been giving out these watches. The show was over and they were trying to capitalise on the leftover watches. Possibly they were telling the truth; they were driving a new Porchë and looked the part – sharp suits and even sharper ties. They were pretty annoyed with me when I flatly refused and let me know it in no uncertain terms. They made some abusive comments about my lack of taste as if they were doing me a favour. Here we have to agree to disagree – the watches were ghastly.
I was reminded of this incident by the news that unwary buyers have been taken for a ride recently by these two rogues. Apparently they stop passers-by and sell them a laptop computer. They show the prospective buyer the goods and switch bags once the deal is done leaving the buyer with a bag full of rubbish.
Okay – so it’s a low thing to do. But what is going on in peoples’ minds to even contemplate buying expensive electronic goods from a complete stranger who just stops them in the street? Those buyers who ended up with bits of wood and an Argos catalogue deserved what they got, quite frankly. I guess stupid, greedy people are self-selecting when it comes to this type of confidence trick. They believe they are getting something for nothing – or, in this case, a too-good-to-be-true bargain. Of course, if something seems too good to be true, then it usually is. Yet, despite numerous warnings on the television, radio, in newspapers and magazines; despite the best efforts of consumer protection agencies, people still fall for it – because they are greedy and stupid.
I don’t buy from scallywags in the street (or car parks). I buy from reputable traders who have a fixed address and provide a guarantee. That way I don’t get conned. It’s a simple enough formula and if everyone followed it these types of confidence tricks would be that much more difficult to pull off. It is, after all, greed that they are preying on.
I saw something like this on the movie Gridlocked, where someone put a brick inside a box with a picture of an alectronic item on the outside and sold it to this mobster, who spend the rest of the movie chasing them down to kill them.Visit me @ http://confessionsofalibertine.blog-city.com/
When I was ‘on the road’ I was accosted by the ‘watch boys’ so many times that I knew their ‘patter’ off by heart and used to give it to them first. Strangely I never got any abuse in return.John