"I Wish I Were Kidding": 55 Industry Secrets That Left People Feeling Scammed

20 years in cybersecurity: most antivirus programs are a rip off. Windows defender does an amazing job at protecting your system and the bells and whistles tacked on to options like Norton or mcafee are largely useless. Use windows defender and windows firewall and you are safe as safe really gets in this digital world.

I work in a library, and the answer is e-books and electronic audiobooks. The vendors charge huge amounts per book license. Except for certain platforms, each license equals one physical book so you have to buy multiple licenses if you want the book to be checked out simultaneously by multiple users. They also have these licenses expire after a certain number uses because they figure physical books will eventually wear out, but these numbers are way lower than what a physical book would see. Our budgets are all being cut and these costs continue rising, so we are able to buy fewer actual titles overall.

I worked in retail supply chain for 25 years. With higher end luxury brands markups can be 90% or more. The quality may be good but most of what you’re paying for is marketing. overhead, and artificial scarcity.

Also sheet sets. There is a physical limitation on weaving of around 500 thread count. Anything higher is made by fudging the number- either by weaving two small yarns together into one (double pick) or bonding two layers together (double ply).

Payday Loan places. Don’t ever stop at a Cash Express or Payday Loan! Keep driving! I don’t care how broke you are. You don’t want to get involved with those places.

Ebook providers have an insane monopoly and charge libraries outrageous prices just to rent books from them for a dozen or so uses. Please don't be put out when your library doesn't use Libby and opts for a cheaper ebook platform. Please don't be put out when there's a longer hold time or when there isn't an endless number of titles. The way the contracts work, libraries either pay a set fee for endless checkouts of select titles or genre grouping, or they pay for titles individually either per checkout, per x number of checkouts, or for a certain duration. (say, 10 copies of a new book for 6 months, then drop 8 of those after the hype dies down).

Once the title runs "out", the library has to pay usually the full price for the title again. And again, the price is often outrageous.

All that said, please do check out ebooks. We need the stats. But also please be kind when requesting books. Ebook budgets often blow past physical book budgets with fewer titles.

Private equity has invaded veterinary medical offices. As a result, prices have skyrocketed. Yeow!

Not a “scam” per se but I’m a teacher.

In about 99% of cases (not hyperbole), your child’s school is not rigorous and their 4.00 GPA means absolute jack. Grade inflation is WILD. It has gotten to the point where I have to hold back my judgment when HS students at graduation are like “we did it!”

You would have to be severely disabled to not pass HS today. Schools are now HEAVILY incentivized to pass you along.

The shameful part is that some students ARE actual 4.0 students, but their grades are diluted so bad that I cannot tell an idiot from someone who actually worked and gain something. Thus, two students - both with 4.0s - can be standing next to each other and one is MUCH more talented.

And don’t get me started on discipline. I would say about 20% of kids are not fit for the traditional HS environment. I wish I were kidding.

Software subscriptions.

I’m in veterinary medicine and can confidently say vaccines and heartworm/flea/tick prevention are NOT scams and are very important for keeping your pet healthy!!

I work in corporate finance. Wealth managers are the biggest scam because they basically charge you insane fees just to do way worse than a boring index fund. Don't pay some guy in a suit to guess the market when you can literally just buy index funds yourself for free.

Data caps on internet packages.

Extended warranties on computers and "data recovery services" at big box stores are pure highway robbery


they'll charge you like 200 bucks to recover files that you can get back yourself with free software in most cases, and those extended warranties basically never cover anything that actually breaks. meanwhile they're selling you a 3 year plan for more than half what the laptop costs.

There are a lot of bad therapists out there. You can have a great education and go to great schools and it still doesn’t mean you’re any good.

Rent to own stores. you pay rent on furniture and then when you try to buy the furniture they price it so high that none of the rent payments apply to the purchase price.

Stealing the American elderly population's life savings via scams, wire fraud schemes, romance scams, etc has become an organized crime problem on an industrial scale. It is the underreported crime of the century, the primary income source for large organized crime groups out of Asia especially, and the problem grows every year. I really can't stress enough just how big this problem is. I'm an investigations manager at a fintech, I have 10 investigators on my team doing this stuff all day and we are overwhelmed with work, if I tripled my team it wouldn't be enough. We write weekly cases with hundreds of bad actor accounts involved.

Talk to your elderly relatives, try to keep in touch as much as possible. The whole world is trying to rob them blind.

I work in nonfiction book writing/editing/publishing. *Everyone* is using AI. It’s the rule rather than the exception at this point, it’s super depressing, I hate it, and it’s the #1 reason I’m switching careers entirely this year after over a decade doing this.

I’m a bartender - drinks are not worth $15-$20. Especially high balls.

As a teacher I'm convinced most educational technology companies are scams. Can we please go back to pencil and paper ffs.

I work in healthcare, specifically counselling you on long term care homes. There are, without a doubt, good homes and bad homes. I'm supposed to be impartial. If you are a jerk to me, I will remain impartial. If you are a semi decent human being I will 100% tell you where to stay clear of. Be nice to healthcare workers!

I was a paralegal for over 2 decades and we did a lot of Personal Injury law. The biggest scam was chiropractors and massage therapists telling our injured clients, 'Don't worry, we'll treat you at no cost to you and we'll get paid out of your settlement'. Then they'd run up bills of $3k-$4k EACH. The settlement offer comes in and after 33.3% attorneys fees plus costs and unpaid bills like those, the client would end up with a pittance and would be really upset. Got to the point where I'd tell them 'you aren't getting any better b/c you need to rest, not constantly go to the chiro 4x a week. Please go see a real doctor.'.