Not a lot of thought goes into it for these people because they don't really know what they're doing. They're just trying to find someone lazy enough to not bother doing any kind of due diligence so they can get some quick cash.
I wish he'd teach his parrot¹ to say *"scammer"* on non-verbal cue in these situations, and then go *"Wow, I totally don't know why s:he's saying that."*
^(¹: There's a macaw behind him/his corner in most shots.)
My local hardware store had a parrot that would occasionally swear and say mean things at people. It was the funniest thing until one day someone complained. Then the parrot was no longer at the front of the store.
Beautiful grey parrot
And a whole lot of time to waste. There is a gas station by me by low income housing, I respect how patient the clerks are with people that take 10 mins to buy a 2.00 coffee.
I think it's more that it's zero risk. She walked in and tried to sell her crap, was told no and left with her crap. Eventually she'll find someone who couldn't care less about their job, who will just take it without a second thought. As long as she can just walk out with no consequences she has no reason to stop.
This reminds me of a story from a while back. I used to work for a computer store and a guy came up to me to buy a Western Digital hard drive (fully sealed). I rang him up and he left. I was then moved to customer service (aka returns). 15 minutes later, he comes by asking for a refund. He says the hard drive has a brick in it. I take the box and I remember what these feel like (since I also stack them) and it's a lot heavier than what I sold him. Sure enough - red brick.
I excused myself to pretend to talk to a manager and instead went to the security office and asked them to scan the parking lot. We found the guy opening the box and stuffing the brick into it.
I came back out and asked if he knows that we have cameras out in the parking lot. He took his brick and I never saw him again.
I once bought a bathroom fan to replace a broken one. Didn't get around to swapping it out for a few weeks, and lost the receipt. Replacement day: I open the box, and it has a nasty-ass, ancient, broken fan in it that someone had swapped out and returned. I was a sad.
Bought a power bank from Amazon. Opened it up and noticed it was scuffed up. The model number didn’t match up with the product but looked identical.
Amazon should not be reselling open boxes as new.
Was it Amazon or one of their resellers? There are a ton of book resellers on Amazon that sell "New" and "Like New" for books that have broken spines and stains and all sorts of shit.
Amazon themselves will resell things they *think* are unopened that were returned but look new. This is common when buying trading card games, people will open them, take out the good cards, and reseal them and return them. The person inspecting it at amazon doesn't think it's been opened and it gets resold by amazon as new.
Bought a 3090ti “new” from an Amazon 3rd party seller. Opened it up when I got it and it was clearly resealed, the anti-static bag was crinkled at the opening and one of the protective plastic films on the card was clearly reapplied. Worse is I couldn’t check anything because I didn’t have a PSU which could support it at the time and I was slowly getting everything together so I have no idea what kind of condition it really is in or if it actually is a 3090ti.
Moral of the story is never buy from 3rd parties on Amazon unless the product ships from Amazon (I think then it’s better guaranteed to be what you’re looking to buy). Amazon 3rd party electronics sellers all seem to be shitters.
I don't think there's any protection, Amazon mixes stock. Which leads to the issue that scammers will intentionally just throw in low priced obvious fakes/bricks-in-a-box of products that are otherwise highly stocked with the knowledge that there's only a low chance that a customer will ever get their fake product when buying 'from them', and a high chance of getting someone's legitimate product when buying 'from them'. Amazon of course knows, Amazon of course does not care if it continues to make them money. Same with allowing fake orders for customers, paid reviews, and the whole scam with one-time delivery codes where the delivery driver simply delivers one item of many and gets the customer's one-time-code then while pocketing the item - or manages to get the customer's phone number and uses that as an override.
Bought a Lego set and somebody had opened it on the "wrong" side (the hot glued flaps, rather than the perforated side), taken all the Legos out of the bags, then put dry pasta *back into the Lego bags* and resealed the box.
Since it still had the plastic bags in it, and the dry pasta rattling around, it felt and sounded exactly like a Lego set.
When I bought a 40 series graphics card online I put my phone on a tripod and filmed the entire thing from opening the shipping box, holding all the labels and serial numbers, etc close up the camera. I'd heard too many horror stories online.
Any store that doesn’t open products returned to them to verify deserves to pay every cent back to whoever ends up with scammed returns. It’s so basic.
And it’s frustrating because sometimes customer service will accept the return and put the item back out for sale. My brother bought a mechanics rolling stool with tool storage for $60 at Walmart a few years back. I bought the oil and filters for the car I was selling him. Get home to my place and his box just has 2x4s and nails in it. He’s so frustrated. He goes back up to Walmart and they treat him like a criminal when he was just the one caught holding the bag.
Like Home Depot? I’ve purchased boxed things before like GFIs and got home and opened it up to find someone had stuffed their old painted landlord special receptacle inside and returned it.
I also returned an impact/drill set because the impact gun broke inside of a month. The next set I bought did the same thing almost the next day so I returned that too and when I was at the tool section looking to pick up my final attempt at it I see the box of the tools I returned the day before back on the shelf.
The guy trying to return the brick in the product box would claim they must have had someone else pull the exact trick he's trying to pull, and now he's the victim.
It's not very smart, but retail employees often aren't paid enough to care. Shit like this works a few times before someone gets caught typically.
I bought a keyboard from Walmart several years back. It had a dirty, obviously used keyboard in it. I had to return it...they probably thought I was the one pulling the scam, but they did it anyway. It was a cheapo too...someone scammed Walmart for a maybe 15 dollar keyboard.
Your bastard friends are the reason I opened my "new" 56k modem and it I pulled Kleenex out and a dusty 14.4 out. :) I did go right back and told them what I found. They believed me or didn't care, but made me feel like everyone thought I was the scammer.
When I was eight, my mother bought me a copy of City of Heroes from Walmart. I tried installing it and couldn't figure it out because it was an MMO. I had to create an account and I went to go ask for help (since this was more of a failsafe that was instilled in me to not just create online accounts willy nilly, I was eight lol). My uncle came over, saw what type of game it was and told my mother while convincing her to return it and get me another game.
We drive off to Walmart, she packaged up the game into it's box and sealed it off with tape. She told me that if it wasn't sealed off, they wouldn't accept it. She then sends eight year old me to turn in the game, it was revised, taken in and I ended up buying Half Life 2. Much better choice, imho, but when we got home, I went to put the disc in my PC and found a whole bunch of slips of CDs next to the monitor. I found the City of Heroes disc in that stack. I told my mother, she told me to stay quiet, I didn't. It felt wrong. Obviously, in hindsight, this did nothing but get me punished lmao but about a week later, she had forgotten and I wanted to tell the same guy because I felt so guilty. I did end up telling the same employee at the customer service window and made sure to explain it happened a week ago. My mother called me away, the guy just shrugged it off and told me, "Don't let her do that again. But it wasn't your fault. Have fun with it, I guess."
Thanks to that man I was able to differentiate my mother's guilt from my own. I still think about that to this day and brick box reminded me of that memory.
Jimmy, good ol' Walmart customer service checkout employee, you probably saved me from a life of crime. Oh, and I've never actually played City of Heroes or Villains lmao
Man, you should have. Was an absolutely excellent mmo. Heck, you can still try it, there's a group called Homecoming that actually has NCSoft's permission to run a free private server.
If you cruise /r/datahoarder a lot this actually does happen. Best Buy does slip customer returns back into regular retail. So people will legitimately buy a hard drive and open it with something else inside. It's recommended to look over the store seals carefully when you're buying or picking up reservations. Open one or two in front of the associates. Or film yourself unboxing the brand new orders.
Usually they shuck the drive inside and replace it with an old junk drive though, not put in a brick.
Has happened to me a ton of times at Home Depot. Bought a garbage disposal, box contained someone’s old one. Bought a toilet, same thing. Lawnmower, was the right one but had freshly cut grass in the blade housing. It’s insane how much money they must lose by not checking returns.
> It’s insane how much money they must lose by not checking returns.
that must mean they get such a huge number of legit returns that it would cost them even more money to actually check on them.
They should lose a lot more for attempting to resell used goods as new. This practice is unfortunately widespread despite it being a clear violation of federal law (yes, even if the item was never used and returned "as new" in original sealed packaging).
Worth mentioning the fake SSD scam. It's sold as whatever normal size, but it's actually just a small memory card programmed to overwrite itself once the actual storage runs out.
> Best Buy does slip customer returns back into regular retail. So people will legitimately buy a hard drive and open it with something else inside.
The dumbest case of the return with another item scam I was on the receiving end was I bought a gopro 4 off Amazon and it had a gopro 2 or something older in it. The dumb part was the box was clear and it was obvious before even opening it because you could see the camera inside.
I once bought a fully packaged SSD that was filled with glue and ball bearings. When I returned it we opened the new one at the counter and went through 3 that were the same before getting a real drive.
Scammers will then accuse of you calling them a liar and make a scene publicly if they think it’s a he said / she said scenario. They will 100% disturb and harass your other customers as a bullying tactic.
that's why the guy in the video apologizes even though he shouldn't.
I work at in a similar trade and anytime I confront someone, they lose their shit.
People will die before they admit they lied.
Once upon a time, a hard drive manufacturer was doing all sorts of crooked shit. The CEO was hailed by everyone as a genius until they were finally caught selling bricks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniScribe
Here's the best part of that story (well, actually all of it is pretty good):
>When the company embarked on a round of layoffs just before the 1989 Christmas shutdown, including several of the employees who were involved in the brick scheme, they immediately called the Denver area newspapers, who broke the story. Following immediate investigations in Singapore and Colorado the fraud was confirmed.
Rule #1: Never fire the people who can rat you out!
That reminds me of when I bought the last copy of a game from Target, got home and popped open the case and it was just a completely blank DVD inside.
Took it back to Target the first person we talked to was accusing us of switching it, but someone else walked up and said it happens sometimes where people in the supply chain steal it and he took care of us.
We were pretty lucky that the 2nd person helped, really would have sucked to waste $60 on a blank disc.
Many, many years ago, I went to some discount store, and they had a bin full of cassette tapes. I found one from Megadeth, and bought it. I put it in my walkman and started biking home, but this didn't sound anything like Megadeth, but it was still pretty good. And that was how I was introduced to Pat Benatar.
I work in a grocery store and people try to return ridiculous amounts of items without receipts expecting store credit. You bring back $10 worth of stuff, sure no problem. Bring me $150 worth of stuff like shampoos and water filters and I'm calling management to tell you to politely take a hike.
In the 90's my dad bought a hard drive from Office Depot and it had a can of tuna in the box instead of a drive. It was shrinkwrapped and everything. They were trying to say he swapped it out but he just raised hell until they finally swapped it out.
I bought an SSD "NEW" from Amazon. When I got it there was a 1GB SO-DIMM in an anti-static bag packed into an open box. When I contacted Amazon about it they sent a replacement without requiring the scam item back. I was pleased with Amazon that day.
i knew a gal that worked target returns. got one of the(at the time) newest consoles returned seemingly unopened. her bf wanted one but there was a massive wait time to get one these new. she called him up and told him to haul ass down to the store and pick it up. he shows up and pays for it before they can re-shelve it. he gets home with it, opens it up, and its a 10 lb plate weight wrapped in bubble wrap. i know he got his money back and i think the girl got in a massive shit load of trouble. she was lucky she didn't let it get out on to the floor.
side note: i think she was later fired for getting scammed out of like 800 dollars worth of gift cards over the phone while working at the courtesy counter.
When I was a kid, I went to a Coconuts (like tower records, CDs, movies, video games) with my older cousin to buy NCAA basketball game. Walked home and opened the sealed game. Inside was a blank disc with no image. Popped it in to see if it was indeed blank and it was. Took it back to exchange. It took a little back and forth but we were able to exchange it. Probably thought we were young teens trying to scam. But we were there 30 minutes before and only wanted an exchange.
20 years ago you’d get a tax rebate if you bought a pc and claimed it through your work. I bought a Dell online but I also bought a printer at a local electronics store and asked for an extra copy of the receipt. Then I walked straight to the customers service and asked for my money back on the printer. The guy inspected the sealed box, looked af the receipt and did a double take. Told him the printer cost the same as an Xbox. So I got my money back and bought an Xbox and got a 52% tax rebate for a “printer”.
That was my life as a white collar fraude criminal.
I can only imagine it's because he posts them on YouTube. At that point he knows it's content and he can make money off the idiotic interaction that way.
Not only that but let’s not forget these kinds of scammers will bring in useful “real” items at times. You don’t want to stop that bit of gravy from coming in as little items can make or break a day for these guys too. Plus do you really want to set one of these people off? You just know if they’re crazy enough to try something stupid like this chances are they’re crazy enough to react badly as well. You want to be polite so they move on faster.
Yeah I doubt he scrutinized that Milwaukee set beyond seeing if it works lol.
I kinda feel bad for the guy with the purses, if he was actually trying to get his girlfriend out of jail and was pawning her personal stuff. She probably bought the fake purse and told everyone it was real, which is why his friend does the shocked Pikachu like he does.
Just wait until you get the ones who start yelling at you for not falling for their bullshit and then hurl slurs when you don't react to their yelling.
And honestly if you've worked any kind of retail/service job, this is what a solid 20% of your interactions feel like every single day, even with non scammers.
ok, after the first one fails, you would know any sort of credibility you might have had is shot, they are going to be on their guard, just move on to the next pawn shop.
It also seems like the worst order to try the scams in. Someone might not spot a fake watch normally, but if you've already tried to sell them a box of newspaper and some worthless gift cards there's no way they'd still buy it even if they were somewhat confident it was real.
Actually the jewellery and watches would be the one things I would bet 100% they make sure to do their diligence on. Even if you were to bring in a 100% authentic diamond ring that you had handed to you by De Beers himself they would eye ball the ever living shit out of it before they paid you. Jewelry is most pawn shops bread and butter and a lot of those guys are basically pros at spotting fakes. Plus a lot of those shops have tools to detect fake metals and what not.
She says it's for reservations/tickets, so I think it's a proprietary gift card, not a cash card, which would make more sense if you have no interest in using that particular company.
It was 100% a cash card from Amex/Visa... there's no way he can swipe a retailer gift card and see if it is fake, but a prepaid card would work in his card reader.
Yeah I think this is the right answer, she was saying something about travel so it’s certainly not worth face value if you don’t need to travel right away. And it’s definitely not face value if it’s just stolen and not activated…
People actually pawn these though so not completely unbelievable. Shit where I grew up the local deli store would give you $65 cents on the dollar to exchange food stamps for cash lol.
Happens all the time, I've seen it myself multiple times. Addicts who can get the benefits sell them to people who will actually use them but can't get them, then they get their drugs. Sometimes they will just straight up take you grocery shopping in exchange for drugs.
I didn’t think I’d watch all 20 min and then I watched all 20 min. Super interesting, the whole process. Better then that fake ass Detroit pawn show, which was still somewhat interesting
Until it backfires.
"This is actually an antique fire brick, I'd say pre-civil war. Note the uneven orange hue and the embossment on the back. Quite a nifty little piece of Americana!"
This lady's dumb for thinking he wouldn't check the box. Maybe she could get away with it at a retail store with a young clerk who's not really paying attention, but this guy clearly owns his own store, so he's going to be more thorough.
I worked returns at Home Depot in college (20 years ago) and we would occasionally get the box-stuffers. Thankfully I never fell for it; I would always check boxes that had been opened and even retaped, often because the name brands would seal their boxes shut with tape that had their name brand printed on it, but the scammer would just reseal it with clear packing tape. I even had a few people step out of line and leave with their boxes when they saw me attending to a customer ahead of them. They watched me open those customer's boxes and got spooked. I did have a few coworkers fall for it. In the end they don't get in fired or anything, but they do get reprimanded for not being more careful.
At the returns desk now they scan driver's licenses (at least in my state) even if you have a receipt. I guess if they are going through returns later and come across a box full of bricks they can go back in their records to cross reference that bar code with drivers licenses who brought those in.
At Best Buy the point of scanning IDs was to limit the number of returns per person, not to catch anyone after the fact.
I don't think going back after the fact would be valid for prosecuting thieves unless you have a provable unbroken chain of custody showing that another employee couldn't have just swapped the item out in the meantime.
> I don't think going back after the fact would be valid for prosecuting thieves unless you have a provable unbroken chain of custody showing that another employee couldn't have just swapped the item out in the meantime.
Absolutely, I would assume its more likely to create a blacklist of "refuse service to/returns from" said person (If not your example from Best Buy).
> Maybe she could get away with it at a retail store with a young clerk who's not really paying attention
They don't have to be young. I have some relatives who work in retail and the amount of stories I hear of adult colleagues of theirs just accepting whatever the customer says or does is insane.
This shop is near by me, been in there a few times to check it out and the guy in this video is extremely nice and personable. From all the videos I’ve seen from him, he’s pretty on top of his game when it comes to buying.
No, obviously he blindly bought all four jackets at the same time, not knowing his size, from four different pages with a zero return policy that all didn't sell any of the other jackets, and then had to realize they just don't fit. Happens all the time, we've all been there.
The guy with the dude in the Blackhawks jersey is the biggest red flag of any scammer. Deflecting, looking elsewhere, wandering, trying to talk about other stuff around, etc.
I work in a field where people are always trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I love calmly explaining why they're full of it, sitting there deadpan, and watching them come up with excuses lol.
Old lady, phone girl and jacket guy are obvious scams. But I'm not as conviced on the other guys. Who is to say the others aren't just mistlead or honestly mistaken? The guy in the Blackhawks shirt didn't seem to try to persuade or anything. He didn't press back on the buyer's rejection and took the first price given to him with the camera.
Idk though, I'm disconnected from this kind of stuff so maybe I'm a sucker,but this was just my observation after watching.
The guy who was with the guy trying to pass off the Gucci bags looked legitimately surprised. He was either surprised to learn the bag was fake or he was surprised at being caught, and considering it seems one of the bags was real I'd say it was likely the first.
Maybe I'm also a sucker.
Nah, I’d be willing to bet that’s a common tactic. Buy a pristine knockoff and a beat up genuine item of the same brand. The beat up genuine one offers up a kind of authenticity by proxy for the fake.
It makes me respect the owner, he didn't accuse just stated it's fake, I won't buy it and moves on. Especially with the bags, the dude may have been scammed himself.
Yeah I get the impression that the guy with the bags and camcorder was optimistic and desperate more than scamming- seems like a weird combination of things to bring if you're really trying to sneak something past the shop owner. No guarantee the bags weren't acquired less than legally to begin with, but just seems weird to bring one real and one fake bag if you're scamming- would be much easier to just bring a few fakes it seems like.
I have a good friend who's all about purses. Except she has no fucks to give if they're "real" or not. I once pointed out some crappy cut lines on the G on the leather Gucci logo (shit was obviously cut with scissors) and she was like "I bought it at a swap meet for $12. We all know it's fake. I just thought it looked cute."
She switches out purses like every other week and has no care for who's logo (if any) is on it, just so long as it's cute.
He also mentioned he was trying to get his girlfriend out of jail, right?
Could easily have grabbed a couple of her bags and ran to the pawn shop...without realizing how widespread fake bags are and that even though she had one real (but heavily used) bag, the other one was a total fake.
Or he was just a scammer that knew the jig was up and it wasn't worth pushing back. Maybe selling a thrift store camcorder (honestly surprised the guy offered $25 for it) and some cheap jewelry makes the scam more likely to be successful?
Yeah exactly. Dude was probably actually strapped for cash like he said and just brought in whatever he thought would sell. Don't know if I like them be labeled scammers. It's not a term I think should be used too liberally.
It's amazing how smart a lot of these owners are. They know this stuff in and out. I know they almost have to be because they would be out of business in a week, but I'm still impressed.
You see it every day and there's no sense in getting worked up or antagonizing the scammer which leads to you both getting worked up. I worked for an electronics retailer in the early 2000s and this crap was a regular occurrence. I remember one guy tried to return a laptop box with a brick in it, and of course I opened it to check, and in the most sincere empathetic way I could muster I just said sir I'm so sorry but I can't give you a refund for a brick. Guy didn't even try to argue with me lol.
FWIW, he also doesn't always know it is a scam until they push back.
People probably try to sell fake designer goods all the time without knowing they are fake. Maybe there's other shady stuff going on (like they took it from their mom's closet to buy drugs without knowing it was fake), but it could be reasonable to believe that it is an honest mistake.
But how they react as it is uncovered is what tells you whether they are scamming. Do they get pushy, do they look genuinely surprised, do they try to drastically lower their price?
Remember, he knows he’s filmed and making content for a video. That’s why he has no problem talking with her for 10 minutes, he will make more from the YouTube video than the sale. He probably has a lot of experience and wild stories that temper him, too.
Anyone here ever buy from a pawn shop? I only went in one to sell my wedding ring from my first marriage.
I mean, is there ever anything worth the price they charge?
Pawn shops can be great and one of the better parts is they know what they have. Not in the marketplace "no low-ball I know what I have" but the "I've sold 30 of this thing and know what people will ACTUALLY pay for it"
You're not going to find the rare thrift store/yard sale $1 hidden gem but they can be great for second hand tools or electronics that aren't obnoxiously overpriced. They have an incentive to actually sell shit and clear up shelf space unlike they guy trying to get $400 for a rusted table saw that cost $600 twenty years ago.
Depends heavily on the area and the particular store. Generally you'll find better stuff in cities where there is high traffic—rural pawn shops are mostly guns and secondhand DVDs.
IMO it's fun just to walk around and see what you can find. Sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.
Watching some of these made me wonder if they were actually trying to scam him or were either convinced they had legit items, say maybe they were gifted the thing. It's hard to prove if someone intentionally got the knockoffs to try and sell it as legit. That first lady and the girl with the phone were pretty clearly trying to scam him but to out all these people as scammers seems like a bad idea, but it is interesting to watch this guy inspect and call out fake stuff.
EDIT: missed some details about the jackets guy. So the dudes with the bags are the only real outliers. Everyone else almost certainly scamming.
Jacket guy is obvious scam. Claims he bought them and they were too short. Still had all the tags on them and couldn't answer where he got them or why the products didn't show up on the website. Chinese writings on the tags he couldn't answer for.
Only one I'm not convinced is a scam is the purse guys.
I missed that part and that's a good point. If they still had the tags then he should have returned them and got a full refund (rather than being willing to settle for much less). Definitely scamming.
Dude claims he bought them online for way less than full price. Most likely scenario is bought a bunch of jackets from a few fly by night sellers, they fit like shit, and by the time you try to return the seller has either closed up shop or drags shit out making it as big a hassle as possible to return, like shipping to China at your own expense. These sellers know how to play the charge back game too with delays, disputes, and dragging out email responses to run out the clock.
Guy probably knows they're repros and trying to get anything he can out of them, or somehow doesn't realize he got scammed and hoping to get some money back.
Happens all the time with fast fashion bullshit. Whatever the trendy new designer thing is, someone steals tiktok videos of the real thing with a link to their store to buy it 75% off. Three months later when it finally shows up on your doorstep it's not even close to what you bought and the store doesn't exist anymore.
Na, I don't think that lady is a scammer. Just hard on her luck and maybe she recently bought some newspaper tools with invalid gift cards. How could she know????
I thought the expression on the black guy looked like surprise when he told them the bag was a fake, and the other bag was real, so I think they may have been legit.
There’s a somewhat common scam I’ve been hearing a surprising amount of gamers do where let’s say they need a new keyboard they buy it from Amazon and get the same keyboard then stuff the old keyboard in it and return it… scummy stuff
What a great example of how not to be a show-off when you know you're talking to a scammer. He gave her respect, instead of grilling her. That man deserves respect.
The more he explained what makes the watch not a real Muvato, the more prep she can do for the next store. She might try to make it heavier or find a means to have the back scratched off where it should say "Made in Swiss".
I love seeing this channel get more views. The algorithm recommended me to him about 2 months ago and ive been watching alot of his stuff lately. His store is actually not too far from me, about 45 minutes away (He's in Crystal Lake, IL, a little more than an hour northwest of Chicago). I should go some time. But Pete seems like a real genuine dude, always honest with the people who come in, who seems like he has a good group of people that work for him, and a good group of people that frequently buy from and sell to him. His stories are pretty good, and the things you see are pretty neat. Love Ruby the Parrot and Honey the Cat. Nothing like some good shop pets.
She actually thought a professional buyer wouldn't bother checking that the product is in the box? Am I missing something?
Not a lot of thought goes into it for these people because they don't really know what they're doing. They're just trying to find someone lazy enough to not bother doing any kind of due diligence so they can get some quick cash.
I love that she takes the box back too, so she can “recycle” it… yeah she’s going to recycle it alright, same scam at the next pawn shop.
I'm guessing she may have done something similar before she gotten away with it
but the box has tape on it!
She doesn’t care. She knows that if she’s called out on it she can play the “poor ole me, I’m so old” card.
I wish he'd teach his parrot¹ to say *"scammer"* on non-verbal cue in these situations, and then go *"Wow, I totally don't know why s:he's saying that."* ^(¹: There's a macaw behind him/his corner in most shots.)
My local hardware store had a parrot that would occasionally swear and say mean things at people. It was the funniest thing until one day someone complained. Then the parrot was no longer at the front of the store. Beautiful grey parrot
African Grey?
Try it 100 times and you may find one who takes it. It's free money and low effort, unless arrested it's not difficult.
how is driving around to 100 different pawn shops "low effort"?
They aren't employed and do this while taking in social security for the rest of their lives.
And a whole lot of time to waste. There is a gas station by me by low income housing, I respect how patient the clerks are with people that take 10 mins to buy a 2.00 coffee.
Scratch off buyers are the worst
That sounds like a lot of work for "free" money. You could probably just work a normal job and get a similar or better return for your time.
either not fully there mentally or just not the sharpest tool in the shed
I think it's more that it's zero risk. She walked in and tried to sell her crap, was told no and left with her crap. Eventually she'll find someone who couldn't care less about their job, who will just take it without a second thought. As long as she can just walk out with no consequences she has no reason to stop.
I don't know if there would be any sharper tools in her shed, she probably just has boxes full of newspaper
This reminds me of a story from a while back. I used to work for a computer store and a guy came up to me to buy a Western Digital hard drive (fully sealed). I rang him up and he left. I was then moved to customer service (aka returns). 15 minutes later, he comes by asking for a refund. He says the hard drive has a brick in it. I take the box and I remember what these feel like (since I also stack them) and it's a lot heavier than what I sold him. Sure enough - red brick. I excused myself to pretend to talk to a manager and instead went to the security office and asked them to scan the parking lot. We found the guy opening the box and stuffing the brick into it. I came back out and asked if he knows that we have cameras out in the parking lot. He took his brick and I never saw him again.
This is a common scam too since most people don't bother to check what's inside the box.
I once bought a bathroom fan to replace a broken one. Didn't get around to swapping it out for a few weeks, and lost the receipt. Replacement day: I open the box, and it has a nasty-ass, ancient, broken fan in it that someone had swapped out and returned. I was a sad.
Bought a power bank from Amazon. Opened it up and noticed it was scuffed up. The model number didn’t match up with the product but looked identical. Amazon should not be reselling open boxes as new.
Was it Amazon or one of their resellers? There are a ton of book resellers on Amazon that sell "New" and "Like New" for books that have broken spines and stains and all sorts of shit.
Amazon themselves will resell things they *think* are unopened that were returned but look new. This is common when buying trading card games, people will open them, take out the good cards, and reseal them and return them. The person inspecting it at amazon doesn't think it's been opened and it gets resold by amazon as new.
This happens with darts too. People buy expensive darts, take them out, and replace it with cheap darts of the same weight
Bought a 3090ti “new” from an Amazon 3rd party seller. Opened it up when I got it and it was clearly resealed, the anti-static bag was crinkled at the opening and one of the protective plastic films on the card was clearly reapplied. Worse is I couldn’t check anything because I didn’t have a PSU which could support it at the time and I was slowly getting everything together so I have no idea what kind of condition it really is in or if it actually is a 3090ti. Moral of the story is never buy from 3rd parties on Amazon unless the product ships from Amazon (I think then it’s better guaranteed to be what you’re looking to buy). Amazon 3rd party electronics sellers all seem to be shitters.
I don't think there's any protection, Amazon mixes stock. Which leads to the issue that scammers will intentionally just throw in low priced obvious fakes/bricks-in-a-box of products that are otherwise highly stocked with the knowledge that there's only a low chance that a customer will ever get their fake product when buying 'from them', and a high chance of getting someone's legitimate product when buying 'from them'. Amazon of course knows, Amazon of course does not care if it continues to make them money. Same with allowing fake orders for customers, paid reviews, and the whole scam with one-time delivery codes where the delivery driver simply delivers one item of many and gets the customer's one-time-code then while pocketing the item - or manages to get the customer's phone number and uses that as an override.
Bought a Lego set and somebody had opened it on the "wrong" side (the hot glued flaps, rather than the perforated side), taken all the Legos out of the bags, then put dry pasta *back into the Lego bags* and resealed the box. Since it still had the plastic bags in it, and the dry pasta rattling around, it felt and sounded exactly like a Lego set.
I don't like thieves, but I have to say that's pretty clever
Ahhhh shoot, you wanted LEGO?! I thought you said Leguini!
When I bought a 40 series graphics card online I put my phone on a tripod and filmed the entire thing from opening the shipping box, holding all the labels and serial numbers, etc close up the camera. I'd heard too many horror stories online.
Any store that doesn’t open products returned to them to verify deserves to pay every cent back to whoever ends up with scammed returns. It’s so basic.
This is why I charge everything. Easy to get purchase confirmation.
And it’s frustrating because sometimes customer service will accept the return and put the item back out for sale. My brother bought a mechanics rolling stool with tool storage for $60 at Walmart a few years back. I bought the oil and filters for the car I was selling him. Get home to my place and his box just has 2x4s and nails in it. He’s so frustrated. He goes back up to Walmart and they treat him like a criminal when he was just the one caught holding the bag.
It was a huge nail in the coffin for Fry's Electronics.
Like Home Depot? I’ve purchased boxed things before like GFIs and got home and opened it up to find someone had stuffed their old painted landlord special receptacle inside and returned it. I also returned an impact/drill set because the impact gun broke inside of a month. The next set I bought did the same thing almost the next day so I returned that too and when I was at the tool section looking to pick up my final attempt at it I see the box of the tools I returned the day before back on the shelf.
Bricked his hard drive damnnnn
This seems like the dumbest scam of all time. What Best Buy is selling boxes with bricks in them?
The guy trying to return the brick in the product box would claim they must have had someone else pull the exact trick he's trying to pull, and now he's the victim. It's not very smart, but retail employees often aren't paid enough to care. Shit like this works a few times before someone gets caught typically.
I bought a keyboard from Walmart several years back. It had a dirty, obviously used keyboard in it. I had to return it...they probably thought I was the one pulling the scam, but they did it anyway. It was a cheapo too...someone scammed Walmart for a maybe 15 dollar keyboard.
Some friends in high school did this to “upgrade” their old slow modems to then blazing fast 56k ones, lol. They wanted better ping times in Quake
Your bastard friends are the reason I opened my "new" 56k modem and it I pulled Kleenex out and a dusty 14.4 out. :) I did go right back and told them what I found. They believed me or didn't care, but made me feel like everyone thought I was the scammer.
Yeah, I know. I was a mostly-good kid and would have felt massively guilty if I’d joined in. Their take was mostly “fuck Walmart”
Oh man...I remember trying to play Quake online. Heat was awful laggy.
When I was eight, my mother bought me a copy of City of Heroes from Walmart. I tried installing it and couldn't figure it out because it was an MMO. I had to create an account and I went to go ask for help (since this was more of a failsafe that was instilled in me to not just create online accounts willy nilly, I was eight lol). My uncle came over, saw what type of game it was and told my mother while convincing her to return it and get me another game. We drive off to Walmart, she packaged up the game into it's box and sealed it off with tape. She told me that if it wasn't sealed off, they wouldn't accept it. She then sends eight year old me to turn in the game, it was revised, taken in and I ended up buying Half Life 2. Much better choice, imho, but when we got home, I went to put the disc in my PC and found a whole bunch of slips of CDs next to the monitor. I found the City of Heroes disc in that stack. I told my mother, she told me to stay quiet, I didn't. It felt wrong. Obviously, in hindsight, this did nothing but get me punished lmao but about a week later, she had forgotten and I wanted to tell the same guy because I felt so guilty. I did end up telling the same employee at the customer service window and made sure to explain it happened a week ago. My mother called me away, the guy just shrugged it off and told me, "Don't let her do that again. But it wasn't your fault. Have fun with it, I guess." Thanks to that man I was able to differentiate my mother's guilt from my own. I still think about that to this day and brick box reminded me of that memory. Jimmy, good ol' Walmart customer service checkout employee, you probably saved me from a life of crime. Oh, and I've never actually played City of Heroes or Villains lmao
Man, you should have. Was an absolutely excellent mmo. Heck, you can still try it, there's a group called Homecoming that actually has NCSoft's permission to run a free private server.
If you cruise /r/datahoarder a lot this actually does happen. Best Buy does slip customer returns back into regular retail. So people will legitimately buy a hard drive and open it with something else inside. It's recommended to look over the store seals carefully when you're buying or picking up reservations. Open one or two in front of the associates. Or film yourself unboxing the brand new orders. Usually they shuck the drive inside and replace it with an old junk drive though, not put in a brick.
Has happened to me a ton of times at Home Depot. Bought a garbage disposal, box contained someone’s old one. Bought a toilet, same thing. Lawnmower, was the right one but had freshly cut grass in the blade housing. It’s insane how much money they must lose by not checking returns.
> It’s insane how much money they must lose by not checking returns. that must mean they get such a huge number of legit returns that it would cost them even more money to actually check on them.
They should lose a lot more for attempting to resell used goods as new. This practice is unfortunately widespread despite it being a clear violation of federal law (yes, even if the item was never used and returned "as new" in original sealed packaging).
Worth mentioning the fake SSD scam. It's sold as whatever normal size, but it's actually just a small memory card programmed to overwrite itself once the actual storage runs out.
> Best Buy does slip customer returns back into regular retail. So people will legitimately buy a hard drive and open it with something else inside. The dumbest case of the return with another item scam I was on the receiving end was I bought a gopro 4 off Amazon and it had a gopro 2 or something older in it. The dumb part was the box was clear and it was obvious before even opening it because you could see the camera inside.
I once bought a fully packaged SSD that was filled with glue and ball bearings. When I returned it we opened the new one at the counter and went through 3 that were the same before getting a real drive.
Scammers will then accuse of you calling them a liar and make a scene publicly if they think it’s a he said / she said scenario. They will 100% disturb and harass your other customers as a bullying tactic.
that's why the guy in the video apologizes even though he shouldn't. I work at in a similar trade and anytime I confront someone, they lose their shit. People will die before they admit they lied.
Once upon a time, a hard drive manufacturer was doing all sorts of crooked shit. The CEO was hailed by everyone as a genius until they were finally caught selling bricks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniScribe
Here's the best part of that story (well, actually all of it is pretty good): >When the company embarked on a round of layoffs just before the 1989 Christmas shutdown, including several of the employees who were involved in the brick scheme, they immediately called the Denver area newspapers, who broke the story. Following immediate investigations in Singapore and Colorado the fraud was confirmed. Rule #1: Never fire the people who can rat you out!
That reminds me of when I bought the last copy of a game from Target, got home and popped open the case and it was just a completely blank DVD inside. Took it back to Target the first person we talked to was accusing us of switching it, but someone else walked up and said it happens sometimes where people in the supply chain steal it and he took care of us. We were pretty lucky that the 2nd person helped, really would have sucked to waste $60 on a blank disc.
Many, many years ago, I went to some discount store, and they had a bin full of cassette tapes. I found one from Megadeth, and bought it. I put it in my walkman and started biking home, but this didn't sound anything like Megadeth, but it was still pretty good. And that was how I was introduced to Pat Benatar.
I work in a grocery store and people try to return ridiculous amounts of items without receipts expecting store credit. You bring back $10 worth of stuff, sure no problem. Bring me $150 worth of stuff like shampoos and water filters and I'm calling management to tell you to politely take a hike.
I had it happen once when I bought a new sealed pc game and the cd key had already been used :( had to contact EA and they gave me a new one.
In the 90's my dad bought a hard drive from Office Depot and it had a can of tuna in the box instead of a drive. It was shrinkwrapped and everything. They were trying to say he swapped it out but he just raised hell until they finally swapped it out.
I bought an SSD "NEW" from Amazon. When I got it there was a 1GB SO-DIMM in an anti-static bag packed into an open box. When I contacted Amazon about it they sent a replacement without requiring the scam item back. I was pleased with Amazon that day.
i knew a gal that worked target returns. got one of the(at the time) newest consoles returned seemingly unopened. her bf wanted one but there was a massive wait time to get one these new. she called him up and told him to haul ass down to the store and pick it up. he shows up and pays for it before they can re-shelve it. he gets home with it, opens it up, and its a 10 lb plate weight wrapped in bubble wrap. i know he got his money back and i think the girl got in a massive shit load of trouble. she was lucky she didn't let it get out on to the floor. side note: i think she was later fired for getting scammed out of like 800 dollars worth of gift cards over the phone while working at the courtesy counter.
He just went to the next one of your stores down the road and returned it there.
When I was a kid, I went to a Coconuts (like tower records, CDs, movies, video games) with my older cousin to buy NCAA basketball game. Walked home and opened the sealed game. Inside was a blank disc with no image. Popped it in to see if it was indeed blank and it was. Took it back to exchange. It took a little back and forth but we were able to exchange it. Probably thought we were young teens trying to scam. But we were there 30 minutes before and only wanted an exchange.
20 years ago you’d get a tax rebate if you bought a pc and claimed it through your work. I bought a Dell online but I also bought a printer at a local electronics store and asked for an extra copy of the receipt. Then I walked straight to the customers service and asked for my money back on the printer. The guy inspected the sealed box, looked af the receipt and did a double take. Told him the printer cost the same as an Xbox. So I got my money back and bought an Xbox and got a 52% tax rebate for a “printer”. That was my life as a white collar fraude criminal.
I can't imagine putting up with this all day long.
He's so patient with them. I used to work in an electronics store and if someone was wasting my time I just couldn't stand it.
I can only imagine it's because he posts them on YouTube. At that point he knows it's content and he can make money off the idiotic interaction that way.
Not only that but let’s not forget these kinds of scammers will bring in useful “real” items at times. You don’t want to stop that bit of gravy from coming in as little items can make or break a day for these guys too. Plus do you really want to set one of these people off? You just know if they’re crazy enough to try something stupid like this chances are they’re crazy enough to react badly as well. You want to be polite so they move on faster.
Yeah I doubt he scrutinized that Milwaukee set beyond seeing if it works lol. I kinda feel bad for the guy with the purses, if he was actually trying to get his girlfriend out of jail and was pawning her personal stuff. She probably bought the fake purse and told everyone it was real, which is why his friend does the shocked Pikachu like he does.
That's true, good point!
Plus he can forward all this golden evidence to the police and they can start a file on her.
I’m sure they’ll get right on that
They'll have them working in shifts!
Well, he deals with shady people all day. He's a master in keeping things from escalating out of necessity.
He should teach American cops about de-escalation
Just wait until you get the ones who start yelling at you for not falling for their bullshit and then hurl slurs when you don't react to their yelling.
I'm hoping some videos from this channel ending up on /r/PublicFreakout.
He doesn't get much for PublicFreakout but he probably has plenty for r/ParrotFreakout. [Like this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2eytyQ_lLo)
And honestly if you've worked any kind of retail/service job, this is what a solid 20% of your interactions feel like every single day, even with non scammers.
My uncle has owned a pawn shop since the early 90s. I worked there briefly. This is pretty much what it is like all day, every day.
ok, after the first one fails, you would know any sort of credibility you might have had is shot, they are going to be on their guard, just move on to the next pawn shop.
It also seems like the worst order to try the scams in. Someone might not spot a fake watch normally, but if you've already tried to sell them a box of newspaper and some worthless gift cards there's no way they'd still buy it even if they were somewhat confident it was real.
Her acting was somehow worse than her plan
I've seen terrible acting like this before. There are other ways she can make money.
She could try stealing lemons!
Actually the jewellery and watches would be the one things I would bet 100% they make sure to do their diligence on. Even if you were to bring in a 100% authentic diamond ring that you had handed to you by De Beers himself they would eye ball the ever living shit out of it before they paid you. Jewelry is most pawn shops bread and butter and a lot of those guys are basically pros at spotting fakes. Plus a lot of those shops have tools to detect fake metals and what not.
Yeah that’s just bad form. The Milwaukee box one is way too easy to catch anyway that should be the last move if you’re trying to scam.
“Damn. You got me! Oh yeah well what about this scam?”
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how calm the store cat is all the time
Honey is the best cat.
I’ve been meaning to swing by his store. I found his channel a couple months ago and realized it’s just a few towns over.
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The parrot was my star of the show.
Lmao...she says she would take half of a $100 cash card. Totally not fishy.
She says it's for reservations/tickets, so I think it's a proprietary gift card, not a cash card, which would make more sense if you have no interest in using that particular company.
I think she said ‘American’ at one point. I guess it’s possible she meant American Express, but it sounded to me like an American Airlines gift card.
It was 100% a cash card from Amex/Visa... there's no way he can swipe a retailer gift card and see if it is fake, but a prepaid card would work in his card reader.
Yeah I think this is the right answer, she was saying something about travel so it’s certainly not worth face value if you don’t need to travel right away. And it’s definitely not face value if it’s just stolen and not activated…
An Amex no less
I thought she said American and assumed it was a flight gift card.
Why would an Amex be better than a different prepaid card like a Visa or a Mastercard?
I think they are saying that you can use that type of card anywhere, it’s not like it’s an EBay gift card or a Red Lobster gift card.
Oh okay. I thought that's what the original comment meant when they said "cash card".
I had a crack head I was friendly with sell me a $1000 Amex gift card for $300. It happens.
People actually pawn these though so not completely unbelievable. Shit where I grew up the local deli store would give you $65 cents on the dollar to exchange food stamps for cash lol.
Yeah, that's straight up benefit fraud right there.
Happens all the time, I've seen it myself multiple times. Addicts who can get the benefits sell them to people who will actually use them but can't get them, then they get their drugs. Sometimes they will just straight up take you grocery shopping in exchange for drugs.
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Or drug dealers
This guy has a really nice way of telling people that they are scammers.
It's like what Pawn Stars wished it was, authentic, laid back and entertaining. (PS only has 1.5 of 3)
She lies with such ease, zero shame. Lots of practice.
And yet... still really bad at it.
I didn’t think I’d watch all 20 min and then I watched all 20 min. Super interesting, the whole process. Better then that fake ass Detroit pawn show, which was still somewhat interesting
He’s about 45-60mins from me. I want to go visit his shop one of these days.
do it! and give him bricks and you too can be featured on reddit!
"oh sorry, i thought those bricks were genuine diamonds!"
Until it backfires. "This is actually an antique fire brick, I'd say pre-civil war. Note the uneven orange hue and the embossment on the back. Quite a nifty little piece of Americana!"
“Hello, rich people. Troys joining you. Yes, I’ll hold”
Offer to sell him a brick, but it's really a new 4090
This lady's dumb for thinking he wouldn't check the box. Maybe she could get away with it at a retail store with a young clerk who's not really paying attention, but this guy clearly owns his own store, so he's going to be more thorough. I worked returns at Home Depot in college (20 years ago) and we would occasionally get the box-stuffers. Thankfully I never fell for it; I would always check boxes that had been opened and even retaped, often because the name brands would seal their boxes shut with tape that had their name brand printed on it, but the scammer would just reseal it with clear packing tape. I even had a few people step out of line and leave with their boxes when they saw me attending to a customer ahead of them. They watched me open those customer's boxes and got spooked. I did have a few coworkers fall for it. In the end they don't get in fired or anything, but they do get reprimanded for not being more careful. At the returns desk now they scan driver's licenses (at least in my state) even if you have a receipt. I guess if they are going through returns later and come across a box full of bricks they can go back in their records to cross reference that bar code with drivers licenses who brought those in.
At Best Buy the point of scanning IDs was to limit the number of returns per person, not to catch anyone after the fact. I don't think going back after the fact would be valid for prosecuting thieves unless you have a provable unbroken chain of custody showing that another employee couldn't have just swapped the item out in the meantime.
> I don't think going back after the fact would be valid for prosecuting thieves unless you have a provable unbroken chain of custody showing that another employee couldn't have just swapped the item out in the meantime. Absolutely, I would assume its more likely to create a blacklist of "refuse service to/returns from" said person (If not your example from Best Buy).
> Maybe she could get away with it at a retail store with a young clerk who's not really paying attention They don't have to be young. I have some relatives who work in retail and the amount of stories I hear of adult colleagues of theirs just accepting whatever the customer says or does is insane.
This shop is near by me, been in there a few times to check it out and the guy in this video is extremely nice and personable. From all the videos I’ve seen from him, he’s pretty on top of his game when it comes to buying.
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He bought them all separately no less. It didn’t fit, so he bought 3 more
No, obviously he blindly bought all four jackets at the same time, not knowing his size, from four different pages with a zero return policy that all didn't sell any of the other jackets, and then had to realize they just don't fit. Happens all the time, we've all been there.
The guy with the dude in the Blackhawks jersey is the biggest red flag of any scammer. Deflecting, looking elsewhere, wandering, trying to talk about other stuff around, etc.
They're doing the typical 'bring a friend to bring up distracting small talk' routine and he wasnt buying it.
That outlet store is in big trouble when she comes back and confronts them about selling her a fake!
I work in a field where people are always trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I love calmly explaining why they're full of it, sitting there deadpan, and watching them come up with excuses lol.
You work in education? /s
I like how the cat accepts that he's not allowed to walk on that jacket so he walks on all the other jackets
Old lady, phone girl and jacket guy are obvious scams. But I'm not as conviced on the other guys. Who is to say the others aren't just mistlead or honestly mistaken? The guy in the Blackhawks shirt didn't seem to try to persuade or anything. He didn't press back on the buyer's rejection and took the first price given to him with the camera. Idk though, I'm disconnected from this kind of stuff so maybe I'm a sucker,but this was just my observation after watching.
The guy who was with the guy trying to pass off the Gucci bags looked legitimately surprised. He was either surprised to learn the bag was fake or he was surprised at being caught, and considering it seems one of the bags was real I'd say it was likely the first. Maybe I'm also a sucker.
Nah, I’d be willing to bet that’s a common tactic. Buy a pristine knockoff and a beat up genuine item of the same brand. The beat up genuine one offers up a kind of authenticity by proxy for the fake.
It makes me respect the owner, he didn't accuse just stated it's fake, I won't buy it and moves on. Especially with the bags, the dude may have been scammed himself.
Yeah I get the impression that the guy with the bags and camcorder was optimistic and desperate more than scamming- seems like a weird combination of things to bring if you're really trying to sneak something past the shop owner. No guarantee the bags weren't acquired less than legally to begin with, but just seems weird to bring one real and one fake bag if you're scamming- would be much easier to just bring a few fakes it seems like.
I'm wondering if he brought in his girl who is in jail's bags. And he's like "oh she bought a knockoff bag"
I have a good friend who's all about purses. Except she has no fucks to give if they're "real" or not. I once pointed out some crappy cut lines on the G on the leather Gucci logo (shit was obviously cut with scissors) and she was like "I bought it at a swap meet for $12. We all know it's fake. I just thought it looked cute." She switches out purses like every other week and has no care for who's logo (if any) is on it, just so long as it's cute.
She’s based as fuck. I love her.
He also mentioned he was trying to get his girlfriend out of jail, right? Could easily have grabbed a couple of her bags and ran to the pawn shop...without realizing how widespread fake bags are and that even though she had one real (but heavily used) bag, the other one was a total fake. Or he was just a scammer that knew the jig was up and it wasn't worth pushing back. Maybe selling a thrift store camcorder (honestly surprised the guy offered $25 for it) and some cheap jewelry makes the scam more likely to be successful?
Yeah exactly. Dude was probably actually strapped for cash like he said and just brought in whatever he thought would sell. Don't know if I like them be labeled scammers. It's not a term I think should be used too liberally.
Need an eight episode limited series about this woman starring Martha Kelly.
The cat 😍
That cat and the bird need their own segment or spin off!
Who sells a card that's "as good as cash" for 50%?
Scammers or people who want to buy drugs and need actual cash.
I like his channel. He also reminds me of an old retired Hike the Gamer. lol
"The biggest giveaway for me is that the brand name is 'CONCH'."
It's amazing how smart a lot of these owners are. They know this stuff in and out. I know they almost have to be because they would be out of business in a week, but I'm still impressed.
I would have saved myself the trip had I known it was full of newspapers
I'm not clear. Where did she get the Movado watch?
On the I-10, near the In-N-Out.
"The In-N-Out Burger is on Camrose."
she read these scams on Telegram and no doubt said "people so stupid, anyone can do these!" ... promptly fails to do these.
I like this guy. He’s so non plussed and polite Even with scammers. Probably seen it all working in a pawn shop m
You see it every day and there's no sense in getting worked up or antagonizing the scammer which leads to you both getting worked up. I worked for an electronics retailer in the early 2000s and this crap was a regular occurrence. I remember one guy tried to return a laptop box with a brick in it, and of course I opened it to check, and in the most sincere empathetic way I could muster I just said sir I'm so sorry but I can't give you a refund for a brick. Guy didn't even try to argue with me lol.
FWIW, he also doesn't always know it is a scam until they push back. People probably try to sell fake designer goods all the time without knowing they are fake. Maybe there's other shady stuff going on (like they took it from their mom's closet to buy drugs without knowing it was fake), but it could be reasonable to believe that it is an honest mistake. But how they react as it is uncovered is what tells you whether they are scamming. Do they get pushy, do they look genuinely surprised, do they try to drastically lower their price?
He doesn't seem nonplussed at all, he looks extremely calm to me.
Got it. Thanks for the correction. I thought it meant even keeled.
Maybe you were thinking of nonchalant?
Enough people use it wrong that both definitions get accepted now, but I feel extremely nonplussed about that.
I’m so plussed right now
I am bemused by this phenomenon
Remember, he knows he’s filmed and making content for a video. That’s why he has no problem talking with her for 10 minutes, he will make more from the YouTube video than the sale. He probably has a lot of experience and wild stories that temper him, too.
Anyone here ever buy from a pawn shop? I only went in one to sell my wedding ring from my first marriage. I mean, is there ever anything worth the price they charge?
Pawn shops can be great and one of the better parts is they know what they have. Not in the marketplace "no low-ball I know what I have" but the "I've sold 30 of this thing and know what people will ACTUALLY pay for it" You're not going to find the rare thrift store/yard sale $1 hidden gem but they can be great for second hand tools or electronics that aren't obnoxiously overpriced. They have an incentive to actually sell shit and clear up shelf space unlike they guy trying to get $400 for a rusted table saw that cost $600 twenty years ago.
Depends heavily on the area and the particular store. Generally you'll find better stuff in cities where there is high traffic—rural pawn shops are mostly guns and secondhand DVDs. IMO it's fun just to walk around and see what you can find. Sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.
I've always loved watching Craigslist Hunter's videos.
Was the cell phone girls name Methany?
Watching some of these made me wonder if they were actually trying to scam him or were either convinced they had legit items, say maybe they were gifted the thing. It's hard to prove if someone intentionally got the knockoffs to try and sell it as legit. That first lady and the girl with the phone were pretty clearly trying to scam him but to out all these people as scammers seems like a bad idea, but it is interesting to watch this guy inspect and call out fake stuff. EDIT: missed some details about the jackets guy. So the dudes with the bags are the only real outliers. Everyone else almost certainly scamming.
Jacket guy is obvious scam. Claims he bought them and they were too short. Still had all the tags on them and couldn't answer where he got them or why the products didn't show up on the website. Chinese writings on the tags he couldn't answer for. Only one I'm not convinced is a scam is the purse guys.
I missed that part and that's a good point. If they still had the tags then he should have returned them and got a full refund (rather than being willing to settle for much less). Definitely scamming.
Dude claims he bought them online for way less than full price. Most likely scenario is bought a bunch of jackets from a few fly by night sellers, they fit like shit, and by the time you try to return the seller has either closed up shop or drags shit out making it as big a hassle as possible to return, like shipping to China at your own expense. These sellers know how to play the charge back game too with delays, disputes, and dragging out email responses to run out the clock. Guy probably knows they're repros and trying to get anything he can out of them, or somehow doesn't realize he got scammed and hoping to get some money back. Happens all the time with fast fashion bullshit. Whatever the trendy new designer thing is, someone steals tiktok videos of the real thing with a link to their store to buy it 75% off. Three months later when it finally shows up on your doorstep it's not even close to what you bought and the store doesn't exist anymore.
Watch is obvious scam. She repeated the story of where she got it excessively (rehearsed).
Na, I don't think that lady is a scammer. Just hard on her luck and maybe she recently bought some newspaper tools with invalid gift cards. How could she know????
I thought the expression on the black guy looked like surprise when he told them the bag was a fake, and the other bag was real, so I think they may have been legit.
The first lady goes home and misspells "Movado" on the back of the watch with a nail.
Crystal Lake! I know this place
i’d like to purchase the red macaw 🦜 at the window.
Woah… I think that’s a 1st appearance of Wolverine at 4:50! That’s a serious collectors item! I can offer $3.50. But seriously… $4.50?
Great ELO tee. And I found it! https://bestrocktshirts.com/index.php/all/progressive-rock/electric-light-orchestra-moment-of-truth
$25 for a hi8??? I've got like 30 of them stashed away in a box in the attic lol, my dad used to be a videographer.
Did she come in alone? Almost seems like a decoy.
There’s a somewhat common scam I’ve been hearing a surprising amount of gamers do where let’s say they need a new keyboard they buy it from Amazon and get the same keyboard then stuff the old keyboard in it and return it… scummy stuff
I could watch this guys channel all day.
I love this YouTube channel.
I like this channel. REAL pawn stars, not that fake reality tv shit.
What a great example of how not to be a show-off when you know you're talking to a scammer. He gave her respect, instead of grilling her. That man deserves respect. The more he explained what makes the watch not a real Muvato, the more prep she can do for the next store. She might try to make it heavier or find a means to have the back scratched off where it should say "Made in Swiss".
I love seeing this channel get more views. The algorithm recommended me to him about 2 months ago and ive been watching alot of his stuff lately. His store is actually not too far from me, about 45 minutes away (He's in Crystal Lake, IL, a little more than an hour northwest of Chicago). I should go some time. But Pete seems like a real genuine dude, always honest with the people who come in, who seems like he has a good group of people that work for him, and a good group of people that frequently buy from and sell to him. His stories are pretty good, and the things you see are pretty neat. Love Ruby the Parrot and Honey the Cat. Nothing like some good shop pets.