There will always be thieves who think they're smarter than everyone else and try to rob us of our money. Thanks to the internet and social media, they can even do it remotely while the whole world is locked down, going through a pandemic.
And while we try to calm ourselves down by saying that sooner or later they will get caught and punished, as one Reddit post shows, some won't. Because we're not even chasing them!
Сreated by user u/F1yff, it asked people the question: "What is a legal scam that is still happening in 2022?" and has received plenty of real-life examples that are still thriving. Here are some of them.
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Churches not paying taxes. It's completely unacceptable and really disgusting. I cannot imagine tithing to a church with a pastor who has big houses and a private jet and luxury cars.
Televangelists like Joel Osteen.
Charging for parking in Hospitals and Clinics.
Agree if it's a private parking firm scalping people for huge amounts of cash. Don't necessarily agree if that money is being fed back into the health trust or hospital itself (though of course that shouldn't have to happen at all, nor should the vast amount of charitable monies that hospitals rely on)
American restaurants forcing the burden of employee wages onto their customers.
How about the employer pays the employee? Crazy concept, but it works!!! And if that employee makes the customer extra pleased with the provided service, that tip goed to that employee! (And not the employer...) I still can't believe how weird that US system is. It almost feels like it is extortion of the employers. Or should I drop the "feels like" in the previous sentence?
Private prisons. You're telling me that they charge the government for the beds and the taxpayers still gotta foot the bill if those beds are empty so the company running it "doesn't lose money"? F*ck you.
Let's add prison phone charges. If we're really trying to rehabilitate people so they emerge as helpful members of society, why are inmates charged up to $5.70 for a 15 minute phone call? This is the state that pays prisoners $0.13 per hour to work.
Charging people money to withdraw money or because they have small (positive) balances in their bank accounts.
This!! Recently I have noticed a lot of bank ATMs are being replaced by non-bank ATMs which charge a fee to withdraw money. Getting to the point where I have trouble finding a local ATM that I can withdraw money from without paying money.
Insider trading within Congress.
But if WE do it, we end up in prison.
Having to file your own taxes then being fined if you don’t do it right.
"News” which isn’t useful or objectively true, and therefore not news, but propaganda.
Ronald Reagan's legacy, he abolished the "Fairness Doctrine". Contrasting viewpoints on controversial subjects were no longer required by law, so, networks were given free rein to embellish the stories reported.
Civil forfeiture. You're going to tell me that a cop thinks that my property might be used for illegal activity, and that cop is going to steal it from me and pad their departments bottom line? What the actual f.
Software as a service.
Once I buy a piece of software that works, it doesn't cost the company more money to make it if I use it for longer. It makes no sense to pay a monthly fee for the permission to use Adobe Photoshop, it's ridiculous.
People say "oh, but you get updates" -- if I want to get the new version of Photoshop, I can pay for a new license.
Any update that fixes bugs should come free, because actually I'm not paying for a buggy product am I?
Video games, as sh*tty as the industry is, are doing this right. You pay once, up front. Then you get patches and security updates for free. Of course there are still problems, but at least buying a video game isn't as much of a scam as subscribing to Adobe's Creative Cloud plans. Total ripoffs.
There are fantastic free open source alternatives for most popular Adobe softwares. I use Darktable and GIMP instead of Lightroom and Photoshop and I edit my videos on OpenShot instead of Premiere. They work great and costs 0$ but I donate a little to support those developers and designers. And if you need to recover your data from a corrupted hard drive or something check icarefree, another free software which works way better than those expensive recovery services. Long live open source!
Sadly overplayed, but health insurance. Just yesterday there was a post about a guy who had medically necessary surgery and the insurance didn’t want to pay the hospital.
Minor tax in UK ensures all medical care is free at point of use ...and yes there are waiting lists...but no one is turned away. No one is penalised for being out of work or not having private insurance. Minor prescription charges in some parts of UK (free in my area Wales) only extra private charges are for opticians and dentistry for adults. You can still get plans for those too...but any medical care required from say an optician finding something requiring treatment is referred back to NHS for treatment with no charge.
"Printing" fee for digital tickets.
Any fees for digital tickets. Booking fee, printing fee, whatever.
MLMs (multi-level marketing companies). 'I'm my own CEO.' No, you aren't. You literally have a company telling you what you can and can't do.
And most people end up in debt because of MLMs. They're just legal pyramid schemes.
Cable company making you "rent" a router for 10$ a month.
I hate the fact i pay subscription to all the channels. Out of 200 i watch like 20 tops. Vut there's no profit if i only subscribe to 20 favourite ones
Insane rent prices for houses even squatters wouldn’t stay at.
That's why The Netherlands has a system where every defect in your rented house means that you pay less rent. At a certain number of defects the house is declared uninhabitable. Landlords hate the system because it means that people can pay less than half of their rent without risking being evicted. The only thing landlords can do to prevent it from happening is keeping the houses up to standard.
Super-high interest, predatory rent-to-own furniture rental/loan things — where you end up paying, like, $3,000 in the end for a $500 laptop.
Ticket master. WTF is a handling fee when I am the one handling my own phone?
Companies with bots who buy up blocks of tickets, usually really good ones, and if you wanted a seat in that section you have to pay a fortune to some scam company to get it. Legalized scalping.
Charging patients in hospitals for TV service. Their bills are high enough, but you want to add $8/day to not have to sit in silence for 23 hours a day?
WHAAAAT, where does this happen? I didn't even know this was a thing!
It happens here in Melbourne Australia. With both my parents constantly in and out of hospital these past 2 years it has been expensive, between 56 and 36 dollars a week. The lower rate kicks in for longer stays in the 2nd week. This is for free to air channels, extra for movie channels.
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We have these in some UK hospitals. Even though the healthcare is free, you have to pay if you want to use your own bedside TV/phone. It's not too bad if you are in for a week. I was in for 7 months! They did offer a small discount on longer periods, but it wasn't cheap. I remember clearly watching the 9/11 news story on it and not being able to work out whether it was a movie or real!
Same in my area in Canada. When I had my C-section absolutely everything was free even my private bed. I could also watch tv if I paid ten dollars a day for headphone!? This was 12 years ago, though. (And yes, you could easily use your own headphones if you knew to bring them!!) then last year I was hospitalized for almost three weeks. No tv whatsoever, but my lifesaving treatment was free at least and now the wifi is free too. So a laptop worked!
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Lol to all the people who didn't know this. Yes in the US you have to pay a fee to be allowed to watch more than 1 channel. It's literally 8-12 dollars. If you want to hear another ridiculous hospital fee... baby holding. You get charged to hold your baby after delivery. It's about 40 dollars.
In the Netherlands most hospitals will charge you for TV service, but prices are fair at €3 per day. Internet and radio are mostly free.
That's why I love the feature I have on my cable subscription. It comes with an app on my phone where I can link up my phone to my cable box at home and watch my own TV on my phone or any recordings I've made anywhere I have good WIFI. Great for hospital stays or long journeys.
At least now there is (usually) free wifi so at least you can watch YouTube or Netflix.
Last time I just watched tv on my phone. One of the nurses gave me the guest wifi password and I didn’t pay for the tv
In the US of course! Our wonderful health system. My FIL (I kid you not) was paying $25 PER ASPIRIN while in the hospital. When we offered to bring in a bottle of aspirin so he could take 2 each day we were told it wasn’t permitted.
That's just insanely unfair, okay so our "free" government healthcare is not the greatest, but it's still a free option. You can go to a Clinic for free, get medication - even chronic to a degree for free. Government hospitals here on the other hand are notorious for being.... well.... dilapidated. and waiting hours can be quite long. So I guess we all have our problems. in an ideal world, we would not even be posting about how horrible things are :(
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it even worse, when they want to charge u a tv fee. qhen ur in the psychiatric ward. U DONT GET TVs in ur room. just out in the common room, and everynes always fighting over the remote anyway.
Illinois USA here. I asked if I could pay for the tv. It worked and provided basic networks, children's, religious, sports, and Spanish language channels that I could want. Also shows that were big hits before I was born. You could tune to basic cable channels but they came up as unavailable. I would have gladly paid a extra daily fee, and they did have free wifi but the set up and constantly moving on the one tray table was a pain.
And 23 hours is dead on, because you're lucky to get an hour (combined) of sleep in there, in a 24+ hour period.
I know they used to have these but not sure they still do. Think they're dying out as everyone just uses their phone and tablets to amuse themselves. Last time k was in hospital I just joined their free Wi-Fi and sat watching Netflix
Completely agree. Was just in hospital for a c-section and had a TV in my room that wasn’t charged for (haven’t seen this TV-charging phenomenon in Ireland yet). However, am do used to watching on-demand on devices that just used my phone the entire time.
Load More Replies... It's a connection to the outside world. It's diversion from where they are. Their brains can leave for awhile. And interestingly enough, the favorite channel for those who are unable to eat due to abdominal surgery/conditions where they can't eat, their favorite channel is any food channel. They're watching and making plans. Not to mention not having to miss your favorite shows or televised sports events while you're there.
In what universe is a hospital "silent" (?!) and cable TV is "free"? Seriously, 150 TV sets getting cable TV when maybe half those beds are occupied ----- the hospital where I am doesn't even make enough off the TV fee to pay for the TVs and the cable. Granted, we're rural, etc., but.... It's gonna be in the bill somehow. Unless the Entertainment Fairy is giving this stuff away and nobody told us?
I've had calls from people in Canada asking me to send them to the business office to set up billing to provide their person with telephone and tv while in our US hospital. We provide these services for free.
I live in US and in my area the TV and WiFi are free in the hospital. So NOT America
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Not everyone who’s in a hospital is well enough to read e.g. someone with an eye infection
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Medication Costs
my dog had hookworm and so my doctor recommended i get treated as well just to be safe - pharmacy called me warning that it would cost me $2,995... asked my doctor if there was an alternative; was able to get an equally effective treatment for $45
Oh my gosh in Australia that treatment would cost $4.50 from a pharmacy.
The troubled teen industry. It doesn't work. It traumatizes children. It's legal kidnapping.
I hope more attention comes to it and something happens. They're a business and the goal is to make money, not help troubled teenagers. Ffs, half the time the kids aren't even troubled!
E.T.A.: The "Troubled teen industry" refers to for-profit organizations aimed at steering rebellious and at-risk youth onto a better path through reform camps. But their methods are "tough love", negative/positive punishments and physical labor.
Because it's a business meant to make money, a lot of corner-cutting happens. They hire young and untrained staff for less pay rather than therapists and certified nurses & teachers. It's also not regulated at all so they can effectively do whatever they want with little recourse.
They use "scared straight" tactics and beat kids into obedience. They claim the best way to send a kid there is by surprise "so they don't try and run beforehand" - AKA burst into their room at 2AM and drag them into a van with very few belongings.
Look up "Elan School" for a notorious one.
Paris Hilton was kidnapped at 2AM and sent to Provo Canyon when she was 16. Look at how well that worked.
Go through this thread for some horror stories.
Why insurance goes up after an incident.
The fact that you give regular monthly installments is the intent that they will save you the hassle in case of a problem.
My homeowners insurance dropped me after I filed my first claim in 16 years. It was a minor claim as well.
Modern art collecting as a easy route to evade taxes. Wealthy person buys painting of black line for $20k, have art appraiser friend appraise for $1.2mm, donate painting to museum or non-profit, write off over a million in losses, zero taxes, celebrate black line like it’s an amazing and deeply moving piece.
Okay well maybe this wouldn’t be done if the tax rate wasn’t insane. Killing your self working half the year for people who hate you and other people who hate your home country, sometimes a mix of both. It’s a fûcking scam, so we scam back. Plus I like my painting of a black line, and it’s worth the value people will pay for it. Sorry you can’t spend my money for me.
That news in America is entertainment. Can get away with saying pretty much anything and still call it “news”.
The news in Australia is pretty bad too. There’s even advertisements presented within informational programs that appear as if a factual piece. Shouldn’t be allowed. I don’t even read/watch it now and rely on more objective sources from overseas. There may be some in Australia but I’ve yet to find them.
College textbooks. "We updated a figure in chapter 8 and changed the page numbers for three Third Edition. It costs $180."
All of them should be continously updated and electronic (ie. pdf files).
if debt collectors can trick a grieving person into uttering words that imply you take responsibility for your dead relatives' debts, that can be treated as a binding oral contract and allow them to collect from you
Usa tax paying system.
Paraphrasing: We know how much you owe, but we want you to calculate it and you have to get it correct under pain of prison or paying too much. Oh and the whole process is more complicated than it needs to be because of private interests.
that cookies still exists on websites. sometimes i don’t have an option but just to give them goddamn cookies! cancel cookies!
Also, anyone who sticks your name on a mailing list and doesn't include an 'unsubscribe' link in any mails back. That's actually illegal, right?
Extended warranties, so many promises made, but when time comes for a claim, almost all are denied.
Well the prices for them are getting ridiculous. If you get all labour and parts paid, or a replacement product, then that was good. But a quick bit of maths tells you that you will have paid for a new product usually within 4 to 5 years, and a proportion of that will already have a manufacturers warranty on it. The sensible thing to do is to put the money you would spend on an extended warranty into a bank account each month, and use the money to pay for a repair or buy a new one when it eventually packs up.
Paying convenience charges when booking tickets online.
I agree. I'd think it'd be cheaper because I'm doing it myself online.
If you’re a personal business owner, you may receive what looks to be a bill in your mail from the US Domain Authority. At first glance, you’re under the impression that you need to pay 289 dollars to renew your website domain name… HOWEVER. There is very fine print stating that you are not legally required to pay the listed amount. It’s actually an ad requesting you pay that amount in order to have your website listed on the US Domain Authority site. I can’t imagine how many people have been tricked by this. READ YOUR MAIL CAREFULLY.
My kid's school charges a $3 "internet fee" if you want to refill their cafeteria cards via the website. If you do it in person there's no fee.
If they feel they have to charge a fee shouldn't it be the other way around since if you use their website you aren't taking up anyone's time?
Funeral homes. Or to specify for the dunces among us, unethical funeral homes chasing profit at the expense of bereaved people...
The amount of Leeching done to grieving people just boils my blood.
Weddings and funerals are cash cows since they're emotional purchases, not necessities.
University fees. I have to not only pay for my classes and admin fees, I have to pay for two separate student Union fees, a technology fee, an online processing fee, and a "recreation and athletic" fee, despite the Fieldhouse being entirely closed due to covid.
I'm working on my MA. I'm 52. I have every intention of paying the absolute minimum on my loans and if I die without paying it off, too bad.
Taxes on taxes
Charging huge fees for parking permits without spending any of that money on the maintenance of those parking spots.
Working for the current minimum wage. I just want it to have kept up with inflation. That is probably around 22.5/hr iirc. The hardest jobs I’ve ever had was my lowest paying job.
Healthcare in the USA. When you work at a hospital and see the f*ckery that happens you get even more mad.
Student debt in its current state. I know physicians who can’t pay those loans off because the interest is just too high. They’ve been paying for 10 years and still have their original principal loan amount.
Those are just three things that make me the most mad right now.
I live in Canada and we would have to make around $24 per hour, 40 hours per week, to just live with no extras. That would barely cover rent, transportation, insurance and food/basic necessities. The minimum wage is $15.00. Even if you did make $24 per hour you're just one emergency away from disaster.
Insurance companies stating they'll cover 100% of the cost. But when you get the bill, it's 200% and you gotta cover the difference. Who the hell reads 100% as literally anything other than fully covered?
Plus 200% means they'd definitely pay for it all :P maybe they meant 20% The only reason I like living in the UK is because of the NHS!
Note: this post originally had 73 images. It’s been shortened to the top 45 images based on user votes.
Lots of duplicates in this list. And of the original entries, I spotted a few that were universal, but the vast majority could be shifted to a list of "things the rest of the world can't believe the US still has to put up with in 2022". So many are not part of the wider experience for a lot of people.
Pretty much everything here is a result of rampant capitalism, the idea that making a profit is the only thing that matters in any business, in any field of human endeavour, where success is defined solely in terms of your wealth. Sorry to be a stuck record on this, but it's true. It's why young people need to vote and they need to start voting for people and parties that do not ascribe to the capitalist model.
1. Philanthropy and corporate investment in the arts, esp by big pharma: basically money laundering on a moral level. 2. In the UK, credit agencies who harvest data about you but won't tell you who they got it from, and you have to pay them to check it and find out if it's wrong. 3. All private sector corporate vision/mission statements that don't say 'make money'. 4. Corporate PR teams doing 'damage limitation' by preventing wrongdoing from being reported openly in the press (I had to give up). 5. HR: literally exists to protect the company from being sued by employees.
Electronic books (eBooks). No way in h3ll should the digital version cost even 1/10th of the hardcopy (paperback!) price. It's not like they have to keep 10,000 digital copies on a hard drive, or anything. $0.99 is... generous.
Yeah! Most of the time they cost the same as the paperback. F**k that
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Being required to qualify for government benefits (food stamps, etc.) based on your future earnings, then being penalized if you earn more than you thought you would. In 2014, I applied for Obamacare because I thought I was required to, and based my application on very low expected earnings. In November of that year, I received a surprise mail from a past employer telling me I had until the end of the year to decide how I wanted my pension. The monthly disbursements wouldn't have helped me so I took the lump sum which put me over my earnings projection for Obamacare, and I had to repay the government the $7,000+ for insurance premiums they'd paid on my behalf based on my low projected income. It's been eight years and that still pisses me off every time I think about it.
Those who get Medicaid, or any assistance will have their estate pilfered by the government. So if you had medicaid because you lost your job, cannot afford to buy health insurance, will have that amount deducted from their estate. This means if you work your whole life but had medicaid for a short time, the gov will take that money.
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How about online advertisers who use our internet connection as they run their ads and cull our data? They need to stop or pay us the profits.
Show me where it is free. Any "it". Either you pay out of pocket, or you pay in taxes. And, I'm sorry-not-sorry, there are far worse things in the world happening, without anyone making long BP posts about it. See: climate change. See: child abuse. See: sweatshops in any given place on the planet. .... No, I don't like these things, but I'm realistic to know that until you ban the concepts of "property and profit", and somehow get everyone to be docile and polite enough to go along? Here we are. Just like our ancestors, when someone figured out holding onto the dead deer meant they had the "power" and could get something in exchange. (Or the fruit. Whatever.) It's Friday, I want to see kittens & Puppies! B/c omicron is devastating the world, but hey, let's b***h about capitalism....?!?!?! We have a bigger concern at the moment. Or I do. Signed, one furious/exhausted MD. MASK AND VAX I BEG YOU! Please.
I'm charged three local taxes for the maintenance of roads. Through my property taxes, a levy that passed two years ago and an additional property tax assessment for repaving my street. I'm moving soon to the town I grew up in that is lower in crime, has better services and will cost me half as much in taxes.
(U.S.) Social Security PAYMENTS are mandatory (for most of us). Social Security BENEFITS do *not* _have_ to be paid.
What gets me is the cost of digital video games. It's the same as a physical. They explain the high cost of games because of production and distribution but now they are claiming it's so it will not "lessen the value of their IP."
Honestly, I'm so sick of hearing about a lot of these issues. Many of them are only problems in the US, and they have been told and shown time and time again how to solve these issues, but they just don't. It's time for us to stop asking, stop listening. The rest of the world has just become enablers.
OK let me give you a few phrases to look up. "Customer image". "Amortisation". "Cross-subsidisation". Once you've looked that up, you'll understand why it is a BAD business decision to do things to your customers that make you look like an unethical parasite.
Load More Replies... Lots of duplicates in this list. And of the original entries, I spotted a few that were universal, but the vast majority could be shifted to a list of "things the rest of the world can't believe the US still has to put up with in 2022". So many are not part of the wider experience for a lot of people.
Pretty much everything here is a result of rampant capitalism, the idea that making a profit is the only thing that matters in any business, in any field of human endeavour, where success is defined solely in terms of your wealth. Sorry to be a stuck record on this, but it's true. It's why young people need to vote and they need to start voting for people and parties that do not ascribe to the capitalist model.
1. Philanthropy and corporate investment in the arts, esp by big pharma: basically money laundering on a moral level. 2. In the UK, credit agencies who harvest data about you but won't tell you who they got it from, and you have to pay them to check it and find out if it's wrong. 3. All private sector corporate vision/mission statements that don't say 'make money'. 4. Corporate PR teams doing 'damage limitation' by preventing wrongdoing from being reported openly in the press (I had to give up). 5. HR: literally exists to protect the company from being sued by employees.
Electronic books (eBooks). No way in h3ll should the digital version cost even 1/10th of the hardcopy (paperback!) price. It's not like they have to keep 10,000 digital copies on a hard drive, or anything. $0.99 is... generous.
Yeah! Most of the time they cost the same as the paperback. F**k that
Load More Replies... Being required to qualify for government benefits (food stamps, etc.) based on your future earnings, then being penalized if you earn more than you thought you would. In 2014, I applied for Obamacare because I thought I was required to, and based my application on very low expected earnings. In November of that year, I received a surprise mail from a past employer telling me I had until the end of the year to decide how I wanted my pension. The monthly disbursements wouldn't have helped me so I took the lump sum which put me over my earnings projection for Obamacare, and I had to repay the government the $7,000+ for insurance premiums they'd paid on my behalf based on my low projected income. It's been eight years and that still pisses me off every time I think about it.
Those who get Medicaid, or any assistance will have their estate pilfered by the government. So if you had medicaid because you lost your job, cannot afford to buy health insurance, will have that amount deducted from their estate. This means if you work your whole life but had medicaid for a short time, the gov will take that money.
Load More Replies... How about online advertisers who use our internet connection as they run their ads and cull our data? They need to stop or pay us the profits.
Show me where it is free. Any "it". Either you pay out of pocket, or you pay in taxes. And, I'm sorry-not-sorry, there are far worse things in the world happening, without anyone making long BP posts about it. See: climate change. See: child abuse. See: sweatshops in any given place on the planet. .... No, I don't like these things, but I'm realistic to know that until you ban the concepts of "property and profit", and somehow get everyone to be docile and polite enough to go along? Here we are. Just like our ancestors, when someone figured out holding onto the dead deer meant they had the "power" and could get something in exchange. (Or the fruit. Whatever.) It's Friday, I want to see kittens & Puppies! B/c omicron is devastating the world, but hey, let's b***h about capitalism....?!?!?! We have a bigger concern at the moment. Or I do. Signed, one furious/exhausted MD. MASK AND VAX I BEG YOU! Please.
I'm charged three local taxes for the maintenance of roads. Through my property taxes, a levy that passed two years ago and an additional property tax assessment for repaving my street. I'm moving soon to the town I grew up in that is lower in crime, has better services and will cost me half as much in taxes.
(U.S.) Social Security PAYMENTS are mandatory (for most of us). Social Security BENEFITS do *not* _have_ to be paid.
What gets me is the cost of digital video games. It's the same as a physical. They explain the high cost of games because of production and distribution but now they are claiming it's so it will not "lessen the value of their IP."
Honestly, I'm so sick of hearing about a lot of these issues. Many of them are only problems in the US, and they have been told and shown time and time again how to solve these issues, but they just don't. It's time for us to stop asking, stop listening. The rest of the world has just become enablers.
OK let me give you a few phrases to look up. "Customer image". "Amortisation". "Cross-subsidisation". Once you've looked that up, you'll understand why it is a BAD business decision to do things to your customers that make you look like an unethical parasite.
Load More Replies...