2000-09-24 - 23:59:45

Gullable

Throughout my life I've had a problem: I'm pretty easily hoodwinked. When people tell me things, I generally believe them. Does this make me a sweet, trusting individual (like Lily says) or a naïve sap? (like I say) You decide.

I guess I was an entrepreneur at an early age, because I remember that during the hot weather I tried running a lemonade stand, set up on my parents' front lawn. I don't think I did it that much because we lived on a side street and there wasn't much traffic. Business was, at best, modest.

I recall one time, some of the bigger kids in the neighborhood came by and wanted lemonade, but they said they didn't have money on them and that they'd pay me later. I had misgivings, but they promised so I gave it to them.

Later in the day I saw the group of them walking down a cross street a half block away. It was obvious that they weren't going to pay me, in fact they'd probably had no intention of paying me from the beginning.

Still I remained a trusting soul, more or less.

Probably the time when my trusting nature made it hardest for me was right after I opened my comic store. It seems like from the first time you turn your "Open" sign around, some guy is trying to talk the money out of your pocket. You get people selling phone service, credit card service, insurance, security systems, printing, cleaning products and the list goes on and on. There were some days that I literally felt like I was under siege.

For instance, here's a little scam I ran into in my early days.

Some guy calls and says that you can be part of a "promotion." Notice carefully that he doesn't say "contest" or "sweepstakes," those have federal rules you must follow. Anyway, this guy says that you are guaranteed a prize, but all you have to do is buy a box of pens (or something like that) with your store's name on them.

Now the list of prizes sounds pretty impressive. You can win 1) A trip to Hawaii, 2) A big screen TV, 3) $25,000 in cash or 4) A grandfather clock.

The way they make it sound you have a 1 in 4 chance of winning the $25,000 but really your odds are more like 500,000 to 1. There probably is only one of each of the good prizes and a whole frigging warehouse full of the cheap-looking grandfather clocks. Also, there is some $50 postage fee for the grandfather clock when you do win it, so it is far from "free." They are also making money on the promotional pens, too. They are cheap little things that probably cost 10 cents to make, but they are charging you $1.25 apiece. So, it is a scam that looks like a sweepstakes.

I can't tell you how often I got calls making me offers like this. And as you can probably tell from the way I phrased that previous paragraph I fell for it, but once and only once. Thereafter I got a certain pleasure from letting them give their whole sales pitch, and stringing them along for awhile and then turning them down flat when they came in for the kill. One time after I did that the guy phoned me back and called me an asshole. Ah, a satisfying day.

As a businessman I got into the habit of saying "no" to every request that came my way. Everybody was guilty until proven innocent.

However, in recent years my pal the Manager has taken over much of the day to day running of the store. He or Skippy usually answer the phone and they don't let idiots like that get through to me anymore. So I've had a chance to relax the wall of suspicion. It's made me feel better about myself and the world in general, but it has left me vulnerable again as the following little story will show.

A couple of months ago, I got a call at the store from a comic artist who used to be a friend of mine that I hadn't talked to in quite a while. He said that the wife of a friend of his was stranded downtown with car trouble and needed forty dollars to get a cab to her job. Could I lend it to her? He said he'd be down to the store to pay me back in a few days.

She showed up, and I chatted with her for a while and then I gave her the $40 and she left. Since then, I have not heard from my artist friend and it's been two months. The phone numbers I have for him no longer work. And come to think of it, he didn't sound like himself on the phone. It may not have even been him! He is pretty well known and it is also common knowledge that I know him. Have I been scammed out of $40, or did someone just forget that they owe me money?

And just the other day, I got another example of scammery on a corporate level. I went to visit my father at the adult home he lives in now, and he was all in a tizzy about something. He'd gotten a check for $50 from AT & T! I looked at it, laughed, and tore it up.

"What are you DOING?????" he practically shrieked. "That was a CHECK!!!"

I then explained to him that it was not a check, it was a contract that LOOKED like a check. A T & T (or whomever) sends you a check, and if you endorse it or cash it, you are accepting their offer of internet service or phone service or whatever. During the course of the service you are, of course, paying back the $50 they gave you at the outset. I've heard several stories of old (or simply clueless) people gleefully cashing these unexpected checks, only to find that they have signed up for internet service even though they don't have a computer.

Nowadays these "checks" have to bear a statement in fairly large lettering saying what they really are and what cashing them entails. Of course my senile father is not too swift on details like that, so he just assumed that his friends at A T & T were giving him a present.

I wonder how many confused old people don't have someone alert to screen their mail? I think they are the people this rather scummy ploy is meant to target. Sleazy bastards.

This is one reason why I'm going to laugh like hell when free internet phone service makes traditional long distance obsolete.