Some scams are obvious, but others hide in plain sight without us even questioning them. Recently, redditor DylanCTV13 asked the r/AskReddit community to share the scams that are so good that people don't even realize they're falling for them. Here are some of the ways people believe we're being duped every single day.
1.“US dental insurance often has a yearly maximum benefit of less than $1500. It makes health insurance look like a benevolent institution. Yes, the two are separate because teeth are not part of your health, apparently.”
Iuliia Burmistrova / Getty Images
—zerasil
“To add to this scam, when dental insurance hit the markets in 1954, you could get $1,000–$1,500 in yearly coverage. Crowns were $25–$50, depending on location. It's now 70 years later, crowns cost $1,000–$1,800 depending on location, and the average dental insurance policy has $1,500 in yearly coverage.”
—Dufresne85
2.“Large-sized products — you don’t need the large, but the small is a bit too small, and the medium is too expensive for the size.”
—gooseapartment
“It's called the decoy effect — changing your choice between two options by introducing an irrelevant third option.”
—-SQB-
3.“Social media. The ‘social' pales in comparison to the ‘media' part. It's all advertising being pumped right into your brain.”
NurPhoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images
—minmidmax
“Sometimes I miss the early days when it wasn't all just a fancy amalgam of advertising, bots, and clickbait.”
—Mundane-Stretch-4873
4.“Paying for (multiple) streaming services, paying extra to gain access to content on those services (that you're already paying for), and paying even more to ‘buy' specific movies or TV shows (with no actual tangible ownership).”
—its-how-i-roll
“And then paying extra to not have ads.”
—FlawsAndCeilings
5.“Convenience fees — you're paying extra just for the privilege of paying.”
—tejutej
“I bought concert tickets for my wife and I just last week. The fees alone were almost the cost of a third ticket. Absolutely ridiculous.”
—bangersnmash13
6.“Voting in a two-party system.”
—AVeryFineUsername
“As someone from a country with a multi-party system, I've always found this two-party system a little odd.”
—More-Championship625
7.“American insurance. As a European, why the fuck would you pay for insurance that half of the time just doesn't cover??”
Morsa Images / Getty Images
—Commercial-Search967
“Everyone in America knows it's a scam; there's just nothing we can do about it. It'd take major policy reform at the federal level to change anything, and our political future isn't exactly bright with a senile tomato as our president.”
—zoobatt
8.“Credit card processing fees. These companies are taking 3.5% of every transaction. It's $160 BILLION per year. And that's not including another $120 billion in interest and fees direct to the consumer. The EU had set the processing fee at 0.3%. In modern times, with computers and the internet, it doesn't cost the processors that much to maintain the networks. It's a price-setting with just four processors (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, and Discover). It's a huge wealth transfer with no real competition.”
—DetectiveMakazian
9.“Tax refunds. People think the government is giving them money. It's not. It's just paying back the zero-interest loan you gave them.”
Thanasis / Getty Images
—Senior-Cantaloupe-69
10.“The American sneaky way of naming things for everything. Most of the time, what people think is describing a product is actually not the case, and it’s part of the complete name. My local Honda dealer included with each service something called World Class Inspection Service, something even the salespeople will hype. It’s not a service that is ‘world-class,' the entire name of the goddamn service is ‘world-class inspection,' and if you ask them who was the authorizing entity that decided on this service to be called world-class, they will fumble.”
“If you start looking at a lot of things like this, you will realize it's just marketing, and worse, people are falling for it.
The terms that are regulated companies have sneaky ways around it.”
—kindrudekid
11.“Bottled water.”
RunPhoto / Getty Images
—red_five_standingby
“There is no reason to buy expensive bottled water. It's WATER for fuck sake.”
—General-Sloth
12.“Tipping culture in the US. Corporations have successfully brainwashed the population into thinking that paying retail workers’s wages is the customer’s job. Employees and customers fight tooth and nail with each other over the percentage of tips, making it even a political issue at times, all the while saving dollars for corporations. Pretty good scam.”
—kronos23456777777
13.“Food delivery apps! They're way overpriced for fast-food munchies.”
Edwin Tan / Getty Images
—Toxic_Zombie_361
“Also, the price for pickup through the apps is much higher than if you just call the restaurant for a takeout order or order through that chain's branded app.”
—meconopsia
14.“Valentine’s Day and/or diamonds.”
—jivan6
15.“Wedding rings. Why should you pay six months' salary for a wedding ring? Because a company made a really successful ad campaign and shifted the culture, so you look cheap if you don't? My partner picked out her ring on Etsy and is all the happier for it.”
Glasshouse Images / Getty Images
—Significant_Debt924
16.“Organized religion. It was genius for someone to realize that they could insert themselves between people and the deity they believe in, siphoning off cash in the process.”
—IWantTheLastSlice
17.“The stock market — nothing but a huge legal Ponzi scheme. All the prices are based on potential future earnings, not actual profits. It's how Elon has made so much while he's owned pretty poorly run companies (they really haven't made much profit, if any). It's a huge, huge house of cards.”
Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
—Beinglieve
“I refer to the stock market as a ‘bag holding game' because most stocks people are clamoring over issue paltry dividends. If the stock issued dividends that covered their IPO price over, say, 10 years, and you continued to receive a dividend as long as they were a business, that would be a different story.”
—hitemlow
18.“‘Free' internet services where you give away all your personal data.”
—qrrux
19.“The 40-hour workweek, originally designed for factories in the 1920s, yet still forced on modern office workers despite studies showing people are productive for only four to six hours a day.”
Luis Alvarez / Getty Images
—Mila-Foxxy
What are some other modern-day scams people are constantly falling for? Comment them below or fill out this anonymous form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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