You know that feeling when everything seems to be normal until you sit on your chair, with extra five minutes to spend, and begin to notice things you’ve never given attention to before. Then, you thought to yourself: “Wait a minute, this is not right!”. Redditors worldwide share the same realizations about the common scams that have become too normal that people eventually just accepted. Read on, and I’m sure you’ll relate to one or two of these stories.
#1 Diamonds Aren’t Forever
The diamond industry, specifically as it relates to jewelry. Everything that the average person “knows” about it stems from propaganda and advertisements created by DeBeers. They aren’t rare, they aren’t worth what you pay for them, they don’t appreciate in value and are a terrible investment. They aren’t special. —Steelle88
#2 Too Much Fancy Coffee
Starbucks. I pay $9.99 for 51 oz of Folgers Ground Coffee, roughly 380 8 oz cups. That comes out to about $0.02 per cup of coffee. At Starbucks, a Tall Dark Roast costs $1.85. I could have 92.5 cups of Folgers at home before I pay for 1 Starbucks. My tub of Folgers is worth $703.00 if I were to sell it at the same price as Starbucks. AND I’m using reusable cups every day. —Bryan15012
#3 Device Security
Idk if it’s normalized but McAfee security service. In my own experience with the service, it’s done literally nothing for me except pop up every time I open my computer or nearly every 4 hours or so. I remember my ex-girlfriend’s grandma who fell victim for the service. I tried to talk them down from it and not to pay the service but I was much too late for any semantics. So I just took it to memory that every computer already comes with security software and any outside security software, if not installed properly, checked with 100% concentrated power of will, you’re going to have a bad time. At least, I’m convinced that the McAfee service is just a virus that makes you pay similar to some of those other viruses that get your photo via your personal webcam, lock your computer and show you a copy-pasted photo of a “legal document” urging you to pay a ransom, what was it, ransomware.
So my belief is that even though most people may use McAfee as a computer firewall security service, it’s more than likely a scam. Downvote me to hell, but at least convince me otherwise first. —Tyflowshu
#4 The Struggle with Cable Companies
My cable company recently started trying to charge me for my router. Which I own. I got a notice saying “we noticed an error in billing and we will be charging you for the equipment rental starting in December”.
The f**k you will, I have every receipt from every cable or phone transaction I’ve ever done for that exact reason. I paid outright for my router so I wouldn’t be renting their sh**ty equipment at $12/month. Now they want to charge me for my own property. After receiving that notice I hopped right on to customer service to get it resolved, and they directed me to their “loyalty department” because “they could best handle it over there”. I cut off the conversation and just canceled my service. Cable companies are pure scum. —pjr032
#5 The Case of Overpriced Water
Bottled water, like Dasani. Especially in places like an amusement park that mark ups the price a shocking amount. Also the average markup of bottled water is 4000%, which is f**king outrageous, because water is literally free most places —gnot_your_friend
#6 The Price of Safety
Back to base security system monitoring. Huge scam.
My smart home security system alerts me faster than ADT ever did (biggest offenders) When you don’t answer the call, they will send out someone and will charge you a fee
And every time your system messes up, it will send false error codes to the monitoring station, which they will charge you a huge fee to fix. And if you want to disconnect it, the guy I spoke to from ADT was going to charge me $250 call out + $50 for every 15 minutes he was at my house, and the job would have taken at least an hour. They said they may need to go into the roof.
No I just called a security installation electrician and he said $50 call out and $30 for every 30 minutes he was there but that was depending on the type of job. He was at my house for 5 minutes. He only charged $50. Compared to ADTs service which would of cost about $450 —BuriedUnderTheDirt
#7 Priceless Education
EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the Internet that sells some sort of “millionaire education“ it’s all bullsh**.
Every single one of them. They are all f**king liars, most of them are not even rich, to begin with! They fake it enough that some idiots buy it. You are customers to them. Nothing more. —PinocchiosWoodBalls
#8 Homeowner’s Dilemma
Homeowner’s insurance:
“Sorry, we’re not selling new policies in your area right now because thing just happened” where thing = earthquake, wildfire, flood, and other things you might … want to insure against?
“We don’t cover that sort of problem.” where that sort of problem = anything that actually happens to your house, due to weasel-wording loopholes
“You submitted a claim? We’re going to triple your rates FOREVER after this.” —balsamicextremist
#9 Boost Your Power with a Bracelet
Idk if anyone remembers Power Balance bracelets from the early 2000s. A lot of celebrities and athletes advertised for them and they claimed to improve your balance and overall health. Well being a rubber bracelet made in a factory, it was all nonsense but they still sold millions of units before shutting down. A new company owns them now and you can still buy them though. —PraiseGodBarebones
#10 The Dark Side of Social Media
From their happy beginnings, they are now mostly a funnel used to ram as many advertisements into your mind as inhumanly possible. “Sponsored Posts” every third or fourth item – I see you, IG/FB/Red/etc. And that’s not even mentioning the extensive filtering network that “curates” the information you get to see when you are looking for something. “Curated information” is just a nice expression for you being conditioned to form certain opinions / buy more stuff. Social media groom minds. —Solitary-Dolphin
#11 Multi-Level Marketing
They prey on insecure women, specifically army wives to give in. It’s almost like a cult. Guaranteeing new friends, lots of free trips, and make 20,000 dollars a month. They are not your friends, the trips are only “free” if you become a top earner And the only way to make 20,000 dollars a month is to get at minimum 100 people in your team that work every single day Most sales from those companies are from the salesperson who is buying it to sell it. And they tell you that you have to buy more to sell more.
It’s really gross. —snowrachell
#12 Keeping Your Cat Healthy
Look at the cat food at a random store, and see how the design brags about all the healthy vegetables they’ve crammed into your obligate carnivore’s diet. Then check out the ingredients and see how corn, rice, etc. are often the first ingredients. Pet foods market toward humans by trying to appeal to human sensibilities, not genuine desire to provide your cat with the best diet. —Hadrian_x_Antinous
#13 Learning is Expensive
Annual college tuition increases. Why aren’t they held to a competitive pricing model as opposed to having to take out a mortgage to go to school? Everyone wants to talk about the government paying for college education, but there is no conversation on why is it that expensive anyway? Especially when some unis have endowments in the billions that just the interest on those funds could literally pay the tuition for everyone that goes through the door. —lcapaz
#14 Another Tea for Cable Companies
The way cable companies are set up makes any real competition basically impossible. You have at most 2-3 options in most places in the country, and in many, many places you only have 1 option. Cable and the internet really need to just become a public entity already. Private companies should not be allowed to price gouge what is basically as necessary as electricity now for many people —twister428
#15 Unpaid Internships
F**k anyone who gives unpaid internships! People get exploited like s**t in that and for what? Most times they don’t even count. For what purpose?
I get so irritated when someone posts “unpaid but you’ll be given a certificate”. Shut the f**k up and do the work by yourself you lazy a**.
I’m talking about unpaid internships which don’t give you anything other than a certificate. There are very few companies that offer unpaid internships that actually provide some value to you. I’m not blaming the usual paid internships at all. —[deleted]
#16 Prices High, Earnings Low
Minimum wage was $4.25 on the sign in the Cafeteria when I was in 3rd grade. It is $7.25 now. I’m almost 40. To reiterate:
1991 vs 2015 in the USA – Mean Prices
Home Price: $123,000 vs $289,500 (+135%)
Bread $0.98 vs $1.98 (+102%)
1lb Hamburger Meat $0.89 vs $4.68 (+426%)
Undergrad Tuition (University of Florida) $1,229 vs $6,310 (+413%)
Minimum Wage $4.25 vs $7.25 (+71%)
You know for the boomers who can’t figure out why Gen Z and later millennials can’t buy a house or pay off student loans with a part-time job. —clanddev
#17 Finding a Good Razor
Cartridge razors! Do you have any idea how cheap a perfectly good razor blade is? They only started putting them in cartridges so that you had to buy theirs for considerable markup. Also, multiple blades is worse for your skin and totally unnecessary. All that plastic is also completely unnecessary and just creates more waste. A single-blade safety razor will save you money, give you a better shave, be better for your skin, and help the environment. There is no downside other than a slight learning curve. Get yourself a brush and some fancy soap and you can cut out aerosol cans as well. —Brettersson
#18 40 Hours per Week
40 hour a week thing is ridiculous. Well specifically for office jobs. Who the hell came up with that concept anyways?
It really depends on the project and how many meetings I have, but ever since we started working from home I swear I work maybe 5 hrs a day.
I’m just glad our company recognized this. They sent an email out last month telling people to stop sending meeting invites after 2 pm on a Friday lol.
If you don’t have anything to do then you shouldn’t be obligated to look like you’re working until 5 pm or whatever. —sdrakedrake
#19 Nice Kicks
Holy s**t you don’t need masses of fancy artistic-looking running shoes collected in boxes that you go and spend $1000-10,000 on at a swap meet…You may as well be collecting very expensive funko pops. You’re not going to wear them…and if you wear them you’re only going to worry about them while you wear them, and the markup is insanity. I know people who do this, and they are leveraging money they don’t really have on something that’s going to sit on their shelf and do nothing…It’s bad enough that s**t like Sketchers (the literal K-Mart brand of shoe) cost over $125 a pop for a really crappily assembled shoe…but to spend in the thousands for what is essentially “Stamp-collecting” is nonsensical bordering on obsessive-compulsive.
And don’t get me started on women’s shoes by design houses. I saw someone dish out $1800 for Loubouton’s or something…what are you wearing those foot-destroying shoes for and why would some leather and glue and plastic cost 18 HUNDRED bucks? Holy s**t what a racket. —[deleted]
#20 Goodbye, Headphones
Apple’s headphone jack removal. Supposedly was to make the phone thinner, but everyone puts a case on anyways. Samsung Galaxy S10 was 7.8 mm thick with a headphone jack. Apple removed the jack with iPhone 7, which was 7.1 mm thick. That’s great, but every iPhone since has been thicker.
And very convenient to remove that, wait till the annoyance died down, then release AirPods.
The whole thing was clearly a scam to artificially make Bluetooth a borderline necessity right before releasing Apple Bluetooth earbuds. And everyone ate it up. —SOwED
#21 Clothing 101
Fashion, but also just clothing in general. No pockets on female clothes? More purses get sold. Thinner layers for women? Have to buy more layers. It gets marketed as being fashionable, but the clothing industry could roll out a marketing campaign for baggy rugged clothing tomorrow and get it trending if they wanted to.
Also, the clothing industry is a cesspool of child labor, human trafficking, and it has some of the highest carbon emissions and water waste of any industry on the planet, way worse than flying. One cotton t-shirt takes thousands of gallons of water to produce. Almost any synthetic fabric is a type of plastic, and you release microplastics upon washing.
On top of all that, we have repressive cultural norms and laws regarding the necessity of wearing clothing that come from Puritans and Victorians who thought table legs had to be covered and ankles were sexy. The idea that you should be embarrassed to be naked in front of other people is a cultural phenomenon, not instinct, and you can look at pretty much any tropical tribe to verify this fact that humans are actually generally normal around other naked humans. —tringle1
#22 Naming a Land After You
I keep seeing advertisements on FB for companies that will give you official lord or ladyship for like $50, based on giving you the title to a small parcel of land somewhere like Scotland. I googled one of them once, and the first result was a breakdown of why the company is fraudulent and doesn’t actually have access to any land anywhere. —Dr_Identity
#23 The Price of Dying
Funerals and everything to do with them. The funeral industry has insane pricing. Some of the funeral homes and vendors are even predatory, getting grieving families to pay upwards of tens of thousands of dollars, because “that’s what the deceased would have wanted”. —chiggenNuggs
#24 The Necessities of Technology
The fact that so many products require you to create an account and register it just to use it. This is starting to become so widespread. Even CAMERAS are doing that s**t now. Pisses me off so much. I don’t want to be tied to some stupid cloud BS I just want to use the damn thing.
Phones themselves are terrible for this too. I should not need an apple or google account to have a phone I should be able to use it as a standalone device with just the cell service and that’s it. All this sort of BS is only so they can spy on you. —RedSquirrelFtw
#25 Women Hygiene
Products that are geared towards making female parts“smell better.” You don’t need a product to balance your ph down there or to make it smell better. Normalize women having vaginas that just smell like vaginas! It’s okay. Stop making women feel bad about everything. —itsclem
#26 College Textbooks
College, in particular the textbooks. College is a never-ending money printer where they take none of the risk, debt, or deal with the consequences. They just keep hiking up the tuition and book costs every year, no matter what. I have heard that there are degrees now where the graduates will be paying off the debt for the rest of their lives.
Do your homework and find all the loopholes in the system to keep your debt as low as possible for your degree. After your first job, no one cares where you went to college, what your GPA was or if you were on the dean’s list, etc. They care about what you have done and can do in the real world. Use community college as much as you can too.
Also, watch out for useless degrees or qualifications. A ton of those exist, and people will happily sell them to you. —Badcapsuleer
#27 Happy Ever After
The wedding industry is a huge scam. Weddings are amazing, but there is so much you can get for cheaper by not mentioning it’s for a wedding.
Cakes, bridal suites, and honeymoons are the main ones I know of that charge extra for being called the wedding version, not to mention the “essentials” that are just add ons! Like wedding night underwear! A lacy white bra and knickers work just as well as some hand spun silky type crap that you aren’t gonna want your new husband to ruin coz the price!
I love weddings, but I can’t stand how the wedding industry has capitalized love. —NuttyDounuts14
#28 Calm Your Mind
The entire wellness industry: GOOP, crystal healing, chiropractory, essential oils, miracle tonics, cure-alls, and homeopathic ‘medicine’. Everyone these days seems to have some sort of home-brew they swear by. None of them actually work and it’s symptomatic of the larger problem of scientific illiteracy gone rampant. No Karen, your bulls**t celery water doesn’t reduce stress. —Veros87
#29 Funny Antics
That audience laughter in comedy tv shows is spontaneous. It is either prompted or canned. Notice that often there is laughter at unfunny moments. The dumbing of America. The directors think we are stupid and don’t know what is humorous. —eyeofdeer
#30 Child Support
To be honest, the child support system. It is clearly created to keep the payor under its thumb. My ex lied about my wages when she first filed and because it was overlooked, I was ordered to pay $1,300 for our one child. I have two other children now and my wife and I have had to endure the loss of our home, passport, evictions, chasing down warrants left and right because of past-due child support, multiple license reinstatement fees, and even lived in a tent for a stint. For two years I was unable to afford to fly over to see my child. She does not allow my daughter to speak to any family members except for myself ( when someone attempts to say hello, the mother hangs up,) so she is going on 7 years old and has yet to meet my mother and father or my brother and his family which excludes his daughters that are her age. Then COVID hit, so another year has gone by without seeing my baby. We have filed petition after petition to get the CS amount lowered, to no avail. There are also fees taxes on late payments so the amount comes out to $1,475. I have gone through two lawyers who have tried to get it lowered but was denied by the Judge. I know CS is important but it seems the system that was established decades ago when Men received slaps on the wrist for child abandonment are causing Modern Families to pay for the sins of our fathers and the system does not reflect the times. There are so many fathers out there trying to do the right thing! The system is such a harsh game to play and most fathers end up giving up, working under the table, or worse. Then amazing women who step up and fight by their husbands’ sides end up tangled in the webs as well that it tends to cause damage to themselves!
Sorry for the rant but I saw the question after just getting off the phone with my daughter who just asked me why I didn’t want to be with her anymore, and that I didn’t love her before hanging up on me. —[deleted]