People Are Sharing The "Modern Scams" They Discovered That Made Them Realize, "Wait, This Whole Industry's A Rip Off"

Buzz Feed

16-03-2025

Recently, someone on Reddit asked, "Redditors who unexpectedly discovered a 'modern scam' that's everywhere now — what made you realize, 'Wait, this whole industry is a rip off?'"
Here's what everyone shared:
1. "Once upon a time, I attended a time-share presentation because they offered money to go. Yes, they are all high-pressure salespeople and scammy by nature, but on this one, I spotted exactly how they would hose everyone involved. I read the contract carefully (since I was there anyway, and it made their salesperson shut up while I read)."
"Quietly buried near the bottom was a mandatory cleaning and maintenance fee of about half the rent of a modest apartment that they could adjust at any time, with no stated limits. Fortunately, they'd supplied a shuttle to pick up people and take them to the timeshare presentation location. About 15 of us were in one of those little shuttle vans with seats facing each other. We started chatting on the way back, and I pointed the clause out to everyone in the group."
— Terpsichorean_Wombat
2. "Furniture. My wife is a huge fan of home design shows, especially one called Dream Home Makeover. That'll be important later. So, one day, she picked out a rug for our dining area. It's called 'The Janette' (yes, they name rugs), and we ordered it. It's something like $1500. The rug arrives with a label on the back that says, 'The Samuel.' I thought we ordered the wrong thing, so I Google the brand and 'The Samuel.' I find it on Wayfair for $300. This can't possibly be the same rug, can it?"
"I take a chance and order it from Wayfair, and when I have both in my possession, I do a side-by-side. It's the EXACT same rug. Basically, these designer brands are buying stuff directly from vendors, changing the name, and charging 5x the price. Fast forward a few months. She finds a dining table on the Studio McGee website (the folks who have the Dream Makeover show). I do a Google reverse search on the picture of the table and find it on a random furniture store's website for 1/3 of the cost."
— schaudhery
3. "I don't know if this counts, but I found an empty lot with barely visible no-parking signs next to an ATM. Tow trucks would wait just behind the building for someone to park there. The person would park and walk around the corner to use the ATM. Then, they returned to their car, which was already hooked up, and the tow truck driver would unhook it for a fee...conveniently able to be obtained from the ATM. It's been years, but I'm still enraged when I think of it."
4. "I worked a month as a pharmacy clerk, and the health insurance price disparity is insane, especially on things like insulin."
5. "I had a 'job interview' with what you'd now call an MLM way before they entered the mainstream consciousness. The interviewer spent the whole time talking about all this hustle culture bullshit, talking about how hard you gotta work if you want to succeed, how it's all down to your network, and you need to be a go-getter; you better earn that commission and all that shit. Well, I'm a fiercely introverted person who wasn't very self-motivated at the time, so when I was called into the 1-on-1 with the interviewer, I couldn't help myself. I told him I was a bad fit, and it didn't sound like it was for me."
"To my surprise, his tone instantly flipped. He started talking about how it wasn't that hard, how you could work less and still make a good living, how generous the commission structure was at lower levels, and so on. Exact opposite of his earlier vibe. And that flip, that's what made me realize it was a scam. They didn't care about my skills, my drive, or my personality. They'd do whatever because all they wanted was for me to buy in. And though I didn't understand the whole scam, I knew that had to be a bad idea. That's the only interview I've ever walked out of partway through."
— GrinningPariah
6. "Mobile gaming. It's been like this for probably a decade now that mobile gaming is just psychologically designed to give you just enough satisfaction at first but keep you wanting more and locking stuff behind paywalls or extremely long-timers. It's nearly impossible to get where you want without dumping money for in-game currency and stuff. Mobile games are designed to the core to be addictive and siphon money from people. So many people still play them. I can't touch them anymore and haven't for years."
7. "When I saw my first crypto rug pull. That's when I realized that most of the industry is a giant casino, and it's all about who can time when to get out of the coin the best. Very few coins offer any real utility and most aren't using them for anything legitimate. Most of it is just to move money across borders without the banks and governments seeing it."
— shotsallover
8. "Any solar roof that is not paid in full at the time of installation. Specifically talking about 20-30-year solar 'leases' and, even worse: 'Power Purchase Agreements.' Scammy, scammy scams. They prey on people. They'll lie and tell you it's a great investment for your house that the next buyer will love. WRONGGGG. Couldn't be more wrong. No buyer wants to take over the next 18 years of your solar lease. You'll have to pay it all off at closing, and GUESS WHAT? it's $50k+. Which is absurd because the panels would have cost less than $10k if you had gotten a real company to do it."
"Even worse: the systems are usually so poorly designed that they don't even appreciably lower your electric bill. So, $50k for nothing. Worse than nothing because you'll have to spend more money taking them off whenever you need work done on the roof. There's also a decent chance that the solar company that sold you that 20-30-year lease goes out of business, so there's no one to talk to about your system. Someone else bought the leases (but none of the service warranties), and you are still on the hook for the payments regardless of whether it works or not, and if you stop paying, they have a lien on your house. SCAM, SCAM, SCAM, SCAM. STAY AWAY FROM 'PAYMENT-PLAN' SOLAR. Regular solar that you pay in full upfront: fine. Good, even. Payment plan solar: SCAM."
— shinywtf
9. "Like a decade ago, Reddit was big on safety razors, the old-fashioned twisty open thing you put a single blade into like what your grandpa might have used. Eventually, I tried it out because of this. I now spend less on shaving per year than I used to spend on a pack of razors for a week or two."
u/Winnipork / Via reddit.com
10. "Individual 'pods' for laundry are a total ripoff that forces you to use specific portion sizes. Companies want you to waste products like this so you buy more often. With liquids or powders, even the caps and scoops are designed so that you use too much. If your clothes are particularly soiled, you can use a little more, but otherwise, you don't need to use a lot for clothes to come out clean and smell nice. You can use half of the recommended amount for most loads, and things will be perfectly fine."
u/Tlammy / Via reddit.com
"Also, fabric softener and dryer sheets are mostly unnecessary garbage. They leave unnecessary scented chemicals on your clothes, can damage some synthetic fabrics over time, and make towels significantly less absorbent. Clean clothes won't smell like anything at all…you don't need to add a chemical perfume to every fabric. Static cling is just a temporary effect of low humidity when you remove things from a dryer."
— BrianMincey
11. "I'm not sure why modern nursing care facilities/homes are not higher on the list. Some are good (but they're $10k/month or more), but most others are shit. Not to mention, they drain older citizens' savings until they have nothing left, then push them to Medicare and then bill the government at a higher cost due to the 'extra' work involved in using that system. A total scam making some of the larger corporations that own hundreds of these little out-of-the-way homes billions each year."
— op4
12. "Most glasses, especially ones you can get at an eye doctor. You can get frames and lenses online for like $30. There's a big monopoly company that jacks up the prices in most brick-and-mortar stores."
13. "Weddings. Everything about a wedding is incredibly overpriced and so far booked out for no real reason."
— MiPaKe
"I used to work at a little seaside place that would take wedding bookings. Someone would call and ask about a wedding, then be told, 'Oh, we're booked out until next year! Yeah, everyone wants to have a wedding here, sorry!' then take down their number. A week later, they'd call them and say something like, 'Oh, it looks like so and so isn't able to make the booking, do you want it?' Then they'd basically triple the price they advertised online. They would use this method multiple times a week, and as a result people were foaming at the mouth trying to get in there. The only time they took real bookings was for known locals."
— airfryerfuntime
14. "I had a too-good-to-be-true feeling about streaming services pretty early on. When interest rates started going up, I thought, 'Oh boy, here come the ads, price jacks, and quality drop.' So far, two have become true; time will tell if quality stays good over time."
15. "Companies posting that they are hiring, but in reality, the jobs were only posted as a way to show the company is growing. I believe it's a way to manipulate their stocks. Fake job listings make it so much harder to find actual real jobs."
— Nat_StarTrekin
16. "New phones each year that aren't big improvements with software that is obsolete before the phone itself is."
— Jappie_nl
And finally:
17. "The 'service fees' scam. You see a price, think you're getting a deal, and then — BAM! At checkout, a bunch of mysterious fees appear out of nowhere. Concert tickets? 'Processing fee.' Ordering food? 'Convenience fee.' Even some hotels now have 'resort fees' for things like using the pool (which you didn't even touch). It's like companies sat down and said, 'How can we charge people more without actually raising prices?' And we all just… accept it. Pure daylight robbery."