Anyone here ever been scammed?

[Nothlit]

The only times I can remember being scammed both involved people approaching me with semi-believable stories, asking for cash. One was at a gas station off a major interstate highway. A teenage girl approached me while I was pumping gas and asked if I could give her and her friends $5 because they were out of gas and needed to get home. It smelled fishy from the start, but not being a confrontational or rude person, I just handed over the cash. It was easier for me to give them $5 than to refuse. It was only after I saw them get in their car and drive off without pumping any gas that I realized for sure.

The second occasion, I was approached by a well-dressed man with a clipboard as I was walking down a city street. He made some sort of plea about needing funds for some sort of research or development initiative (something along the lines of childhood malnutrition or similar). Again, I knew it was probably a scam. There were a lot of homeless panhandlers in the area; this guy was probably just one of the more creative among them. But for whatever reason I forked over $10 because it simply felt easier to me than being rude and refusing.

Those were both several years ago. I've developed a thicker skin since then, so I probably would respond differently today. But in any case, I'm pretty okay with only ever being scammed out of $15 over the course of my life.

[thd7t]

My grandmother got a call a couple of months ago from someone claiming to be her grandson Mike begging for money for some emergency or another. They actually got kinda close, she has one grandson and he's not named Mike but my sister's husband is (grandson-in-law). Luckily she got suspicious since it's not like them to ask for money despite having gone through some very tight times and she hung up then called my sister back. You hear about these things happening in the news but this is the first I've heard of it happening to someone I know

People tried to pull this on my grandfather (age 97).  The person said he was my brother and that he was in jail.  He's hard of hearing and couldn't quite tell if my brother was calling, but my grandmother was with him and wrote "SCAM" on a piece of paper for him. 

[JetBlast]

So far nothing more than the occasional panhandler for me, but I have relatives that were invested with Bernie Madoff. Their CPA told them the numbers didn't make sense and they should get out, but they ignored him because the profits looked so good and being such a prominent figure on Wall Street they couldn't believe he would be doing anything shady.

[highcountry]

Just after I turned 18 I had a shoe repair person take me for a ride.  I'd gone in to have the shoes resoled, and he successfully up-sold me to get some other work done.  He did a bad job on the resoling, and the shoes died not long after.  I suspect I got my money's worth in the end as the lesson was quickly learned and not very expensive.  I've always been puzzled by why he would push additional shoe repairs on old shoes, as it seems like repeat business is more valuable than a $30 repair.

[NV Teacher]

And I feel very virtuous - I stopped them from harassing several other people, and possibly really scamming someone - so I did my civic duty.

Can you see my halo?

That's how I am with telemarketers.  My goal is to keep them on the phone for as long as possible asking any and every question I can think of and having them repeat things over and over.  It's dumb I know but it brings me great pleasure.

[galliver]

A few months ago I was hanging out in a hotel room after a day at a conference and got a call on the phone from someone claiming to be the manager, about how my card supposedly hadn't gone through and they needed to run it again to straighten it out. Fair enough, I said, sometimes weird things happen, I'll go down to the desk and sort it out. At which point he escalated and informed me that if I didn't give him the number RIGHT NOW I'd be evicted from the hotel. At which point I called BS. Went down to the front desk anyway and found another guy there telling the night manager the exact same story I had. Really glad I have a giant flashing stop sign in my head that goes off every time someone asks for my CC over the phone.

As for being scammed out of real life money:

Last week I went to the dentist and was billed $400+. In exchange, I had one half - the left side of my teeth cleaned. The 2 hour visit was mostly spent taking x-rays and photos of my mouth, "oral cancer screening", and other crap I didn't really want. I don't mind paying for x-rays - but charging $50 to take photos of my mouth with a goddamn digital camera pissed me off.

Luckily I had insurance, but still. Now I still need to go to another dentist for the other half of my teeth to be cleaned.

Sounds like you were getting a deep-cleaning done, where they have to numb you? That would explain why they could only do half your mouth at a time. My mom gets this.

[Lian]

Never on investments, but I keep investments simple and low-cost with index funds.  A couple of years ago, I received several very threatening phone messages from a debt collector. They sounded very credible, and I was very concerned, because even though I had no debts, I imagined some past forgotten debt - I racked my brains and worried. I did some research, and found the debt collector was out-of state, should not have been making threatening phone calls to me, and was likely a fraud.  I actually read recently that the company (based in Ohio) was finally being prosecuted, and that they had raked in millions of dollars with threatening phone calls that effectively scared people into sending them money on prepaid cards.