Some people really are their own worst enemies.
A man and a woman paid £650 for what they believed to be a laptop computer – only to discover they had been sold a bag of potatoes.
The couple were approached on Tuesday by a man in Huntingdon High Street who offered to sell them a laptop.
They viewed the laptop in a rucksack and withdrew £650 in cash from a bank to pay the man.
Sigh… Anyone stupid enough to fall for this deserves to get fleeced. This is a classic switch con and has been publicised by programmes such as the Real Hustle. But even if one wasn’t aware of the specifics, for crying out loud, giving a perfect stranger in the street money for a computer that you didn’t plan to buy is just asking for it.
No sympathy here, I’m afraid. These people thought they were getting something on the cheap. Con merchants usually play on greed and in this case, they scored.
Not only did they get stung by an obvious hustle, they complained to the cops about it.
I’m surprised they werent charged with attempting to receive stolen goods or something.
Greed with a healthy dollop of utter stupidity…
“But even if one wasn’t aware of the specifics, for crying out loud, giving a perfect stranger in the street money for a computer that you didn’t plan to buy is just asking for it.”
The January Sales work the same way. I remember some years ago seeing someone being interviewed about their ‘bargains’ and proudly showing off their new half price coffee table on which they believed they’d saved a couple of hundred quid or something ridiculous. Bollocks! They could only have saved money if they had intended to buy the thing anyway when it was at full price. If it was an impulse buy that wouldn’t have happened if they’d not noticed it then they didn’t save a penny. Quite the opposite, because if they hadn’t seen it they’d have gone home with a couple of hundred quid more than they did (though probably they’d have just spent that on something else). Apart from the bait and switch part it’s really not that different from shelling out on the world’s most expensive potatoes thinking they were a laptop you didn’t even know you wanted when you left the house.
AE, I can do better. I once encountered a young and impressionable friend returning from an unplanned trip to the sales.
‘Look!’ she announced proudly, ‘I got this Ralph Lauren dress reduced from £450 to £250, and with the £200 I saved I got some Gucci sunglasses. They turned out to be half-price, so with the money I saved on them, I got a handbag too.’
Some twits down our way bought a VCR and TV off a pair of dodgy blokes in an Irish registered transit.
Didn’t care that the stuff was probably stolen from someones home cos it was so cheap.
Imagine my delight when they found that there were no workings inside, just a couple of concrete breeze blocks!
I laughed till I stopped – which was quite some time.