106 Dirty Business Tactics That You May Not Know Exist

Debt collectors will have "detectives" call you from a number that appears to be a legitimate law enforcement agency when you Google it. It's actually a spoofed caller ID using a legitimate agency's fax number. The "detective" will threaten arrest and throw around names of local judges. The debt collector will claim to not know the "detective" who left the message, but will be willing to take care of your debt.

Selling a customer a wireless phone package that you claim is "unlimited," then throttling their speed when they surpass some arbitrary limit of data used.

Getting solar panels on your house by lease or "power purchase agreement" is a horrible deal for a homeowner. You save a small amount on your bill, but are tied to the agreement for 20+ years while the company that actually owns them retains all of the tax benefits.

Mechanics and other car servicing places will often put many additional tasks/replacements on your bill or imply that you should do things immediately. While many of their recommendations are things to keep in mind, often the tasks they are talking about are not immediately necessary and can be put off for a while before there is an issue. (This in no means is me saying that you shouldn't regularly take your car for servicing)

Rental companies, specifically for vacation. They will say a certain condo/house is available on their website but then when you call, they'll say it is now unavailable or just got booked very recently. Then they'll try and show you a different place which is like $50 more a night, banking on the desperation of the tourists to just say "f*ck it" and rent it.

I've seen many videos of cops pull drivers over, put them in handcuffs and sit them on the curb "for their safety," and then ask for their keys so they can get their registration. You know, to get the stop over with so they can get out of the handcuffs and go on their way.
This is how cops legally obtain permission to search your vehicle. Any time you are compelled out of your car, lock the car, put the keys in your pocket, and don't hand them over under any circumstances.

If political campaigns are calling you, they never actually remove you from the list when you get asked to be removed. Most of the time the refused option needs to be selected multiple times in your database profile to actually be removed.

Petco will sell you non-aquatic plants specifically for your aquarium that will poison everything in the tank.

At home depot and lowes there are cacti with plastic flowers glued on to them.

Offering people in debt credit cards with incredibly low initial interest rates for the first year and then raising the rate dramatically to keep them paying off new interest debt forever

I recently paid for a riverboat dinner cruise, the cruise was cancelled cuz the boat broke and they wouldn't refund my money citing "they told me so" when I paid for them. There is a clause that if they have to cancel they'll do the event in the dock...

In high end IT, vendors will often "go dark" in the months before a service contract renewal or infrastructure refresh is needed. The idea behind this is that the customer is forced to come to them, or they can come to the customer with little enough time to complete the refresh that they are either forced to make a purchase on bad footing for price negotiations or renew service agreements for an additional year at a higher rate while migrating to new gear.

Places that change your oil put a sticker on your wind shield to remind you to get it changed again after 3000 miles. In reality you could go at least double that distance and it will probably be fine

Best Buy: With an HDTV like this you're going to want these gold plated HDMI cables which are rated for 720Hz ($80) and you'll want a router that can take advantage of full 360° panoramic WiFi too.

Automatic renewal/evergreen clauses in equipment leases where the service/maintenance payment is bundled in with the equipment payment. Terms are normally 90-day advance notice with annual renewal. Lessor has to enforce the annual renewal - to amortize the residual cost of the equipment, and give sales leverage to the servicing dealer. Usually by this time in a five-year lease the service portion has increased incrementally due to automatic increase clauses in the lease contract. Lessee: I want to return my equipment. Lessor: You cannot, unless you pay 12 months of rental+service, and then ship back the gear at your own expense. But the dealer can sell you a new machine that we can finance for a much lower payment! Total fucking scam and I was responsible for enforcing those terms for many years. Left with an indelible stain on my soul.

If you go anywhere to get your oil changed, check what your interval is first. Some will insist on an oil change every time you go in, which you do not always need. Toyotas are a good example. They have a 10k synthetic oil and need to be changed every other service appointment (5k service intervals).

Delaying pay day because the "big boss" is not around and we "need his/her signature". Rinse and repeat, until the employees get used to it or forget and the delay is so big that it reaches the next pay day and they can completely skip a month's pay.

Roadside assistance through your car insurance can be reported as a claim. You have no way to argue against it.

When dealing with a salesperson, they will wait for a third "Hard no" before ending their sales pitch

Data caps on mobile internet plans.