Declining pay rises because they think they'll pay more in tax and their take home will be less than before the pay rise.

My dad and online banking. You can check your balance, make transfers and even set up standing orders. "But my account will get hacked" is his response every single time.

Therapy. People just can’t fathom that just talking to someone who is not involved directly in your life can really help with processing and resolving a problem. You only get out of it what you put in.

We had a gal in the telco who was retiring under a surplus - meaning they would pay her so much for each year she worked, in addition to her pension. She turned the money down because she didn’t want her taxes to be too high. I didn’t know her and heard about it after she left. The Union guys tried to explain it but she just would not listen. I don’t know if she thought it was a scam but she didn’t trust the IRS

Travel Insurance. It was great when they arranged all travel from overseas apartment to our house when child broke their ankle on an internship. Paid all of the our out of pocket expenses, including our deductibles/copays until child was functioning.

Modern medicine. Like Cleetus, we just want you to not spread COVID, it isn't gonna make you gay.

In the US, universal healthcare

The repair industry. I worked in home repair, small engine repair and computer repair shops years ago. A lot of people expected us to just fix things for free. Others would take it as an insult when we would quote prices or ask to be paid for a job. Send a bill and some people would ask why or what is this. Ask us why we were ripping them off even though the bill was itemized and the price was discussed before hand. It was a horrible industry to work in because of they way people are.

I know I'm late to the party on this comment. But in America the sad answer is this is how people are stating to look at unions. People saying "I don't wanna pay union dues every month" even though my dues cost me less then 2 hours of work a month and my wage is more then double what I would be making non union and that doesn't count the benefits that aren't even supplied to non union guys in this trade.

For a depressing amount of the UK: the EU.

NASA, physics and anything about the earth being round

My dad and step mom once freaked the f**k out because the census was at our door. They said, "she doesnt have a marked car. It's a scam" she had a badge and clipboard. Then my psycho step mom proceeded to get mad at me for opening the door. For the census.

Veterinary care. People don't understand that I can't just dispense certain medications without seeing the patient first. Some of these medications could cause fatalities or worsen the situation if used/prescribed wrong!

Some members of my family think internet providers are scammers because they pay for 400mbps download and think they will get 400mbps download on each device even if someone is watching Netflix or downloading at the same time on another computer.

The stock market. Lots of people over worry about the short term, withdraw once it dips and never put back in. Never realizing the magic is in the long term

Vaccines and vaccination. Not me, but those who are anti vaccination really have no understanding of virology, immunology, epidemiology or how to assess relative risk. They probably fall into many of the other things that they “think is a scam but they don’t understand.”

There was a time when my parents thought buying stuff online and paying with a credit card it's a scam, took me a while to convince them that if you know which sites are good to order from and which are bad, you can actually avoid scams.

The air in bag of chips.

Airline / Hotel / Credit Card rewards. They take a lot of time and a 100% commitment to never, ever carrying a balance, but you can definitely earn a lot of rewards even without playing the churning games. The Flyertalk.com community is amazing for anyone wanting to get started.

5G

Buying a beginning band instrument, then buying a step-up instrument within a couple of years

Higher pay rates for union trade labor.

Paying to publish. Roughly 3-5% of thousands of people a year who search for agents when trying to get a book published from a traditional publisher are accepted. When musicians try to create an album, they have to usually pay to use a studio, have someone market it for them, and edit the song. Why is publishing seen as any different? Everyone expects to be paid for their book, when in reality, you have to pay someone to even take a glance at it, let alone give you any worth while feedback.

Insurance. It's weird to pay for something that you hope not to use.

CareCredit. People always think vet offices tell you to apply to “our credit cards” so you can pay your bill because we don’t offer payment plans. It is not just for vet hospitals but any medical service. You get 6 months 0% interest for whatever amount you are approved for and it is an outside company. Vet hospitals don’t usually offer payment plans bc people don’t pay and then they get sent to collections. We can’t afford to not have income. Ask anyone who works at a clinic and I bet you they are getting by paycheck yo paycheck. Even DVMs aren’t making much considering they graduate with just as much student loans as an MD.

Harbor freight tools. Sure they are cheap and probably poorly made, but for $100 I got a power washer. Do you know how much joy a power washer can bring someone? Neighbor is washing his car with a hose looking like a fool.

In some cases, DLC for games. I play a fair amount of fighting games, and its a bit annoying when people see a game with alot of DLC and immediately assume the game is trying to scam them. When a developer is supporting a game, of course they're gonna want to add more characters to it. Its one of the easiest ways the drum up hype, mix up the gameplay, and bring some more variety to the game. If a game is supported *for awhile*, then of course, its gonna get alot of DLC. This mostly bothers me with BBTAG cause characters are sold in packs of 3 that cost as much as single characters in other games. "Wow, look! this game has half the roster as DLC!" yeah, characters are re-used assets so they were released in bulk after launch. There definitely are fighters that tried to scam people with DLC (Dead or Alive 6, SFxT, MvC:I, Marvel 3. Capcom's pretty bad for this in general) but it bothers me when people associate 'alot of DLC' with 'they're scamming us.'

Nuclear power, people are generally concerned about the pollution it causes when in reality the radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant has a relatively low impact on the environment, especially when compared to the fallout of more resource heavy nuclear weapons

School

Investing in $GME All shorts have to cover (they have not) and Gamestop is revolutionizing their business model and team! Extremely bright future ahead!