“I understand my permission herein overrides my listing on any state of(sic) federal do not call list and any prior listing on the do not call lists of the companies listed above.”
That’s disturbing. There is no way that’s possibly legally binding? Surely there can’t be a loophole this ridiculous in the Do Not Call law?
If it's legal, it seems like every business would do this. Your bank, the local McDonalds when you install their app, Uber & Lyft, every e-commerce site would bury in the terms & conditions, etc.
I have, but I assume they were just wardialing. I don't think I've ever gotten a scam call where they actually knew my name or DOB or anything else that could be associated with the info I put into the McDonald's app (presumably that's what they would be selling... just the existence of a phone # isn't particularly interesting I'd guess)
It is legal, and that is exactly what businesses do. The statement was just a notification. Any company you do business with and provide your info can contact you, because you overrode the DNC by giving out your contact information.
I’m pretty sure filling out a form with your phone number and a granted permission with that wording does override dnc lists, but you can reverse it again when they call.
The general rule of thumb is that consent to be called overrides the Do-Not-Call stuff. Although, that said, you also have to be able to later withdraw that consent, I believe (I know this is true as far as anti-spam laws go, but I'm not specifically familiar with the telephony rules).
Even in that case it can be argued that the actual quote was written by a real doctor and the actor is simply reading it. This one sounds like a complete scam.
Don't worry, they've mostly moved on to selling crypto and NFTs for the most part... I haven't seen a car parked in my local mall for ages, there's a bitcoin ATM parked in that space now.
There's a certain breed of huckster that even if they designated a prize winner, it would be one of their family members. The most important part of managing scams is to expose them, and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work.
You can never guarantee that! Even if the law was able to be that clear-cut about a particular crime, plenty of people would still believe they will get away with it, otherwise there would be no hard crime in the world right?
In lots of cases, this is demonstrably not true. Sure some scammers might make millions but many make much less. Look at the average cost for prison, the cost of the police and Courts and it can add up to much more.
I'm not saying that you should only jail people if it's cheaper but society cannot afford to incarcerate everybody who commits a crime, not only for the money but the effect it has on ex-cons who can't find work and spiral downwards; families growing up with parents in prison; hardening a soft criminal by jailing them with hard criminals.
Sadly, it is much more complicated than we want to admit and there aren't many good alternatives that I have seen. Tends to be quite polarised "never jail people" or "always jail people".
The government does nothing about the overwhelming majority of small time scammers. It’s left to the civil courts and small claims courts. When the feds do prosecute scams, it’s typically for large dollar value schemes that defraud tens of millions or more.
So we already have that soft on crime reality when it comes to scamming and false advertising. The average person believes the government is far, far more active than it really is in this type of issue. Crime pays and most criminals get away with it.
But you are assuming what they are doing is illegal. Just because the car isn't winnable might be misleading but that doesn't make it a crime if the defendent claims that they never said that you could win the car, they could also claim that the Ts and Cs describe the real scenario.
Even if it is slightly a grey area, you then have a lawyer fight which costs a ton of cash and then even if found guilty, what are you realistically going to do to someone who pretended that you could win a car to market their timeshares? life in prison at $100K/year to the tax payer?
This is why consumer protection institutions exist (SEC, FTC, FDA, etc.) so individuals don't need to sue.
These sorts of sales tactics should just be illegal and criminal. If your sales pipeline requires exploiting human cognitive failures (ie., "boiler room sales tactics") then you're scamming people. A business exists to provide a service people want, not to scam people into something they dont. The gov. provides limited liability protections to businesses, not to scams.
I think we're far enough into our understanding of human psych now to say "here are the fault lines", if your business principally (, systematically, essentially, ...) uses them to make money, it's illegal.
> The most important part of managing scams is to expose them,
Yes, because their targets will be reading Hacker News.
The Nigerian Prince scam still works, and every person in the world has heard of it by now.
> and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work.
I don't think they value their public image half as much as you seem to think. But you're on to something.
What if the alternative line of work they had to pick was cleaning toilets at a federal penitentiary, or stamping license plates, or maybe breaking gravel at a re-socialization camp somewhere in Siberia?
It's pretty easy to be deceptive without needing to be false. A lot of advertising these days just use a mix of clever selective language, vague subjective terms, and omission of important information to avoid directly lying. It's pretty much normalized across all marketing at this point.
To my knowledge an ad doesn't have to correspond to the visual which is why a lot of ads visually sell or imply sex in some way, meanwhile whatever there selling isn't. Clothing is notorious for this. Sticking a car there just catches your eye like an attractive person might to lure you in. It's then up to the passerby to read the details and fine print of what's actually being sold.
Well that's just disappointing. There is no car and it's all just smoke and mirrors to subject you to things like a timeshare promo and harvest your data? That's not even a good scam! It's just like countless others. The only creativity is the car and its not even theirs its just a loaner from some random dealership.
Even if this outfit is fully owned and operated by a scuzzy timeshare company, do they really make enough money to justify the $1500/~=22 marks?
The article only mentions people being contacted by the timeshare company, but I wonder if they might sell the info as a secondary revenue stream, especially given the waiver which claims to override federal do-not-call lists.
How much would one packet of contact info+metadata sell for, if the subject has signed on to be contacted by advertisers?
> How much would one packet of contact info+metadata sell for, if the subject has signed on to be contacted by advertisers?
LendingTree.com was charging $70 per "lead", this was 2018 or so, not sure how prices have changed since then. However this was on the high end, zillow.com, also sold leads but for quite a bit lower (although you got what you paid for).
> do they really make enough money to justify the $1500/~=22 marks
I was wondering the same, but one thing that helps the math in their favor a bit was that the 22 was in one hour on a weekday afternoon. I imagine it’s higher on weekends and evenings.
Yes. Timeshare sales orgs make a boat-ton of money. The average punter isn’t capable of doing the math to compute that a timeshare is among the worst deals anywhere.
Because the fundamental economics of time shares are a scam. They are pitched as "ownership" but what they really are are perpetual rental contracts with no way out. (The rent is called "maintenance fees" but it doesn't matter what label you attach to it. It's a sum of money that you are obligated to pay year after year after year. If it quacks like rent...) And you even have to pay a hefty sum up front for the privilege of being obligated to rent a place once a year forever.
Most of what you've described can also be applied to condominiums. The only difference is that you can occupy them year round, but I don't think that's a relevant difference. Are the "fundamental economics" of those also "a scam"?
I have no idea what a timeshare is (sorry) but aren’t condos something you fully own? Like some of my friends live in condos, some lived in a condo for a few years and then sold them before moving into a house or some other city. Where I live the condos are usually similar in appearance to apartments (bed bath living room kitchen all on same floor) and there are townhomes which are a bit fancier and you might get an attached garage.
> A timeshare (sometimes called vacation ownership) is a property with a divided form of ownership or use rights. These properties are typically resort condominium units, in which multiple parties hold rights to use the property, and each owner of the same accommodation is allotted their period of time. Units may be sold as a partial ownership, lease, or "right to use", in which case the latter holds no claim to ownership of the property. The ownership of timeshare programs is varied, and has been changing over the decades.
I think they're talking about the fact that you're required to pay condo fees to maintain your ownership of the condo, which does kind of make it a hybrid rental in a way. Obviously there's pretty good reasons for condo fees on some level (ignoring any mismanagement that may or may not be uncommon -- though sometimes the mismanagement is that they're too low), but it's something you have to factor in. You can never be completely free and clear with a condo that has fees.
I don't think there's a way of owning a domicile in any capitalist country without paying a membership fee (property tax) to the government. If you rent, you're doing that indirectly.
I mean, "homeowner association fees" are just condo fees for places that aren't apartments. They seem even less likely to go towards anything useful than condo fees do though.
But yes, that's true about property taxes. But since that's a commonality between condos and otherwise-individually-owned property it doesn't really matter. In a condo you pay both, but if you own outright you only pay one. In a rental you're kinda paying both combined, because the owner pays property taxes and then presumably also tries to extract profit.
Anyways, I don't agree that condos are a scam in the same way that timeshares are, and I don't think a condo is just a glorified rental (though the one condo I have owned in my life had absurdly high fees that I regretted getting myself into) or a scam like timeshares are. I was just trying to explain what I though the GP meant.
Condo home owners association control the fees. They go to insurance, money to replace common owned properly like the roof, exterior walls, paint, parking, landscape etc. You can go get elected and convince the board to not invest in these things and lower the fees. You can also vote to increase it to pay for things like to add solar.
Did you ever look HOA financial docs that details exactly what the HOA spent money on?
In the condo I owned? Yes, I became quite familiar with how the money was spent, and most of it was in principle logical for the building it was in, and the board wasn't doing anything unethical or anything like that.
It was, unfortunately, just a very bad situation for the building, which was aging poorly from its origins as a low unit count high value building with a lot of expensive amenities, windows that couldn't handle changing climate, a parkade that needed deep structural work, having been built when asbestos was in vogue, and a population that was once wealthy but was now largely on fixed incomes and declining property value.
No one did anything wrong (except maybe a few attempts to fix the parkade in overly optimistic and superficial ways that required re-fixing at more expense later), it just wasn't worth condo fees ballooning well past my mortgage payments and it ended up costing well hundreds of $k to sell and doing so was one of the most stressful times of my life.
None of that means "condos are always bad". Just this one was a mistake.
If you mean what I said about HOA vs condo fees, I've only ever seen HOA used for detached homes or townhouses, where the common concerns are a lot less critical than in an apartment building (and so, from what I know, tend to be more frivolous). But maybe it's used differently elsewhere.
Every condo I’ve owned the condo fees were controlled by the HOA. Sometimes we were members of two HOAs, one for the neighborhood and one for the condo complex.
Where I live if it's a condo the organization built around the unit owners is called a condo association or corporation. The principle is the same though. The board is elected by the unit owners based on ownership units and they manage or delegate management of things like fees and reserves and upkeep.
The main difference between a condo association and an HOA here is what kind of property is involved. But HOAs are also a relatively recent development here and aren't regulated as strongly so they vary more.
Timeshares are very similar but the difference is that you typically only get a week or two to stay there - it's jointly owned by others.
That obviously has a big impact on resell value - so much to the point that some timeshare owners can't give it away let alone sell it, because no one wants to be beholden to the maintenance fees.
No because you buy a condo and get full ownership. You can use it 24/7, rent it out, remodel internally … hell you can even break down walls if they aren’t structural or add new walls if you want.
Depending on specifics you even get partial ownership of the whole building and a seat on its management board. At least that’s how it works for my mom, they run the building like a co-op and there is no other owner than the people who own the apartments inside.
edit: a timeshare in comparison is kinda like buying an NFT of an apartment. It gives you the right (obligation) to use the place for a period of time every year
> The only difference is that you can occupy them year round, but I don't think that's a relevant difference.
Most people think it's a pretty relevant difference. For one thing, if you occupy a place year-round, you can keep your belongings in it. That's a pretty significant feature for most people, which is the reason most people choose to live in a permanent domicile rather than moving every week. But different strokes for different folks I guess.
The "a relevant difference" part was in relation to the sentence after, which is whether something is a scam or not. Regardless of what utility year-round occupancy affords you, I doubt that's the defining factor between whether it's a scam or not.
I suspect there's also an overselling of a given property, and if not straight overselling, overselling the viable months.
Most vacation destinations are somewhat seasonal. Maybe the most major cities with year round cultural activities, but not in places like beach and ski towns.
You can potentially have 52 "1-week-a-year" people fighting over the 16-20 weeks a year the location is most desirable, and maybe settling for lesser times, or just not using it that year. Hell, why not sell 60 memberships, knowing some will just punt in any given year?
Condo fees are generally set by an elected council of owners based on actual spending needs. The condo association is also 'owned' by the condo owners, so if it dissolves any assets in the accounts revert to the owners. This means that you are entering into a partnership where the other partners are theoretically acting in your interest. They also come with the legal protections of being real property.
Timeshare owners are generally not represented by a committee of other owners, the money does not go to things approved by them, and the company makes no promises about acting in the interest of timeshare owners.
So yeah, you are contractually obligated to pay fees for a space you can occupy is where they are similar. There's a reason that timeshares almost never appreciate, often being given away for free, where a condo tends to hold value or appreciate.
In Australia you're obliged to provide the accounts to prospective buyers and current owners in "condo" (we call them Strata Title) units. Very easy to see where the money is going and how it's been managed.
As a fun little bit of anecdata, newer buildings are always the worst with many leftover, teething issues and strata title can sometimes be heavily in debt. Old buildings can have huge amounts in the sinking fund and may elect to reduce yearly fees and rely on interest.
A condominium is an ownership structure, where each owner owns the exclusive rights to some portion of a building (or set of buildings) and share common ownership in the rest of the condo association. I fail to see how that's even passingly like a timeshare, except that both typically have fees and involve real estate.
1. If you own a condo, you get voting shares in your strata/HOA. The owner collective collectively sets fees, maintenance schedules, etc. The owners act for the interest of themselves, so as an owner, that is usually in your interest. Legislature protects your rights as an owner.
2. If in some hypothetical world, you were unhappy with the fees, and you couldn't sell your condo, you can walk away from it anytime you want, and all you're out is the purchase cost of the condo.
3. You can't do that with the timeshare. You need to find another sucker to take the timeshare off your hands.
4. For what you get out of it, the cost of owning/renting a timeshare versus owning/renting a condo is horribly tilted against the timeshare.
5. Which is why intelligent people will pay a million dollars for a condo, but only idiots buy timeshares.
6. Which why you get screwed if you want to do #2, because of #3.
The reason people buy timeshares is because they are bad at math, bad at finances, and don't understand that they are getting fleeced.
Timeshares don't necessarily have to be shitty scams, it's entirely possible to design one that isn't a waste of money. But in practice, all of them are.
I’m on the board of my condo’s HOA and can see where every dollar of my fees get spent. It’s pretty much entirely going into maintenance of the building.
Serious question: how has post-pandemic inflation impacted the economics of timeshares purchased pre-pandemic? Is there any particular point in time where we can look back with the benefit of hindsight and say that a timeshare actually would have been a good investment?
I'm sure that certain timeshares (no inflation adjustment with good governance) have aged really well, and some people that wanted access to specific locations were able to pickup timeshare rights for a song.
The problem is that the "benefit of hindsight" question requires you to compare other investments that have probably fared as well or better without the constraints/risks of typical timeshares.
Honestly I find it kind of a shame because there are places in the world I would actually love to own/rent a regular consistent shareable space in, but it's basically impossible to do, without it being a scam, unless you have a bunch of well-off friends who want roughly the same thing as you.
Probably the closest you can come is buying or renting a place and then airbnb-renting it out most of the time, but then you're getting yourself into some legally grey areas most likely (plus becoming a landlord, which may be quite a lot of work and/or morally questionable in itself depending on your views).
People complain that Safari is a terrible web citizen. Here I go to this website, with Safari and my trusty ad blocker extension, and the page keeps reloading endlessly. Who’s to blame? The crappy website, Safari, or its extension?
I mean—-tongue in cheek—-are you trying to illustrate that Safari actually goes above and beyond here by looping infinitely on a page that is about a scam that is essentially about an ad technique that loops you endlessly?
There are other equally shady fronts for this activity. I made the mistake of giving my name and number a person running one of those "raffles" at an NHL arena. I was deluged with time share spam calls for weeks afterwards. I should've known better as the team owner made his money marketing for AOL.
I'm suprised they go to so much effort to get peoples info in 2022. Surely u can scrape as much of that as you want from social media or just buy it en-mass? Then u can spam people to your hearts content.
I think the source of the information might be useful. If they truly think they are going to win a car, then the chances of a successful scam are higher. The more gullible. The more vulnerable. Thus an easier target.
If you ever watch scam baiting videos, those Indian scammers share and sell the numbers the collect. If they can fall for the "Microsoft tech support" scam once, then they are likely to fall for the "Amazon refund" scam as well.
They are looking for qualified leads, 28 years or older, hopefully in a couple, mobile number, where you like to go on vacation, and what type of credit card(s) you own. Scraping social media will absolutely not generate leads that a salesperson can contact.
> Patrick collects a rolodex of her (fake) data — full name, age, marital status — then tells her she has to be at least 28 to enter the drawing. “Tell your parent to call me,” he says, and hangs up.
> Her “dad” (our writer, Conor) gives it one last try. Patrick tells Conor that in order to win the car, he has to go to a local Great Destinations office and attend a 90-minute timeshare presentation.
This is the only part I still don't understand after reading the article. Why do they limit this to people at least 28? Is this just a way of filtering out people unlikely to have enough money to scam into spending on a timeshare, or are they avoiding some esoteric regulation that somehow blocks them from marketing to younger people?
Anecdotally, I had 20000x more money at 22 than 28. If I remain employed for the rest of the year I might be on par by the end of it. Graphing my income over the last 10 years would look like a memory leak
I'm hoping the same. Regarding 401k please remember that employer matches do not count towards the contribution limit, always calculate your deduction so that you max it out without the employer match. The employer match is the cherry on top.
My income potential increased quite dramatically actually. But after multiple burnouts, and struggling with symptoms of ADHD, it doesn't really matter what you accomplish most of the time if you miss enough morning standups to piss off the manager. So I've really struggled to maintain _any_ employment, and therefore I had literally zero money going into this year. The memory leak analogy was due to working every so often enough to bank a few tens of thousands, and then losing that job and just gradually draining mt entire bank account while looking for a new one.
Yes, and that's why I asked if the intention of limiting the scam to people 28 and above was about filtering people unlikely to be able to pay for them
A friend of the family recently won a million dollar house in the hospital raffle. It was a house on the Gold Coast in Queensland, which he immediately sold. I think he might also have won $20,000 of gold bullion in another hospital raffle.
And off topic but my brother won a years supply of Kentucky Friend Chicken in the footy tipping..... and he is a vegetarian. Imagine that - you win the sacrifice of 365 chickens for your skill in picking footy teams. KFC gave him 50 x $50 vouchers.
And I once spent two full days entering every possible online competition I could find. You can guess how much I won.
Here is Australia in the 1980's it was common to find free competition tickets that you could enter in fish and chip shops. For a joke, a friend entered another friend, who won an all expenses paid trip for two to Europe, without knowing they had been entered.
I personally during the source of my many years, have won precisely nothing ever.
The Gold Coast and Queensland are in Australia, so you're 100% on the money. You see Surf Life Saving raffles for gorgeous homes and cars all the time. I imagine the laws in our country (I'm also in Australia, though not Australian) mean the advertised prizes have to be winnable.
We get the car parked in the shopping centre with big "WIN THIS CAR" signs. Entry is $5-10 per ticket though, so it seems feasible there's actually a winner somewhere along the way (My assumption is a Mustang appears in a few shopping centres at once and one is ultimately given away, for example).
there are also raffles for entire houses held in the vancouver bc area, for a children's hospital and a few other charities. the houses/property really do exist and there really is a winner each year. it's my understanding that these do see a fair bit of legal scrutiny and oversight to make sure everything is above board, tickets are like $100 or $300 a piece.
Kinda funny how that comment is flag-killed, but an equally unverifiable anecdote is the top comment on the previous discussion, and it claims the same thing:
a lot of things are, I don't think it matters if it's verifiable true, it's a single n=1 anecdote anyway. The meaning comes from the reason it was mentioned, which I don't think is fluff.
That a difficult task might be possible using an unconventional method that the competition designers didn't anticipate. Again, I said believing it isn't necessary.
> There are other types of car giveaways run by more legitimate parties (charity raffles, event promotions) that do deliver the goods — but if you win, you’re liable to pay a hefty gift tax.
I don't think it's a gift tax, but ordinary income tax. A coworker won a living room sofa set on a game show, and the staff were waiting with a 1099 for her as soon as she stepped off the stage. The IRS says you need to pay tax based on the fair market value, but the shows will list the prize at it's full retail price.
So if you should happen to (and you won't) win the Acura, you'll owe 25% or more on it. Plus any state income tax. I'm not sure when the IRS actually wants their money, but a safe assumption would be "soon". Perhaps by the next quarterly estimated-tax date.
In Australia, the thing called an "art union" used to be how to raise money for charity, and the prize was often a home, and they really exist, and people did win and live in them, and some of them were classics of the low spot of the 60s and 70s, shag-pile carpet, sunken entertainment pit, volcano-stone fireplace...
They still take place. I suspect the buildings have moved with the (architectural) times.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5473090/ (swingin' safari: 2018) is a coming-of-age film set in Australia, which includes an exploding whale, Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue, and a beautiful shag-pile den with sunken pit. It was shot on the GC.
They certainly aren't as common as they used to be, but I still see them. I think maybe Royal Life Saving Society still do it? Gold Coast apartments are typical properties now. I'll never enter though - not since they sold my details and I got spam calls for years.
> I don't think it's a gift tax, but ordinary income tax.
Correct. Prize winnings are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. The gift tax applies to gifts, not prize winnings, and even then, the giver pays it, if applicable.
Oprah's famous "You get a car! And you get a car! And everyone gets a car! " show landed each audience member who got a 'free' car with a $6000 tax bill.
The problem was that the people in the audience all needed cars and couldn't afford them. They didn't have money. Finding $6000 to keep a gift when you're broke is a hard problem.
IRS does offer payment plans at least for some types of tax debt. But really, if you need a car but are unable to get $6000 to obtain one, I'm not sure if you have that much better luck in the used car market, since a car would still require some thousands that you either need to have at hand, or get a loan to. If you can't get a loan for a $6000 new car, can you get a loan for a $3000 used car?
Offering to pay the tax does trigger more tax; but as the added tax is less than what you add to the price, the total amount converges (as long as the tax rate is less than 100%). To have the recipient end up with a net payment N after taxes you've to pay N/(1-r), with r being the tax rate.
With a 25% tax rate and car value of $28,500; to make it a tax-free gift Oprah should've paid an additional $9,500.
Yeah, the term is "grossing up" and it's often done for bonuses and things. I've also seen it on sweepstakes. One for Fage yogurt offered a dream vacation to Greece and included a gross-up to pay the income tax.
Yes, the normal progressive tax brackets apply. So if Oprah gives you a car worth $40k, and you have no other income that year, you will take the standard deduction and pay 12% on what's left. Don't forget to pay your state income tax and also the DMV to title & register the car. Getting free stuff isn't cheap!
really hate these vulture like slime tactics to go after desperate and gullible people. it just brings tears to my eyes thinking of how shameless people are and how little they think about the after math of their actions. ex) crypto
It sounds like they're raking in a lot from this, so you'd kinda think they'd be best off actually giving away a car like, once every 5 years. To literally never give out the thing they're advertising seems like playing with fire. (The actual supposed big prize—after you jump through a lot of other hoops—is $100k, but same deal.)
How does this work, given there is no sale? Sales tax applies to the sale price paid, but there is no payment. I think the same is true for use tax, too.
I don't think this is universal among all states. After a quick search, I found sales tax does not apply to gifted vehicles in a number of states: Kentucky, Tennessee, New York, Minnesota (between immediate family members). In Texas, it's a $10 gift tax in lieu of sales tax.
I actually gave away a Porsche 911. This was not a mall giveaway but a marketing experiment for my new startup: Flat 6 Club.
Yes, we wanted something in return, in this case, we wanted you to buy a t-shirt or start a subscription (merch+content+events), which gives us essentially all the same info, which would enter you in a sweepstakes to win the car. We also wanted to promote the club, which we did.
We researched it and contracted a sweepstakes company who helped us run the sweepstakes legally.
In the end, we gave away the car to a very nice man and his wife, who we flew in from Minnesota to San Diego for the giveaway event.
Some people did think it was a scam.
But there are several operations that actually do give cars away such a Omaze, Diesel Brothers and many more.
There’s a model there based on the new post-search world we live in that has to do with high engagement increasing Return On Ad Spend and other AdTech voodoo.
No doubt there are lots of scams but there are also real winners out there.
We’ve only given away 1 car. We learned a ton.
I decided to kill the monthly subscription after we gave away the car because we grossly underestimated the amount of up-front ad spend required to achieve a good ROAS and I knew we wouldn’t be giving away another car for a long time.
The biggest surprise to me was hearing from people that were sad that we killed the paid membership/giveaway program.
This was $9.11/mo for membership and occasional swag drops and automatic entry into our next giveaway —whenever that might be. I communicated personally with some of these folks.
The gist of what I learned was that for $9.11/mo, people enjoyed the hope that they may one day win a 911. We literally had people beg us to bring it back. This is probably the same happiness that a lottery ticket brings to many people. It’s not really that they expect to win. As long as someone wins, they’re buying some hope, some excitement… a dream.
In a world where the deck is stacked against most people regardless whether they "do the right things" like go to college hope of a chance windfall may be the only way to reach beyond their economic situation. $9.11 saved per month isn't going to ever buy a car, but it might win one and that's an easy value proposition to some people.
I would disagree. There are several sections of STEM where there really isnt much for you. What are you supposed to achieve with a bachelors in physics?
I’d hire a physics BS grad for a software dev job. The ability to reason through mathematical problems is very similar. But then, I’m an atmospheric science student who ended up as a programmer.
Other than perhaps space exploration, what do any of these have to do with physics? It seems what you are arguing for is “just found multiple highly successful businesses”, which… well, yeah. Why do you need a physics degree for that?
I think cars have something to do with physics(like most real things), and since physik is applied math and being good with applied math might also help with numbers of money in general, I think a physics degree is helpful in allmost any job.
Physics seems to attract the sort of people who have the sort of arrogance it takes to look at a product or business and say "This is not great. I can start work from first principles and build a better one". Elon Musk is certainly an example, but not the only one (think MySQL/MariaDB, 90s Nokia, or more far-fetched example, the Red Special guitar). Physics also tends to be just difficult enough that most computing or finance problems are easy in comparison, and some of the math is useful.
It was supposed to be a joke, which maybe people missed, about how Elon Musk was a physics major and how mean values on power law distributions are distorted greatly by the outliers.
So I have n clue what the median is, but I assume, like all income and wealth distributions it follows a power law distribution.
It might differ between countries, but I've found that physics is one of the most valued degrees. It's a demonstration of problem-solving skills that are very desirable for a variety of jobs (e.g. software development).
A physicist can be a good multi-disciplinary, quantitative problem solver. I think the reason is that physics doesn't "own" very many practical techniques, so we are constantly borrowing from other fields. Physicists also tend to keep their math skills after graduation. Most program well enough to be dangerous, and with a bit of guidance can become good developers.
I got a BS in math and physics, then continued for a PhD in physics. Today I work for a company that makes measurement equipment. We have engineers from most of the traditional disciplines, but they tend to be silo'd, and happy to avoid math and theory. Unavoidably, understanding (and proving) how the product works involves a combination of mechanical, electronics, data processing, statistics, and so forth. My long term role is to be the person who understands how the product works, not only acquiring domain knowledge but creating it.
The deal is that physics isn't an exclusive guild, and there are people in other disciplines with similar inclinations, but they're as rare as physicists. So I can't tell you why you need a physicist at the exclusion of any quantitative engineer with 30 years of experience. I can't promise that you'll get rich at it. I just try to help people and learn new things.
> Just get a STEM degree and it’s hard to do poorly afterwards.
Wait until the winds of the economic climate change their direction again; until this moment, celebrate and post such texts on HN that will become bad advice.
Ah, the AI-mediated boom of janitors, teachers, and other low-paid jobs that are costly to automate. I wouldn't say that they will bathe in money though. Being low paid is their competitive advantage.
Idk... I know like 10 people who got degrees in math and none ended up working in a job that requires any degree at all. Food service, secretaries, factory workers, insurance salesmen.
I just think there isn't nearly enough jobs in the field compared to the amount of people who are graduating with math degrees. There's only 27,700 actuaries in the US - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/actuaries.htm
First, you're sample size of 10 people has no value.
Second mathematics is just one degree and can not be used as a representation of all degrees. Finally actuaries are just on career that someone with a math degree might get so that total number doesn't have value when talking about the potential of a math degree
They are a libertarian thinktank, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's a lot more data than we've had in this thread so far.
TLDR: Engineering pays, computers pay almost as much, art and music are usually a net negative (over 42 working years).
Looking at math, 88% of graduates will earn a 42-year ROI of <=$1,000,000, which means most of them are earning an additional $24k/year on top of what they could've expected to earn without a degree ("counterfactual earnings": https://freopp.org/how-we-calculated-the-return-on-investmen...). Only 3% of math majors should expect a negative ROI (i.e., they would've been better off NOT getting their degree). By comparison, 68% of art & music majors will have a negative ROI on their degree.
I read your comment as "College can only improve your chances, especially in certain fields. And at the very least it's smarter than hoping for a windfall". Did I understand that right?
If so, I don't necessarily agree. College is an expensive (dollars and time) proposition that rarely pays off. Trade schools, boot camps, etc. are probably better investments for many people. And frankly, saving your money and hoping for a windfall is probably smarter than going to college unless you have a very clear idea already of what you want to study and what career you want to go into afterward.
College is not an automatic positive. For a lot of people, their degree ends up not being worth their student debt.
Or maybe I misunderstood the "it can only improve your chances" part... like maybe you meant "it can improve your chances, but only in certain fields", vs "it can only improve your chances (not worsen them)"?
That’s the thing that naïve expected value arguments miss - sometimes even though in the long run you’re better off not buying lotto tickets or insurance, we don’t live in the long run and often it’s worth sacrificing a bit of expected value to hedge against a potentially devastating loss, or create the tiny possibility of a life-altering windfall.
True, but it usually doesn't stop with a one-off lucky shot. Some people just repeatedly spend money in ways that will hurt them in the long run. It's a sad situation if you think your best hope for the future is (extremely unlikely) random luck or keeping shady creditors at bay.
There are a whole lot of companies out there fishing for vulnerable people, in all shades from legally shady businesses to pretty much all ad and credit companies.
The reason I asked is because almost every sweepstakes I see on youtube/instagram/tiktok violates this so I am not ever sure all these "sweepstakes companies" know the rules.
fwiw - I follow a number of car YT channels that do giveaways (cleetus mcfarland, etc). They've always mentioned the no purchase required aspect and have a third party company who handle the draw, etc.
Great question. I’d estimate the odds of winning our car were orders of magnitude better than any organized lottery.
We had a lot to learn about successful execution on the marketing side so the actual number of entries was well less than 100k.
A properly motivated individual may be able to automate finding first-timers like us, and entering via sending postcards, and actually have an excellent chance of winning.
> But there are several operations that actually do give cars away such a Omaze, Diesel Brothers and many more.
From the article: "There are other types of car giveaways run by more legitimate parties (charity raffles, event promotions) that do deliver the goods — but if you win, you’re liable to pay a hefty gift tax."
263 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadThat’s disturbing. There is no way that’s possibly legally binding? Surely there can’t be a loophole this ridiculous in the Do Not Call law?
Your bank is absolutely permitted to call you regardless of you being on the DNC. You have an existing business relationship with them.
There's a certain breed of huckster that even if they designated a prize winner, it would be one of their family members. The most important part of managing scams is to expose them, and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work.
Or we make these scams illegal. Sending scammers to jail is much more effective than finger wagging.
Public shaming is much cheaper
I'm not saying that you should only jail people if it's cheaper but society cannot afford to incarcerate everybody who commits a crime, not only for the money but the effect it has on ex-cons who can't find work and spiral downwards; families growing up with parents in prison; hardening a soft criminal by jailing them with hard criminals.
Sadly, it is much more complicated than we want to admit and there aren't many good alternatives that I have seen. Tends to be quite polarised "never jail people" or "always jail people".
So we already have that soft on crime reality when it comes to scamming and false advertising. The average person believes the government is far, far more active than it really is in this type of issue. Crime pays and most criminals get away with it.
Even if it is slightly a grey area, you then have a lawyer fight which costs a ton of cash and then even if found guilty, what are you realistically going to do to someone who pretended that you could win a car to market their timeshares? life in prison at $100K/year to the tax payer?
These sorts of sales tactics should just be illegal and criminal. If your sales pipeline requires exploiting human cognitive failures (ie., "boiler room sales tactics") then you're scamming people. A business exists to provide a service people want, not to scam people into something they dont. The gov. provides limited liability protections to businesses, not to scams.
I think we're far enough into our understanding of human psych now to say "here are the fault lines", if your business principally (, systematically, essentially, ...) uses them to make money, it's illegal.
I think the point was that these scams wouldn't exist if the laws were better.
Yes, because their targets will be reading Hacker News.
The Nigerian Prince scam still works, and every person in the world has heard of it by now.
> and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work.
I don't think they value their public image half as much as you seem to think. But you're on to something.
What if the alternative line of work they had to pick was cleaning toilets at a federal penitentiary, or stamping license plates, or maybe breaking gravel at a re-socialization camp somewhere in Siberia?
To my knowledge an ad doesn't have to correspond to the visual which is why a lot of ads visually sell or imply sex in some way, meanwhile whatever there selling isn't. Clothing is notorious for this. Sticking a car there just catches your eye like an attractive person might to lure you in. It's then up to the passerby to read the details and fine print of what's actually being sold.
Even if this outfit is fully owned and operated by a scuzzy timeshare company, do they really make enough money to justify the $1500/~=22 marks?
The article only mentions people being contacted by the timeshare company, but I wonder if they might sell the info as a secondary revenue stream, especially given the waiver which claims to override federal do-not-call lists.
How much would one packet of contact info+metadata sell for, if the subject has signed on to be contacted by advertisers?
LendingTree.com was charging $70 per "lead", this was 2018 or so, not sure how prices have changed since then. However this was on the high end, zillow.com, also sold leads but for quite a bit lower (although you got what you paid for).
I was wondering the same, but one thing that helps the math in their favor a bit was that the 22 was in one hour on a weekday afternoon. I imagine it’s higher on weekends and evenings.
Even better is just not buying one and just renting one a usually little more than the maintenance fee.
> A timeshare (sometimes called vacation ownership) is a property with a divided form of ownership or use rights. These properties are typically resort condominium units, in which multiple parties hold rights to use the property, and each owner of the same accommodation is allotted their period of time. Units may be sold as a partial ownership, lease, or "right to use", in which case the latter holds no claim to ownership of the property. The ownership of timeshare programs is varied, and has been changing over the decades.
well actually... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax#Places_without_pr...
But yes, that's true about property taxes. But since that's a commonality between condos and otherwise-individually-owned property it doesn't really matter. In a condo you pay both, but if you own outright you only pay one. In a rental you're kinda paying both combined, because the owner pays property taxes and then presumably also tries to extract profit.
Anyways, I don't agree that condos are a scam in the same way that timeshares are, and I don't think a condo is just a glorified rental (though the one condo I have owned in my life had absurdly high fees that I regretted getting myself into) or a scam like timeshares are. I was just trying to explain what I though the GP meant.
Did you ever look HOA financial docs that details exactly what the HOA spent money on?
It was, unfortunately, just a very bad situation for the building, which was aging poorly from its origins as a low unit count high value building with a lot of expensive amenities, windows that couldn't handle changing climate, a parkade that needed deep structural work, having been built when asbestos was in vogue, and a population that was once wealthy but was now largely on fixed incomes and declining property value.
No one did anything wrong (except maybe a few attempts to fix the parkade in overly optimistic and superficial ways that required re-fixing at more expense later), it just wasn't worth condo fees ballooning well past my mortgage payments and it ended up costing well hundreds of $k to sell and doing so was one of the most stressful times of my life.
None of that means "condos are always bad". Just this one was a mistake.
If you mean what I said about HOA vs condo fees, I've only ever seen HOA used for detached homes or townhouses, where the common concerns are a lot less critical than in an apartment building (and so, from what I know, tend to be more frivolous). But maybe it's used differently elsewhere.
The main difference between a condo association and an HOA here is what kind of property is involved. But HOAs are also a relatively recent development here and aren't regulated as strongly so they vary more.
That obviously has a big impact on resell value - so much to the point that some timeshare owners can't give it away let alone sell it, because no one wants to be beholden to the maintenance fees.
Depending on specifics you even get partial ownership of the whole building and a seat on its management board. At least that’s how it works for my mom, they run the building like a co-op and there is no other owner than the people who own the apartments inside.
edit: a timeshare in comparison is kinda like buying an NFT of an apartment. It gives you the right (obligation) to use the place for a period of time every year
Most people think it's a pretty relevant difference. For one thing, if you occupy a place year-round, you can keep your belongings in it. That's a pretty significant feature for most people, which is the reason most people choose to live in a permanent domicile rather than moving every week. But different strokes for different folks I guess.
Most vacation destinations are somewhat seasonal. Maybe the most major cities with year round cultural activities, but not in places like beach and ski towns.
You can potentially have 52 "1-week-a-year" people fighting over the 16-20 weeks a year the location is most desirable, and maybe settling for lesser times, or just not using it that year. Hell, why not sell 60 memberships, knowing some will just punt in any given year?
Timeshare owners are generally not represented by a committee of other owners, the money does not go to things approved by them, and the company makes no promises about acting in the interest of timeshare owners.
So yeah, you are contractually obligated to pay fees for a space you can occupy is where they are similar. There's a reason that timeshares almost never appreciate, often being given away for free, where a condo tends to hold value or appreciate.
As a fun little bit of anecdata, newer buildings are always the worst with many leftover, teething issues and strata title can sometimes be heavily in debt. Old buildings can have huge amounts in the sinking fund and may elect to reduce yearly fees and rely on interest.
https://thehotelskills.com/different-between-time-share-and-...
2. If in some hypothetical world, you were unhappy with the fees, and you couldn't sell your condo, you can walk away from it anytime you want, and all you're out is the purchase cost of the condo.
3. You can't do that with the timeshare. You need to find another sucker to take the timeshare off your hands.
4. For what you get out of it, the cost of owning/renting a timeshare versus owning/renting a condo is horribly tilted against the timeshare.
5. Which is why intelligent people will pay a million dollars for a condo, but only idiots buy timeshares.
6. Which why you get screwed if you want to do #2, because of #3.
The reason people buy timeshares is because they are bad at math, bad at finances, and don't understand that they are getting fleeced.
Timeshares don't necessarily have to be shitty scams, it's entirely possible to design one that isn't a waste of money. But in practice, all of them are.
I'm sure that certain timeshares (no inflation adjustment with good governance) have aged really well, and some people that wanted access to specific locations were able to pickup timeshare rights for a song.
The problem is that the "benefit of hindsight" question requires you to compare other investments that have probably fared as well or better without the constraints/risks of typical timeshares.
Probably the closest you can come is buying or renting a place and then airbnb-renting it out most of the time, but then you're getting yourself into some legally grey areas most likely (plus becoming a landlord, which may be quite a lot of work and/or morally questionable in itself depending on your views).
I mean—-tongue in cheek—-are you trying to illustrate that Safari actually goes above and beyond here by looping infinitely on a page that is about a scam that is essentially about an ad technique that loops you endlessly?
If you ever watch scam baiting videos, those Indian scammers share and sell the numbers the collect. If they can fall for the "Microsoft tech support" scam once, then they are likely to fall for the "Amazon refund" scam as well.
Social media companies have really clamped down over the past 5 years on any form of contact info scraping
> Her “dad” (our writer, Conor) gives it one last try. Patrick tells Conor that in order to win the car, he has to go to a local Great Destinations office and attend a 90-minute timeshare presentation.
This is the only part I still don't understand after reading the article. Why do they limit this to people at least 28? Is this just a way of filtering out people unlikely to have enough money to scam into spending on a timeshare, or are they avoiding some esoteric regulation that somehow blocks them from marketing to younger people?
Anecdotally, I had 20000x more money at 22 than 28. If I remain employed for the rest of the year I might be on par by the end of it. Graphing my income over the last 10 years would look like a memory leak
In totally legitimate businesses we've set ages around there just to avoid the hassle and bs.
It works beyond any reasonable expectation
Yeah that fact is worse than there being no car.
And off topic but my brother won a years supply of Kentucky Friend Chicken in the footy tipping..... and he is a vegetarian. Imagine that - you win the sacrifice of 365 chickens for your skill in picking footy teams. KFC gave him 50 x $50 vouchers.
And I once spent two full days entering every possible online competition I could find. You can guess how much I won.
Here is Australia in the 1980's it was common to find free competition tickets that you could enter in fish and chip shops. For a joke, a friend entered another friend, who won an all expenses paid trip for two to Europe, without knowing they had been entered.
I personally during the source of my many years, have won precisely nothing ever.
I think it's safe to say he's in Australia.
We get the car parked in the shopping centre with big "WIN THIS CAR" signs. Entry is $5-10 per ticket though, so it seems feasible there's actually a winner somewhere along the way (My assumption is a Mustang appears in a few shopping centres at once and one is ultimately given away, for example).
(Carn the Lions)
Up the Dons!
No one says 'footie' in Australia. We say 'footy'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17400832
A fascinating movie... https://www.magpictures.com/thequeenofversailles/
I don't think it's a gift tax, but ordinary income tax. A coworker won a living room sofa set on a game show, and the staff were waiting with a 1099 for her as soon as she stepped off the stage. The IRS says you need to pay tax based on the fair market value, but the shows will list the prize at it's full retail price.
So if you should happen to (and you won't) win the Acura, you'll owe 25% or more on it. Plus any state income tax. I'm not sure when the IRS actually wants their money, but a safe assumption would be "soon". Perhaps by the next quarterly estimated-tax date.
They still take place. I suspect the buildings have moved with the (architectural) times.
Correct. Prize winnings are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. The gift tax applies to gifts, not prize winnings, and even then, the giver pays it, if applicable.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oprah-gives-away...
With a 25% tax rate and car value of $28,500; to make it a tax-free gift Oprah should've paid an additional $9,500.
There’s a great YouTube view about exactly this by Stand Up Maths if you want to go down a rabbit hole.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3cNdM7W0VlQ
Is it simply counted on top of (added to) your existing income, and therefore progressive?
If I'm unemployed, with no income at all, would I pay very little to no tax on such a gift? Or gifts are a special case with a separate rate?
I really don't understand what people are complaining about, seems like a good deal to me...
Yes, we wanted something in return, in this case, we wanted you to buy a t-shirt or start a subscription (merch+content+events), which gives us essentially all the same info, which would enter you in a sweepstakes to win the car. We also wanted to promote the club, which we did.
We researched it and contracted a sweepstakes company who helped us run the sweepstakes legally.
In the end, we gave away the car to a very nice man and his wife, who we flew in from Minnesota to San Diego for the giveaway event.
Some people did think it was a scam.
But there are several operations that actually do give cars away such a Omaze, Diesel Brothers and many more.
There’s a model there based on the new post-search world we live in that has to do with high engagement increasing Return On Ad Spend and other AdTech voodoo.
No doubt there are lots of scams but there are also real winners out there.
We’ve only given away 1 car. We learned a ton.
I decided to kill the monthly subscription after we gave away the car because we grossly underestimated the amount of up-front ad spend required to achieve a good ROAS and I knew we wouldn’t be giving away another car for a long time.
The biggest surprise to me was hearing from people that were sad that we killed the paid membership/giveaway program.
This was $9.11/mo for membership and occasional swag drops and automatic entry into our next giveaway —whenever that might be. I communicated personally with some of these folks.
The gist of what I learned was that for $9.11/mo, people enjoyed the hope that they may one day win a 911. We literally had people beg us to bring it back. This is probably the same happiness that a lottery ticket brings to many people. It’s not really that they expect to win. As long as someone wins, they’re buying some hope, some excitement… a dream.
If this doesn't work out moving to the probability of a windfall maybe desperation but it's not smart.
If people believe this is their only hope that's sad and we should guide them to make better decisions.
Start an internet payment, space exploration, electronic vehicle, tunnel boring, or direct brain-computer interface company.
The mean ROI on a bachelors in physics is probably the highest in STEM.
Apparently, they're also popular on Wall Street
Mandatory SMBC link: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21
Historically, the most successful examples in each of those industries have a physics degree. I cannot explain the causation.
Elon Musk also drives the mean for physics majors way up.
It was supposed to be a joke, which maybe people missed, about how Elon Musk was a physics major and how mean values on power law distributions are distorted greatly by the outliers.
So I have n clue what the median is, but I assume, like all income and wealth distributions it follows a power law distribution.
My PhD was sure a very nice to have, but never a life changer.
Would I do it again? Probably yes because of the tremendous joy research brought me (and free time for parties!).
Did I recommend it to my kids? No, they are better off with me specific studies.
I got a BS in math and physics, then continued for a PhD in physics. Today I work for a company that makes measurement equipment. We have engineers from most of the traditional disciplines, but they tend to be silo'd, and happy to avoid math and theory. Unavoidably, understanding (and proving) how the product works involves a combination of mechanical, electronics, data processing, statistics, and so forth. My long term role is to be the person who understands how the product works, not only acquiring domain knowledge but creating it.
The deal is that physics isn't an exclusive guild, and there are people in other disciplines with similar inclinations, but they're as rare as physicists. So I can't tell you why you need a physicist at the exclusion of any quantitative engineer with 30 years of experience. I can't promise that you'll get rich at it. I just try to help people and learn new things.
Of the 100 or so people in my MSCi physics degree programme there were:
About 40 who went on to do PhDs ... of which about 30 are now academics, the rest went pretty evenly into the categories below, just a few years later
20 went on to some kind of elite professional services: investment banking, consulting, law or into large corporate management graduate programmes
10 are teachers, tutors, or have some other allied role
10 are civil servants or work for think tanks or other NGOs
20 have jobs in tech in various capacities
Wait until the winds of the economic climate change their direction again; until this moment, celebrate and post such texts on HN that will become bad advice.
I just think there isn't nearly enough jobs in the field compared to the amount of people who are graduating with math degrees. There's only 27,700 actuaries in the US - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/actuaries.htm
They are a libertarian thinktank, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's a lot more data than we've had in this thread so far.
TLDR: Engineering pays, computers pay almost as much, art and music are usually a net negative (over 42 working years).
Looking at math, 88% of graduates will earn a 42-year ROI of <=$1,000,000, which means most of them are earning an additional $24k/year on top of what they could've expected to earn without a degree ("counterfactual earnings": https://freopp.org/how-we-calculated-the-return-on-investmen...). Only 3% of math majors should expect a negative ROI (i.e., they would've been better off NOT getting their degree). By comparison, 68% of art & music majors will have a negative ROI on their degree.
If so, I don't necessarily agree. College is an expensive (dollars and time) proposition that rarely pays off. Trade schools, boot camps, etc. are probably better investments for many people. And frankly, saving your money and hoping for a windfall is probably smarter than going to college unless you have a very clear idea already of what you want to study and what career you want to go into afterward.
College is not an automatic positive. For a lot of people, their degree ends up not being worth their student debt.
Or maybe I misunderstood the "it can only improve your chances" part... like maybe you meant "it can improve your chances, but only in certain fields", vs "it can only improve your chances (not worsen them)"?
There are a whole lot of companies out there fishing for vulnerable people, in all shades from legally shady businesses to pretty much all ad and credit companies.
[1] https://gleam.io/guides/no-purchase-necessary
We had a lot to learn about successful execution on the marketing side so the actual number of entries was well less than 100k.
A properly motivated individual may be able to automate finding first-timers like us, and entering via sending postcards, and actually have an excellent chance of winning.
Reminds me of Lazlo in “Real Genius” ;)
From the article: "There are other types of car giveaways run by more legitimate parties (charity raffles, event promotions) that do deliver the goods — but if you win, you’re liable to pay a hefty gift tax."