Part 1: Beware!

Among other things, we usually hit the road and buy groceries during one of my days-off (Friday or Saturday). Last Friday was no exception. We went to the mall with the intention of buying groceries and eating lunch as it’s already lunchtime.

However, we were sidetracked by a salesperson from one appliance company in the mall, AOWA. We –my ma and I- were given coupons for redemption at their outlet, no fee needed. Since it was just near a store we frequent, we decided to drop by the outlet, thinking that we’ve got nothing to lose in the process. (In reality, we lost precious time! Almost 2 hours!).

Mugs in boxes. Got these for free after signing in our names. But that’s not the end of story (that is just the beginning of their devious marketing strategy).We were shown their products..One of these was the electronic foot massager, which my father tried, upon the encouragement of the salesman. Things became fishy when in the middle of this “trial”, the sales person opened the box containing the mugs and pretended to be surprised at the sight of a rolled paper inside the box. It was supposed to be a coupon of some promo they had last Christmas. And the man prompted me to open it (while saying that he is not aware of this since all he knew was that the coupon was a Christmas promo..blah blah..).

What the coupon said was we won 1 sound system set (man trying to be so surprised, ecstatic said he has to call main office and ask if we can avail of this since he’s not aware that promo period was extended..). He even insisted that I speak with their so-called main office personnel (who wants us to believe that she’s speaking to me for verification-sake i.e confirm if I’m related to the salesman ..etc..).

Catch: To avail of the free sound system, we need to buy 1 item from their product list. By the way, the prices of their products are way too expensive, in 38K-49k range. Sound system costs within that range too.

I listened to the salesman with skepticism building everytime he opened his mouth.

We’ve heard of text/internet scams, networking schemes and other similar schemes with the intention of shortchanging their clients. I have been a victim to one of these years ago (when I was still immature with matters concerning “money and finances”) and my only consolation that time was I lost far lesser amount of cash than the people I know who invested in that networking company. They were speaking of millions, half-millions, hundreds of thousand of money coming from retirement or stint abroad! Lucky me, what I lost then, I was able to save much more of that amount in the bank the same year. Since then, I have learned to be wary and not to fall prey with people who operate fraudulent businesses, ever again. Hard lesson but I learned it well (I would like to think so..haha).