Hey Pandas, If You Were Ever Scammed On The Internet Or In Real Life, How Did It Go Down? (Closed)

I was at a touristy spot in Greece with my wife and a restaurant owner invited us in, showing off his range of ice creams. We picked from the cart and sat down to our ice creams. When it came to paying the bill, he gave me the menu, which I thought was odd. Then when I saw the price I realised the scam. 50 euros for 2 ice creams (of average quality)! His whole game was to get people into the restaurant and get them to order something without looking at the prices on the menu, then make out the price had been available to see the whole time. I did the typical embarrassed tourist thing and payed, but I am now wise enough to always check prices before ordering. I dread to think how much a meal there would have been.

Okay. My grandma and I get scam calls a LOT. We all know its a scam because either the number is super long or the number starts with the letter V. A few times my grandma literally flirted with them. She is very old. I seriously love them calling.

Went to a movie theater once and bought popcorn and a large coke.

they tried but never succeed. about 3 weeks ago i've got a call from someone with a very, very, very big accent who told me he's from the Windows company... not Microsoft... Windows... SERIOUSLY??? they didn't try to be convincing

I was sitting next to my grandmother when she got a call saying that "her granddaughter had been kidnapped by them" followed by a recording of a kid screaming. The "kidnapper" asked for my grandma's bank OTP. She gave the phone to me, and I proceeded to rattle off a bunch of random nonsense in my best old lady voice. Best day ever.

I've never been scammed online but pre-Internet, for fun, I answered a newspaper ad reading something like "Send $1 to see how you can make easy money".
I did & actually got a response, which perhaps negates the scam part, but it said, "Place a newspaper ad stating 'Send $1 to see how you can make easy money'."

This is going to sound ridiculous, but at the time it was the most devastating thing that happened to me.

When i was around 9 I used to play that online game called Animal Jam. Of course, just like every cool kid out there ya boi had a membership. With this membership i was able to obtain the premium currency, Diamonds, Quite easily. With these Diamonds i went the the Diamond store and bought an expensive item called a Spike Collar. I have zero clue why these were the most sought after, but everyone always wanted one of the authentic ones. I had two authentic ones and one store-bought one at this point, and i wanted another authentic one. So i went to the main area and started advertising the crap out of my incredible offer for an authentic one. Some dude comes up to me and says „I dont have a spiked collar, but i have something even more rare.“ naturally, i am intrigued. I ask him to show me and he shows me these Ram Horns that look hella cool. Of course im skeptical so i ask him if he is sure these will outmatch the value of an authentic spiked collar. He says yes, they will, and that in exchange he wants one of my authentic spiked collars. This sounds like an excellent deal to me because he says that these horns were extremely rare and a beta item. Beta items are hard to come by because only a few of them ever existed. A beta item could easily outpace 5 spiked collars. So of course im in and we initiate the trade. Just to be nice i toss in a few less rare items and accept the trade. Once we finish the trade, this dude starts laughing. Immediately, i know somethings up. He says „check the store“ and leaves the lobby. I looked at the store. There, in the store for like 5 of the non-premium currency, are the ram horns. I got swindled out of one of the most sought after items, and you bet i was pissed. The problem is, i never got the guys username so i could never report him for scamming me. I am 15 now and i still haven’t forgiven him.

So... i bought nothing from amazon, but got a call saying that i did. So i looked at amazon and saw 10 things ranging from 1k to 5k dollars. I was like wtf who did this. Apparently, this person had called me before, and stole all of my personal data. How i got my money back is that i saw where the adress was forwarded to. I drove straight to that house, and found the same guy who i had been on the phone with. He later git 1.5 years of jail time. :D

At least like once a week I get a call from "the auto warranty center" telling me that "my car's warranty has been extended" hooray! except I don't have a car
the weirdest part is most of the calls have the local area codes which i find really sus... :/

I went to Chicago 4 years ago with my friend. And this person walked up to us and said that they were homeless. So, I gave them $50. Then, a few hours later we saw them getting into a
F'N LAMBO!!! (I was 14 at the time)

This happened to my professor in the middle of class... She got a phone call saying her house mortgage wasn't paid, then was asked to send her credit card number to "avoid any future complications."

I got a popup once while I was checking my bank account balance online. The popup was thanking me for being a loyal customer of "bank" and offered me a free watch minus shipping if I took a short survey. I did the survey and when the watch arrived it was a different watch than was advertised and then I was charged $125 for the watch. I complained to my bank and found out they didn't do rewards like that and then after some digging around I found the company name that sent the watch I called them and the FBI and within 2 weeks I had a refund.

When I was backpacking is Australia, in like 2005. Girl came up to me, in a tourist hotspot, whilst I was very much looking like a tourist, and did the, "i just filled my car up and forgot my wallet, I cant get any help" wouldnt leave me alone for like 5 mins, I get my wallet out and give her $20, then she asks for $50. Which she didnt get.

Not a textbook scam case. I was a graphic designer during the 2008 financial crisis. That’s it. Basically I did a lot of free (or unpaid for) work with the promise of paid work “in a month or two when the economy recovers.” I was 21 and fresh out of college so I did a lot of free work. When that job finally came 2 years later, it was a dollar over minimum wage.

not mine, but my great gramma alwasy answers the phone with hello, (police dep). all her friends just laugh, scammers get scared away

First I have to say that I was pretty shy. In my twenties I was getting better but still not happy with conflict.

I went into a car dealership to look at some cars just to get some prices and test drive a car. My car was on it's last legs but still got me from point A to point B without too many problems. I told them that I planned to trade it in if I bought a car. They asked me for my keys so they could give me a trade in value.

After I'd looked at a car and listen to a hard sell, I said not thank you, not at this time. I asked for my keys back. They offered to let me "test drive" a vehicle over the weekend. I said "No, and asked for my keys back." Time passed, I hunted for the sales man and again asked for my keys. He informed me that they had sold my car and couldn't get it back.

Remember I was pretty shy. I was ready to cry. Then, I got mad. The salesman tried to shift me to his office. I dug in my heels and at the top of my voice said "You sold my car without my permission? I want MY car back now. If you sold it, it is your problem." Mind you they had kept me waiting and waiting before they rolled out that they had sold my car. The place was busy and quite a few of the customers had seen me pacing and waiting. When they tried to tell me there was nothing they could do, and shuffle me into an office, again. I refused to go into an office, loudly. Then I went into that angry rant that they had better get me my keys (by this time I was also freaking out in my head, the key ring had more than just my car keys. It had my house key, my parents home, the place I worked etc.) Just about the time where my brave front was melting and I was going to cry they brought my car around and handed me my keys. No apology, nothing.

You might think they were just taking advantage of a young woman but about a month or so later there was an article in our paper about a couple suing the dealership for selling their truck while they test drove a vehicle "over the weekend". This time the dealership had actually sold their vehicle.

I had not believed they actually sold my car, it was in pretty bad shape and there was no title (I had it but they didn't) who would buy it? Apparently they could and the couple in the article had to take them to court.

I remember being scammed in Roblox once, I was paying to get a certain item (I was really young at the time) without asking to get the item first. I lost around (in game) $300 or $600

I get phone calls about my car... excuse me i am under 15 and have never owned a car

I've always been very wary of things. But I got got once. I was a single mom at the time and me and the kids needed to get away. I worked a crap ton of over time and saved up money to rent a house on the beach for a few days. Price wasn't "too good to be true" and I remember to always voice verify. I spoke to dude on the phone and he sent me a lease agreement. All normal. He asked for a deposit, all normal. Until two days before our trip I emailed him to confirm time to meet to get keys and was ghosted. After some sleuthing and a LOT of crying found out that property was owned / rented by someone else and booked for like a year. Funny thing is I think they were in on the scam because when I contacted the actual owner, she didn't even sound sorry or anything. I was out like 800 bucks. I reported him to FBI, LE etc. Told him straight up he was scum for scamming a single mother and he was going to rot in hell. He promised to pay me back after knowing I reported him. Still waiting all these years later, but I believe in Karma and she'll get hers for sure.

This lady wanted to take us on a "tour around the town" near a popular tourist destination. Apparently this happened a lot, and there was a sign saying "Do NOT accept any tours from people".

The lady wanted us to get into her car, and she was talking to my mom about how her granddaughter or whatever was 3 and was just trying to pry information from us. My dad was very alert and called my mom back because the lady could either charge obscene amounts of money for a small tour, or just get us all in the car and idk, drive off a cliff?

We didn't end up getting scammed but it was a close call.