How do scammers flourish? How we stop them

The scam has been around since man realized that there were greedy, not informed, not schooled, other human beings that were looking for something for nothing. We hear about email scams, lottery scams, and business scams. What is the single most thing that entices people to respond to these scams? MONEY - In the form of something for nothing or almost nothing. Rule of thumb - If its to good to be true, IT IS. Every product made has a minimum cost to produce. If you don\'t have a clue about a product or service you want to buy how can you make an informed decision? EXAMPLE: Apple has been successful for many years. They come out with the iPod it costs X amount of dollars to produce. However to make money they must mass produce the item. They mark up the item a certain % for sale on their own sites which becomes the MSRP. However, in order to market them around the world they sell them to authorized distributors for a smaller % discount on the MSRP mark-up and to retailers for a less % who in turn sells them to you. I personally have worked with apple products for years long before the ipod or itunes. The only ipod with any mark up of more then a few $$$ is the iPod touch and the classic. Even then the markup is not allot. The shuffle has no more then a $3-$4 markup. Retailers sell these because its not the iPods themselves they make a ton on its the accessories and it brings in business. If you follow this progression of formula\'s you would find that a retailer would be making about 7USD on the ipod nano and about $15-$20 on the Classic and Touch for each one sold. Here again they are not making vast amounts of money from selling 1 or 2 but because they are selling hundreds. This process is followed by all companies with Brand names that have no self distribution. Therefore if you see Name Brand items advertised for more than 15-30% off MSRP price you need to be highly suspect of the seller and exhaust all avenues in completing \"Due Diligence\". If you are not sure then check out before you just accept what someone says. You can not buy brand name electronics cheaper from China! There is a set price on every item that no one is allowed to sell under that price. STOPPING THEM 1.) Eliminate the greed in yourself. 2.) Be informed, know the product. 3.) Think before you jump. If you have a seller who is saying come to our warehouse we have the product vs someone saying i heard there was product in this country or in this state go pick it up. Use your mind and common sense here who has product? the person saying they HEARD it was in some place or the person saying come to our place. 4.) Exhaust the available resources for confirming trade partners. Talk with Authorized dealers, distributors. do your own research 5.) Never do first time deals via the internet alone. Any legit company or broker should have no reason to let you meet in person, even if they do not have a warehouse as many brokers do not they should have no reason to deny meeting in person and confirming they have done transactions with the company they are buying from now in the past. 6.) Get a pre-shippment inspection done by a reputable service unless the company is offering you to come to a OWNED warehouse not a FF warehouse and has sent you POS before hand and the deal is no payment of any sort until inspection. Rule of thumb if there are no Picts of stock or if the seller says you have to put a deposit down before seeing the POS or says they want to know you are really serious before sending it out or any other excuse as to why they can not provide POS then it does not exist. 7.) Don\'t pay until you recieve the inspection. If they want 30% in advance tell them you need a factory audit first. If they refuse then the stock does not exist. Inspections are honored by real suppliers and manufacturer\'s it also sends them a signal that you are a serious buyer. Lastly understand that you can not buy a branded product from anyone other than the manufacturer or factory authorized distributors and VAR\'s. Sure brokers sell mobile phones but remember that the only place they can get them is from a Authorized distributor or VAR. Be very cautious of anyone asking for money up front without allowing you to see proof of stock. Also i cant say on other companies but i do know with Nokia and Apple if you want production runs on phones or computers full payment is required upfront and they do not accept bank LC or escrow for payment. So this should tell you anyone saying they can do production run phones and saying they accept bank LC or escrow then i would question it. Again only the authorized distributor of a brand name product can do what are called production runs. I hope that this helps weed out some of the scammers and save some of you from getting hurt by these scammers

Very good post Livewire every members needs to take this all in.

RSPDISTRIBUT ( 0 ) on 21 Jul 2008 04:45

Great post Livewire...Thanks for the really useful info.

lexluthor ( 0 ) on 21 Jul 2008 21:50
20 Jul 2008 18:33
livewire ( 0 )
Joined Apr 2008
Jason Stuckey
Jason Stuckey
United States, MI