So there’s been a recent gas scam that I first noticed last year when a Hispanic guy pretended to be a representative of a gas company and showed up at my door. I went through the spiel with him, realized it was a scam then closed the door on him. However the same gas scam showed up at Sam’s club a few month later, where they were doing the exact same thing but now in an actual store with barrier to entry. They disappeared after a few months (probably because Sam’s got complained at enough/ blamed for letting them in) and then they popped up at multiple other stores and disappeared. Now the exact same scam showed up with a chick pitching a tent outside a store complex with a sign saying “Free Gifts” and a smaller sign “if you bring your gas bill”.
This has been the most prescient for just an in person scam, but we have been bombarded post Covid with scam phone calls, scam texts from India pretending to be a toll road, on and on. Am I going crazy or have we officially gone full India in this country where scams don’t get cracked down on anymore?
I think the big problem is so many governments, both federal and state give huge benefits to both the companies and the consumers who use them.
Like, when I was hearing a few of these pitches out (because the idea seemed smart before I knew the scam being played) they were constantly talking about the tax breaks you get and the return money from the electric company you'd earn. And checking it out most of those things were legit, even if the contract with the solar company was designed to cheat you out of it as much as possible.
Point being, like almost any industry where the Government gets involved to subsidize and pay for it becomes a den of nonsense and exploitation. Without that, it might be prohibitively expensive for most people but it would also filter out the scam company, who doesn't have enough suckers available to justify.