… and as the article fails to mention… what about the bloody TREES!? Imagine scammers cutting down a century-old, beautiful tree just to make a few hundred dollars. What a scummy, short-term, selfish thing to do. GRRRR.
Stories like this make me consider that humans deserve to go extinct. Maybe raccoons and corvids will do a better job of caring for this planet.
If they actually cut them down, could you invoke TREE LAW? Wrongfully cutting down trees can lead to massive fines in the US, since they are so hard to replace.
Especially since you could pull this scam with a whole lot of other businesses that wold not result in cutting down trees.
Your mistake is thinking that scammers care about those things.
Maybe the point is to also reduce the selling price and buy the house with trees cut down for cheaper?
Raccoons and corvids? What, in the 30 minutes after they defeated the crabs, but before they evolved into crabs themselves?
Once everything evolves into crabs, we’ll be doing a lot better on this planet.
That’s apparently our benevolent creator’s plan.
slowly lifts Old Bay from under the bar
… In a news story about swaths of people getting scammed, finding it, stopping it, helping others and news notifying everyone possible… Humanity deserves extinction because of some scammers probably in India?
Doomers are fucking stupid.
Personally, I was expecting to read about some tree law here.
Why are Americans still dealing with checks in the age of digital banking?
That same scam is also ran on every other payment method. These would all be prevented by not accepting checks that aren’t for the exact amount and don’t pay the difference in cash to the check writer.
One reason is to avoid card transaction fees. For smaller companies providing often expensive services, like tree felling, they’ll pass on the card transaction fee to the client or recommend they just pay by check to avoid it.
Which is against the agreement with the banks, but here we are.
Even if it’s not explicitly passed on to the customer, prices increase to cover those fees. We had $7500 of tree felling and fire mitigation work done a few years ago. Assuming the fee is 3%, no reason for either party to pay $225 for the convenience of using a card when a check works fine.
Because the US detests change of any form, even if it will make things better.
More and more it seems like it’s especially if it’s gonna make things better lol
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I’m certainly not handing out my card over the phone.
Wait till you learn your routing and account numbers are right there, unencrypted, on the check, and there’s basically zero protection against unauthorized drafts in the EFT system.
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I think you’re assuming that a merchant who collects card details for payment also stores those details. They do not. The information is immediately tokenized and a 1-way authorization token is returned to the merchant. It’s literally what that little spinny circle when you click “pay” is doing. It’s reaching out to the payment network, which is in turn, reaching out to the card issuer who is proxying it to the issuing bank and asking for authorization.
At no point is your card number retained by the merchant. If the authorization code is somehow leaked, it’s literally only good for a single transaction, and can’t be used to generate future transactions.
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But you’re okay sending a check?
I still have to have a checkbook because my dog groomer and my tree trimmer/gutter cleaner companies both refuse to accept cards. They are small businesses and don’t want to deal with the fees. My options are go get cash every time, or keep a checkbook on hand to write checks. While I understand their reasoning, it’s infuriating that checks even still exist.
Lots of small businesses using square and other payment processors.
Honestly if a business told me that they don’t take card, I’d tell them they don’t take my business. Unless they’re an exceptionally skilled artisan (and I’m in the market for an exceptionally skilled artisan), their shit stinks like everyone else’s, and there’s another guy right behind them that will gladly take my money.
Man I hate having to bring cash for Facebook marketplace meetups, but at least then it’s worth the hassle because it’s an exceptionally good deal or unique item.
For me it’s services that I will pay by check for, not goods. My dog groomer took me a long time to find someone that would actually listen and not try to over-groom my dog. (Just bathe him, trim his paws and ears, and send his ass home! He’s a golden, do not cut off his chest fur, or his pantaloons, or his arm feathers!) And our gutter/tree guy because he legit charges half what the other larger companies in the area charge, does good work and cleans up after. I would rather give him a check than pay twice as much (not kidding) to the big corpo place via card.
Boomer contractors who can’t figure out how to take a payment on a mobile device.
I haven’t had a checkbook in a long time.
I have received a check for some equity with a previous employer. There is barely any bank on the continent that can do anything with it, so I’ll wait for my next overseas trip to cash it.
I receive checks sometimes. My mother-in-law sends them as a gift, for example. But my credit union just lets me take a photo of the front and back through their app, with ‘VIA MOBILE DEPOSIT’ written on the back.
On the other hand, I couldn’t even tell you the last time I wrote a check.
What are you talking about pretty much any bank can cash a check…?
In the NL, ING was the last one that did, they stopped doing it three years ago. I go to a few other countries around the EU as well regularly, it’s the same. Checks are not really a thing here any more.
Most foreign banks don’t deal with American checks. If you retire outside of the u.s. it can be difficult to deal with your retirement funds. There are a few expat banks around that specialize in dealing with this problem.
I pay in checks for large bills. I fail to see a problem
Why would you use a functional system for the past fifty years that works? Instead of using a third party data harvesting middleman like Venmo/Cash app/Paypal who can reject your purchase because fuck you?
Wait, you guys don’t have bank transfers in the USA? I can send money from my own bank account with no fees to every other bank in my country
We do, but most people are afraid to use them. We have Zelle, which is free. I think the issue is that Zelle isn’t protected. If you send the money to the wrong name/number there is no way to get that money back unless the recipient agrees to it. But there is no law or whatever to force that person to return the money if you are the one who made the mistake.
You gonna organize a bank transfer to pay your dinner check?
Yep, I scan a QR code that they give me and my bank, any bank in my country, will transfer the requested amount to the restaurant in one click on my phone. With two additional clicks I can send a QR code made by my bank to my friend who can transfer his part to me. Both transfers happen within a second.
On the way home, I pay for public transport by bank transfer by holding my card to the reader when getting on the bus, then off the bus. It’s simple and secure.
Oh wow, how interesting…
I’ve definitely never seen that in the US
It’s called Zelle. We have it, it just isn’t as ubiquitous.
You don’t get out much or you live in BFE. Plenty of restaurants bring you a QR code on the check.
I’d much prefer to do that than to hand my card off to a stranger to do god-knows-what with for 5-10 minutes in the back room.
Yes the us has bank transfers. No you are not special
Many banks charge a fee for wire transfers, in some instances $20. Zelle is free, but not every bank uses it.
Y’all don’t have a government option?
In Brazil we can send money to each other between bank accounts. There’s even this new and fast system called “Pix”, in which you can, in just some seconds, create a code of a payment request, show it as QRCode, scan it and pay it. It’s pretty neat.
In America, banks would lobby against it, and Republicans would call it socialism.
Has no one here ever used a debit card?
The problem is, you don’t know if it’ll bounce till you try.
It’s the only way to pay cashless without paying transaction fees. Big banks make too much off of credit card fees to allow instant transfers like the rest of the world.
Thanks for reminding me I need to go get a check lol.
Momentum more than anything, lot of places don’t accept them at all
This story makes me excited for the day we might someday have a tree-law or perhaps even bird-law sublemmy of our own.
Someday perhaps.
Tree law is a thing, there are big lawsuits in the states over trees.
The Japanese government recently arrested members of a big auto dealership for allegedly killings a few trees in front of their buildings.
Tree law was one of the few subreddits that I would actually read everytime I saw a post pop up in my feed. Something so satisfying about a good case of tree law.
You know what could speed this up, is if lemmings were willing to go do some tree crime.
Then we could speed run getting the tree-law sublemmy. In fact I know a good starting template for tree crime…
How would one report a tree crime, doesn’t seem the kind of thing to call 911 about?
You can tell me.
Or a scam-law…
Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
In this case, if the perp playing this game is caught, he can be sued for the cost of not only the wood of the tree, but the cost to replace it with the biggest tree possible (including grinding out the old stump, the equipment needed to dig the new hole for the new tree’s rootball, and transportation and planting of the tree itself). To get a large tree costs $1-2,000, never mind the outsized equipment necessary to move and plant it. So this can get quite expensive quite quickly.
Source: used to work in the industry, and had a friend who was a consultant on several cases like this, albeit it was generally malicious neighbors going after trees that weren’t on their property, because they ‘hated the leaves in the fall’ or ‘the tree was blocking their view’.
The scam in question, from the article:
McKcraken said he never requested a tree removal service and didn’t want any trees at his Forest Hills house — which he’s trying to sell — removed.
“They’re trying to target vacant houses because the owners won’t know,” he said. “So that they can post themselves as the owner, and the owners won’t be home to stop it and won’t be home to notice it if the tree services do show up.”
The Wilson County Sheriff’s Office said the scheme begins with a scammer calling or emailing a tree service company for a quote on how much it would be to cut down trees. After receiving an estimated amount, they send the company a faulty check for more than needed.
Before the company realizes the checks are null and void, the scammer asks the company to pay back the difference.
“They send you a check for $1,500, and they want you to send $500 back to them,” Adam Barbee with Arbor Sense said. “And then that way, they take $500, and you try to go cash the check, and the check is no good.”
“They send you a check for $1,500, and they want you to send $500 back to them,” Adam Barbee with Arbor Sense said. “And then that way, they take $500, and you try to go cash the check, and the check is no good.”
If someone sends me a check for $500 more than they should have, I would just have them send me another and void the incorrect one. Checks that don’t match invoices make for sloppy books.
And oddly the only way to buy weed on plastic around here (legally) is for you to use a debit card, which they round up to the next $5 and give you back the change (which most usually ends up in the budtenders tip jar anyway).
It’s because the way the law is written, it’s actually processed as an ATM transaction.
Obviously this is a legal loophole, but there are legitimate reasons to extract more than necessary.
Man, I had to look that up. That’s wild.
It’s kinda silly but it’s really equally silly to use the stores ATM (or a neighbors) just to give them cash. Having cash, for me, though, is a weird thing. I’m pretty well disciplined with spending on credit cards, but the idea of having “finite money” with me is challenging. What is too much money to carry regularly? What is too little to get through the day, barring any unexpected expenses.
At least my bank reimburses ATM fees, including those from the dispensaries.
Good idea.
Makes you wonder why so many are willing to just send some money back.
Usually they camp it in language where they are only able to cut one check (company policy of one check per PO, for example), but they need to pay two people, you and another facilitator such as a transport service. The extra money is to pay for the transport service, which is actually also the scammer.
Though in this case, the scammer is pretending to be a single person. But even if it was a company, the proper response is, “Well, I’ve already voided the check. Sort that shit out with your manager. We’ll do the work when the check clears.” That last line because the overpaying scam should be obvious these days. Sucks if you’re desperate for some work but that’s the kind of feeling these pieces of shit are targeting.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I guess it just seems ridiculous because I don’t see myself trusting a check from anyone nowadays.
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That is like, actually one of the oldest scams in the book. I’m impressed.
Yeah, this is textbook check fraud. The specific scam is called the fake check scam (who could have guessed?) It’s extremely common in online marketplaces too. Lots of “oh I’m sending a check to pay for your (very expensive) item and for the movers. If you could give $500 to the movers that’d be great.” Now you’ve handed the scammer $500 and they’ve stolen the item you had for sale.
For instance, let’s say you’re selling a motorcycle on Facebook marketplace. You’ll get contacted by someone offering your asking price. You accept. They overpay by like $500, and tell you that the excess is for the movers who show up to collect the bike. So you pay the dude $500 to take the bike. Then their payment bounces/gets reversed, and you’re out the payment you gave to the mover (really just the scammer, or the scammer’s friend,) and they stole your bike without paying for it.
I’m guessing they’ve pivoted to cutting trees because the online marketplaces wised up and started warning sellers about the potential scam.
That’s a pretty interesting scam.
People have been doing similar scam on used car sellers for years.
Example being I post a car for sale. Scammer offers to buy. Scammer brings check higher than the agreed price. Tells me I can deposit the whole check, just give them difference back in cash. Scammer leaves with that cash and the car. Few days later bank tells me the check was no good.
Used to hear about that often enough Craigslist even sent out warnings to sellers.
I dunno, if you cut someone’s tree down, you’re responsible–even if you thought you had permission.
And the tree’s owner can sue you for comically large amounts of money. Ye olde r/bestoflegaladvice actually had to ban tree law posts for much the same reason that r/nocontext had to ban content from r/crusaderkings.
Yeah I was thinking about tree law lol lol
TREEE LAWWW!!
What a bizarrely specific scam. Shouldn’t take too long until everyone in that line of work in a particular area catches up on it.
Overpayment and asking for cash back is one of the most common scams, it’s hardly specific. You can replace tree felling with just about anything. They’re just the latest victims.
Yeah, and not to diminish or demean any victims, but waiting for any check to clear before reimbursement is a solution, or requesting a new check and ripping / voiding the old one on receiving the new check in the correct amount.
And if someone gets mad at you for that, they’re either scamming you or they’re not being accountable for their mistake.
The scam is old AF, it’s just new targets. If you’ve tried to sell a car in the last 20 years, you’ve dealt with someone trying to pull it. Or rent a room or house, there’s a reason Airbnb is popular with owners, even for long term situations.
This sounds like the shittest scam ever and one that is very easy to avoid.
