Dodgy shop on Oxford Street selling £20 iPods

C_Ronaldo

i was in london some years ago and what rodhull described sounded very similar to what i saw, they had loads of electrical goods all at very cheap prices and it had to be dodgy,

Horasio

lynzpower wrote:

my OH said there was one of these in bournemouth once and it was all over telly, people got the boxes home to find they were empty aside from weights like bricks and so forth.

I just dont understand why trading standards dont go in and close these down on impact.

I better warn my mother about this one

Quasar

Unfortunately when an item is sold "as seen" that's just what it means: you buy what you see. Personally I don't think is legal, let alone right, but peeps fall for it time and again, that's why these scumbags can carry on doing, er... business.

When I see things going for impossibly low prices, far from thinking I'm about to save a packet, I go by the maxim "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is".

Broke_Student

Me and my mother fell for this one a few years ago. We ended up with a £5 camera for £50! There are some every few years in Leicester.

From what i remember it was as others here have described. The day starts with them emphasising heavily this is not an auction and the check very hard to see people had not been in there before. Doors close. They sell worthless goods at pennies. Poundshop goods at a pound - looks more impressive when you think hes randomly taking stuff he has (could have been a game boy) and just flogging a walkman + bunch of junk. They then give some folks their money back for saying they are happy and look too nice to be true by now. Then they make bundles of empty boxes (gameboy, camcorder) and sell to their own people for £20. Then he announces he wants to move onto bigger stock/deals. If you have £50 you should wave it in the air, if you don't you should leave now. Then i don't know.... a period of blankness/dumbness and you leave the shop £50 down with a £5 plastic camera!

Infact, I think there is a joke TV advert about these sorts of people at the moment (possibly a credit card one?). Its the one with two thugs and it ends "if you don't like it, you can come and see our complaints department" and they have fists in palms.

Was an experiance though and worth paying the price to learn the lesson. That day made me much more wiser to the world.

Poppycat

Yes I saw that and reminded me off this thread.

The real Hustle is back on TV on BBC3, there some right cons including breaking into a house and pretending to sell a car take the cash then 2 bogu coppers knock on door and arrest the person selling the car.

Kilty wrote:

There was a piece on The Real Hustle on BBC Three about this kind of thing.

They got a van full of stuff, with some expensive electronics on display, and sold loads of small, crappy items to people first (like £1 shop cutlery and stuff), keeping asking them if they were happy, and if they said they were happy, giving them their money back.

They moved on to some pile of crap for £20 apiece, people snapped it up, they then said "Are you happy?" everyone shouted "Yes, We're happy" and they then said "If you're happy, we're happy", closed the door and drove off.

Broke_Student

3. The Jam auction
The con: Jam Auctions involve “jamming” a big crowd into a shop which has been taken over for a few days by the gang. "Lucky" customers are then persuaded to part with their money for apparently cheap-as-chips electronic items.

How it works: The shop is filled to the rafters with gadgets and gizmos which are offered at a bargain price to anyone willing to pay cash for a “mystery bag” – which the hustlers say will contain a selection of products worth many times the value of the cash handed over.

As soon as the victim parts with their cash they are bundled out of the shop and left to discover the harsh facts: they’ve just bought a pile of worthless rubbish – sometimes just stones in a box.

reehsetin

grrrrr these people irritate the hell out of me - and the crowds moreso
i work on oxford street - they pop up for a couple of days usually before new buys come in and set up the shop - new buys always have signs saying the items sold in the last few days are nothing to do with us your screwed basically
feel like screaming at um when you walk past - you twits it really is too good to be true - a laptop for £20 my !!! grrrr

Elliesmum

Lakeuk wrote:

These are one of the oldest con's going, they usually end with the punters paying £50-£100 for a cheap plastic camera worth no more than £5 but they're told it's RRP is £400.

Punters leave shocked that the sale has early before they could get what they wanted (not that it was ever there), but happy they've got a bargain - It's only a very short time later when they realise they've been given aload of rubbish and the conn's are long gone.

BBC3 did a series on con's called 'The Real Hustle' in which they demostrated how it was done on the public - I expect it'll get repeated

I saw this too - it's a con pure and simple

Bamber19

the newest series of the real hustle now has this exact con on it, it's similar to the van "are you happy, here's your money back" one but slightly different. As mentioned by the OP some people get ipos etc for a very low price...these people are plants, they are not necessarily "in on it" but they are at the very least being paid to put their hand up to buy everything(this entices others to think "wow, that must be a good deal" and at the end of the day the items that get sold to the general public are th echeap electronics worth a few pounds for £20 and the "£600 watch" for £20 aswell. It's quite easy to get a little bit of plastic with a RRP made up and claim the watch is worth that when in fact it's a £1 watch.

wlf

The scam is actually a lot more complex than what was explained in The Real Hustle(whihc by the way seems to be getting worse by the episode).

There is a book called 'The Hard Sell' which has a comprehensive write up of the way it works.