Lack of knowledge in their victims.
Yesterday I got scammed, which is something that rarely happens to me. But it occured in an area where I had little knowledge.
I doing some house maintenance, and getting the tree in my back garden trimmed by professional tree surgeons, when someone knocked my front door. Naturally I went to see who was there, and it was a bunch of guys offering to clean my guttering. £150 for the lot. I said fine, because I needed it done, and then went to get the tree surgery supervised.
Next thing I know the guys doing the guttering claimed that the felt under the roof tiles was badly worn away, and I was in danger of water coming in. I was susceptible to this argument because a few days before we had indeed had a huge thunderstorm. They made a quote - £700 for both the guttering and doing the felt, insisted that this was at a deep discount if I could pay cash.
When I mentioned I didn't carry that much cash in my account, they did the hard sell and said, "transfer the money from your savings account, it'll cost you much more if there is another storm and rain damage occurs".
Anyway, I withdrew the maximum from my current account (£400) and gave it to them. They claimed they put in some plastic in the guttering and left, and said they'd come back the next day. It was after they left I started to have doubts. I couldn't see the plastic that they claimed to have put in. And how could that work be more expensive than the tree surgery which was pretty substantial?
My husband hit the roof when he came home. I hadn't managed to get a business card from them, I didn't know their names, I had no phone number, and I had paid cash. The bank's daily withdrawal limit had saved me £300, because if it wasn't in place I'd have stupidly paid £700 and I'll never complain about it again! Anyway, we decided not to continue with the next day's work. I was simply not to open the door.
They did come back, banged the door practically every hour, and then removed the guttering and left it on the drive. But I didn't answer the door and pretended to be out.
When my husband came home, he was around when they knocked the door again - at 8 p.m. And they were taken aback to see him (at 6ft 4'') rather than me. I think they thought I was a woman on my own (I don't wear my wedding ring because it is now too small for my fingers). They still tried to scam him - they accepted that he was cancelling the rest of the job, but did he want to pay them to put the guttering back. He said they really ought to do it for the money they'd already taken. The head scammer agreed, we asked him to leave his card ( for the umpteenth time), I even asked him his name, which he sort of deflected.
Anyway, it's now midday and they haven't come to put the guttering back. I think they want to steer well clear of our property in case we note their registration plates.
How did I come to be scammed?
I consider myself very savvy. I don't fall for online scams. I tend to know all the tricks and protect myself from them. I know about online security, strength of passwords, not to fall for dodgy IPOs and so on.
But I know dipsquat about home repairs, what they involve and what they should really cost. And the scammers were able to play on both my lack of expertise and my worry that something might really be wrong with my house.
I guess I've learnt an expensive lesson - leave the home repair decisions to my husband.
But next time you hear someone was scammed, and think, "how could they be so stupid?" - well it's likely that the scammer hit them in a spot where they have low knowledge and high fear, and played on that. We all have our areas of expertise and areas of ignorance, and it's the ignorance bits where we are vulnerable.
I'm pretty bad at estimating the costs of household repairs too. It's something they should teach you at school - xyz goes wrong, this is what it takes to fix it, this is how much it is likely to cost. That way people wouldn't get scammed by unscrupulous salespeople.
In theory, we should be able to check the credentials of tradespeople online, including the costs - and if you book in advance you can do that. The trouble is people who simply turn up on the doorstep to do work - it's hard to say, hang on a minute, I'd like to google you before I allow you to do any work - though with hindsight, that's what I should have done.
Online ratings have definitely improved things.
But I wish there was something like Uber for tradesmen - where you could pay digitally, and there would be a money trail as well as the ability to rate the tradesman. That would put the scammers out of business for sure.
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