Thursday, August 16, 2007

Television Deals Too Good to be True

It's probably happened to you before. Someone approaches you and mentions that they have some appliances that they'd like to sell to you. Dirt cheap. The only catch is that they aren't trying to sell it to you from a store but rather from the back of a truck or some other such shady place. Well, I think P.T. Barnum said it best when he said, "there's a sucker born every minute," and in these cases it's the literal truth. What's the case? Well, across the country, police have been receiving complaints about a rash of oven door thefts with no apparent reason about them. The reasoning came to light when police followed up on a tip about some dealing in 'widescreen televisions'


It seems that people as far and wide as Indiana and California have been reporting that they were approached by individuals claiming to have widescreen televisions for sales. Given that a decent sized one will cost you anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars, when someone offers you one at a much reduced cost, your first instinct may be to jump on the deal before it's too late but the second part would likely be that you are suddenly hit with the realization that something in this situation is not kosher. If you were one of the ones who got hit with the non-kosher feelings then consider yourself lucky. In case you hadn't guessed yet, theives were stealing oven doors that resembled televisions and were packaging them and selling them as widescreen televisions.


The con artists had gone to such an extent that they often packaged the doors in old television boxes and included peripherals such as power cords and remote controls. Think about it though. How many times when you buy a piece of electronics from the store are you shown the entire contents even before you put down the money? You aren't. You take it on faith and assume that everything will be okay with the product. In this case you have someone ready to sell it to you at a reduced cost and is showing you the contents (fake though they are) which is meant to instill some measure of confidence in what you're purchasing. Given all that, why wouldn't you take the deal?


I bargain hunt as much as the next guy but I also use a little bit of sense when it comes to something like this. If the person is selling it from the back of his truck it's more than likely that he doesn't have a store or he didn't receive an extra consignment despite what he or she says. It's all a matter of looking at the overall picture and then realizing that it stinks to high heaven. I was once approached by a trio of guys in a van who were offering to sell me a set of high end speakers for a couple of hundred bucks. It was odd enough that they were approaching me as I was walking through a parking lot on my way to the grocery store but what was even more odd was the fact that they kept dropping the price every time I said no. Isn't that the opposite of how most negotiations are made. If car dealers operated on that principle we'd all be driving Ferraris!


These theives are apparently preying on those who aren't all that knowledgeable in electronics or who seem to be trusting. It's all a subjective thing but I guess they figure that if they have piqued their interest enough for them to come listen to their offer for the television, they don't know all that much about it. Simple things to check if you're ever approached by someone selling you something like this. If it's in a box, check to make sure that the labels on the remotes and televisions match those on the box. Meaning if the box is a Sony television box and you have Magnavox remote controls, something's wrong already. Similarly, ask to see the television out of the box. If you can see through the screen to the guy on the other side, chances are that you're looking at an oven door. Even if it's labeled Sony.

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