kizanski Posted December 22, 2014 Author Posted December 22, 2014 Why make a fake Schecter? Kizanski bought it, didn't he? You think he's the only one on the planet who's susceptible?Well, when it happens, you feel like the dumbest guy on the planet. After all, I talked myself into being scammed. I pretty much asked for it.Much like when you get pulled over for speeding. Where'd that cop come from? Why did I think I wouldn't get pinched?But the question remains: How much profit is to be made on a $1200 guitar, after you factor in the cost of the parts, shipping and the effort involved in putting it together and emails back and forth?The guy on TGP who was familiar with the guitar told me that the seller has been trying to move it for two years! He never told the seller that he pegged it for a fake. He just stopped returning his emails (which still afforded him the benefit of the doubt in my eyes).
Steve Haynie Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 EBay won't permit sale of forgeries Those are not forgeries. They are genuine pleather Armano Exghance jackets!
cynic Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 The first week I was at my current job, I was walking around outside taking a look at the parking lot. A dude in an SUV pulls up and asks if I'm interested in any Armani jackets. He was a sales rep and was heading back to Italy, but did not want to pay the import taxes to bring the samples back, etc. It's the white van speaker scam. I knew a guy that got booted out of the Navy, and for years he drove around LA and Orange counties selling cheap speakers out of the back of a van. "Extra's" that weren't on the manifest or some similar nonsense. He even let the marks audition the speakers in their own homes on their sound systems, and people were buying them up left and right. They LOVED the sound! Fake doesn't mean the jackets can't keep you or someone else warm. Put a positive twist on the experience and sell or donate them. Someone will be grateful.
Ting Ho Dung Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 I'd rather keep them to remind me of this naive incident. It's so dumb that I feel I deserve to continually remind myself of it.I may actually just donate them to goodwill. They are still functional...Donate them and take the tax break.
kizanski Posted December 22, 2014 Author Posted December 22, 2014 Fake doesn't mean the jackets can't keep you or someone else warm. Put a positive twist on the experience and sell or donate them. Someone will be grateful....and STYLISH!!
Armitage Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 Once fell for that old scam when I was a kid (gold cross) when I got home and bit it, it left teeth marks.was a great lesson to do never do business with people selling crap in parking lots.You do realize real gold is actually really soft, and the higher the purity the softer it gets?
kizanski Posted December 22, 2014 Author Posted December 22, 2014 Once fell for that old scam when I was a kid (gold cross) when I got home and bit it, it left teeth marks.was a great lesson to do never do business with people selling crap in parking lots.You do realize real gold is actually really soft, and the higher the purity the softer it gets?Yeah.... I was thinking that too.
ARM OF HAMER Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 You sensed something was not right and you protected yourself................crazy a fake Schecter! what next? Guess people will do anything to make a buck................this guy had to know w/o a doubt that what he was selling was not real.............he was also hoping that the guy that bought it would not know it................well that came back and bit him on the ass..............good for you! The old ones ARE cool I really liked this guitar that was waaaaaaaaaaaaay played.
ARM OF HAMER Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 Just body oils and sweat!.................. you can see how they just leached into the wood in certain areas and corroded the pickguard and the controls................... Kent Armstrong PUPS!
FGJ Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 I was taken by a parking lot scam eons ago. The con artist was clever insofar as he showed me the real thing in order to reel me in, and later slipped me the forgery when money exchanged hands. Frankly, it served me right for being willing to buy (had it been real and not a forgery) what was in all likelihood an object of suspect origins.
velorush Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Just body oils and sweat!.................. you can see how they just leached into the wood in certain areas and corroded the pickguard and the controls................... Kent Armstrong PUPS! Wow! That guy needs fracking!
TBP Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Here's an observation for general reference that may help someone from falling for a scam. From what I've noticed, most effective scams seems designed to get people to think they are taking advantage of the scammer. That can be due to a situation (guy is getting on a plane, has medical bills, etc) or an apparent lack of knowledge (the I'm not sure what this is, but here's just enough info to make you think it's a grail). This seems to create a sense of urgency for people to act, either before someone else does or before the seller/scammer realizes what s/he has. People may tell themselves that this is what anyone else would do or justify it some way, but they think they are the ones taking advantage as they hold more knowledge, are in a better situation, whatever. So they fall for the scam. So I suppose the easiest way to avoid them is to just deal with people openly and honestly. I wonder what the seller would have said if you'd e-mailed, "If your description is accurate, this is a highly collectible guitar and is considerably more valuable that what you've priced it at. If you are able, you should check the market. I am interested in it at a fair price but would also need more information to determine the guitar is authentic." (My possibly naive thinking is that a genuine seller would appreciate that whereas a scammer would either come up with a reason s/he needs money right away or just move on to someone else).
velorush Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Dead on TBP: create a false sense of urgency - sells new cars every day!Dead on also on honesty being the best policy. The con knows the victim's Achilles' heel is found in allowing them to put one over on the con. If we're not looking to take advantage of someone, that weakness falls apart.
Sugartune Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Dead on TBP: create a false sense of urgency - sells new cars every day!That's how I ended up in my TDI months before we intended on buying one..."What's a few months? Price of gas will be $2.00/litre ($7.57/Gal) by the summer. Great deals now! Enjoy the most out of diesel and put that gasser away!" Wife fell for it. But she was the one that wanted to wait longer. Not me, as I was the one with the daily hour long highway commute each way. It was kind of a "sure, twist my rubber arm" scenario for me, but still. There was that plying. Trying to get you to think outside of the box you've sealed yourself, containing the rational thinking and planning you had sorted before going in.
hamerhead Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 My wife is one of those 'if it were meant to be, it'll be there tomorrow' people. Aggravating as hell.
veatch Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 ^^^I do this myself - mostly to avoid that impulse buy. I miss out on a few guitars here and there, but overall, i've come to peace with that.
DaveL Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Once fell for that old scam when I was a kid (gold cross) when I got home and bit it, it left teeth marks.was a great lesson to do never do business with people selling crap in parking lots.You do realize real gold is actually really soft, and the higher the purity the softer it gets? I'm sure guys with high purity gold don't sell out of the back of their trunksfor less than what they could have gotten for scrap weight...
Never2Late Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Just to put things in perspective - somewhere around 40% of China's GDP is directly derived from the manufacturing and sales of knocked off (fakes) products. I can't recall the exact number, but it is staggering. Most of the higher end knockoffs are exported to the US and the UK. The lower quality junk goes to Africa and Central America.Their government is fully aware and condones it. If they made any genuine attempts to stop their knock-off industry it would very likely collapse their entire economy.Think of how the counterfeiters went down to faking 20's rather than 100's since they were all closely scrutized and penned. Now even those get penned. They can and will knock off anything marketable that has a decent margin.It is a "buyer beware" market now, that's one of the many reasons why this place is so special.To be fair, China 'also' makes the Genuine Article of many of these items in various factories throughout their country. Many of these 'fakes' are being made at the same factory, with the same tooling, and the same materials, by the same workers, as the "genuine article" - it was just made 'off-hours' by the plant workers and they omitted the labels to sneak it out and make a few more bucks for themselves. This is why I steer-clear of most "designer labels"...of anything.
Armitage Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 MOST of the time, counterfeits are made to look mostly like the real article, but are complete junk. Lots of it is just random stuff with a big name label put on after the fact, it looks legit but doesn't even match the big guys product in any way. They don't buy a legit product and reverse engineer it either, they just make something that looks close, the guts are never similar. Also I think the "Off Hours" thing is a rumor. Imagine if Mattel/Sony/Westinghouse (or whoever) found out their supplier was making knock offs after hours. Besides, if it was made after hours, it wouldn't be a knock off... it'd be an identical item, it'd be made by the same guys on the same machines, it'd just be under the table production of the legit product.
mrjamiam Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 MOST of the time, counterfeits are made to look mostly like the real article, but are complete junk. Lots of it is just random stuff with a big name label put on after the fact, it looks legit but doesn't even match the big guys product in any way. They don't buy a legit product and reverse engineer it either, they just make something that looks close, the guts are never similar. Also I think the "Off Hours" thing is a rumor. Imagine if Mattel/Sony/Westinghouse (or whoever) found out their supplier was making knock offs after hours. Besides, if it was made after hours, it wouldn't be a knock off... it'd be an identical item, it'd be made by the same guys on the same machines, it'd just be under the table production of the legit product.I think the "Off Hours" thing happens. When I was in graduate business school a decade ago (!) we pursued some research to help deter this. The situation is that the high-profile brand is based elsewhere (usually "first" world) and contracts out to a low-cost manufacturer to produce the products, ensuring a large margin from the high markup. If the brand doesn't build in some kind of limiting factor by controlling the supply of some element of the production, the unauthorized production can happen. We looked at RFID tags and the like, the idea being that the brand would obtain them independently and supply them to the offshore manufacturer. Say, make an order for 2000 handbags and supply 2000 coded tags. Without this sort of control, the factory could make a run of 3000 bags (assuming that they handled the raw material sourcing locally), meet the 2000 bag order and sell the other 1000 out the back door, bound for illicit markets wherever. With the control, the extra bags could be identified as illicit, since they'd lack the tag. Of course you'd have to have intellectual property protection support in the producing and target market countries along the way, which is where the idea foundered at the time, in addition to being a bit ahead of widespread adoption of the technology.Of course none of this would stop the "eh, close enough" type of counterfeiter. And there is HUGE demand for luxury/status items worldwide, but not ability to buy the real thing, hence the problem.
kizanski Posted December 23, 2014 Author Posted December 23, 2014 Well, that's all well and good, but we're not talking about a knock off of a guitar which has even been made in the past 35 years.
cmatthes Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Nope. Just a knock off guitar that was probably made in the last 3 months, of a guitar that hasn't been made in the last 35 years.Sorry that one didn't work out, Kiz - at least you get your money back in the deal and have a great cautionary tale.
hamerhead Posted December 23, 2014 Posted December 23, 2014 Plus, we got to laugh at you for being a dumbass.
kizanski Posted December 23, 2014 Author Posted December 23, 2014 Plus, we got to laugh at you for being a dumbass.Been entertaining you fucktards for over a decade. Why would I stop now?
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