** Click here for Episode 181 **
Our next correspondent asked that their name and address be redacted, so they will henceforth be known as Captain Scammington:
I have hit on a way to get anything you want for what you want to pay – yes really, and this isn’t junk mail I promise.
On, shall we say, certain well-known online retail outlets, as well as buying new tat, you can sell your old tat. On certain well-known online retail outlets you will find a few big timers, using clever software, will always undercut your price by a penny – several times a day.
So you simply decide what it is you want to buy and the price you would like to pay for it. Check to see if big timer has the item (one doesn’t want to shit on one’s peers) and then tell a tiny fib that you have one already and put it up for sale. They will then lower the price of theirs to a penny under the price you’d like to pay for it – at which point you buy it. It’s very unlikely that someone will buy the one you ‘have’ in the meantime and if they do it’s very easy task to cancel the transaction. I ‘reckon’ you could get away with this maybe a half dozen times a year.
Now answer me this: is it so terribly wrong to fraudulently offer something for sale you don’t have (big business would never do that, would it?)? Or is it sticking it to the man and to be applauded?
Readers, you sit on all points of the moral compass. Is there something noble about sticking it to Big Business with a bit of petty crime? Is one foolish not to use the mildly naughty means at your disposal to bag yourself a bargain? Or is wrongdoing just plain wrong?
Whatever you say, though, I’m sure Captain Scammington will continue their cheapskate ruse until either they cook up an even better one, or they get struck by lightening.
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Answer Me This! Podcast 
July 8, 2011 at 4:25 pm |
If you can get away with it you should! Absolute genius
July 7, 2011 at 3:35 pm |
WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT!?!
July 7, 2011 at 9:00 am |
It is a big naughty, but very clever too! I don’t have a problem with this approach, it’s up to the ‘big timers’ to set a realistic minimum. If their software is so simple that it just takes the lowest price and subtracts 0.01, then they deserve it. Any reasonable software of that sort should have a lower limit.
Well done.
July 7, 2011 at 8:59 am |
If they’re using a “clever software” tactic to undercut you at every turn then this is just a clever tactic for mild revenge. If they’re willing to sell it at the price you want to pay then win-win
July 7, 2011 at 8:58 am |
Unfair on who? The sellers whose only tactic is to undercut other sellers by a penny? Surely anyone using such an automated system leaves thenselves open to the risk. Though presumably their software enables then to enter a lower limit on the price.
July 7, 2011 at 8:53 am |
It’s just wrong! Unfair too.