OT: Frozen meat scammers
Mark G. Forbes
friendly-looking guy shows up on my doorstep this afternoon,
starts his story about how the truck's freezer unit has broken
down and he needs to unload a bunch of steaks at a really great
price. I interrupted him there and said that I'd seen this scam
before and I wasn't interested.
At that point he started shouting (through the storm door) that
it WASN'T a scam, shook his fist at me and left. I'd had a
reading light on in the living room, and they'd spotted me as
they were driving by cruising for suckers.
Variants on this are a fairly common ploy. A few of these guys
have edible-quality products, but they all share high pressure
sales tactics and misleading stories playing on your good nature.
They typically drive little pickup trucks with a freezer unit
in the bed, and some sort of friendly-sounding meat-ish name. You
can get taken for a few hundred bucks, because they're *really
good* at salesmanship and flim-flammery. We almost got fooled by
this about 20 years ago, but smelled a rat in time and stopped
the check.
Just FYI, for when they show up on your doorstep some day. Lots
of bad reports on the web if you look around.
MGF