30 Things That Feel Like Scams.

Nathan Johnson Published 01/26/2023

Stuff we just put up with.

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1.
Convenience fees on electronic payments
2.
That health insurance doesn’t cover your eyes or teeth
3.
The price of printer ink.
4.
Mum "influencers" using their kids as bait to advertise products. Absolutely despicable.
5.
That it’s considered normal to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding/ring/bachelor party
6.
America’s tipping culture. The fact that businesses have put the burden on consumers to pay their employees livable wages is a joke
7.
Subscription services for f*****g everything
8.
For profit prisons
9.
Paying hundred of dollars per month for health insurance and then insurance not paying for anything until you’ve hit your deductible (usually thousands of dollars per year) and then after hitting your deductible insurance only paying for a certain percentage of your care until the end of the year until your deductible resets and you pay out of pocket all over again until you hit the deductible and even after hitting the deductible your insurance is fighting tooth and nail not to cover anything.
10.
Unpaid lunches that extend your work day.
11.
A fee to pay your bill.
12.
Not as accepted as it was but the idea that alcohol is safer than other illegal or recently legalized substances
13.
The right (or refused right) to repair. Absolute b******t that i cant fix my own s**t.
14.
Five day work week
15.
Ticketmaster
16.
College bookstores
17.
TurboTax. They lobby the government to make it difficult to do taxes without their software. I lived in the UK and it took literally 15 min to do taxes on bad government software
18.
Middlemen/Brokers eating up the profit and inflating the prices in pretty much every business.
19.
Herbalife
20.
Political promises
21.
Claw Machines
22.
Student loans
23.
On a lighter note, Santa Claus, Unlike other scams, I am 100% OK with this continuing.
24.
Justice System. Crimes are punished unequally. Whether it's because of how laws are written, socioeconomic background, judicial discretion, DA's refusing to prosecute, or ect.
25.
luxury skincare. go to a dermatologist. pay less. get real results.
26.
I don't think it's a scam, but the prices like "4.99$", when it's clearly 5$, but they know most of the people will tend to think subconsciously it's 4$
27.
As an academic scientist pick one of these two: We use tax payer money to fund biomedical research, which we then write up into a research study and pay the Journal so that they can publish the said study only for the journals to turn around and put them behind a paywall. We also use taxpayer money to fund years of biomedical research, which occasionally results in a groundbreaking drug/treatment, which then gets licensed out (usually) by a pharma company, which then marks up the price and turns around and charges the taxpayer an absurd amount of money to use the said drug. Edit: Additional salt to the wound: Do you guys know Moderna (which made the mRNA covid vaccine) and the NIH (the federal institute that performed initial pre clinical research on the mRNA vaccine and also literally funded the research) are in a patent dispute over the vaccine?
28.
Arbitration clauses in almost every service provider contract. Tricking you into giving up your access to the court system. Nobody talks about it, but they should.
29.
Reddit awards.
30.
Worked at CapitalOne Investing for a while. Came to understand that the 401(k) system is merely the base layer of a congressionally-sanctioned Ponzi scheme to prop up our stock market. If 401(k) contributions were to dry up tomorrow, the entire house of cards collapses. There is now legislation that proposes increasing the contribution limits and even making 401(k) participation MANDATORY for some employers. A healthy financial system wouldn’t need such measures.

1.
Convenience fees on electronic payments
2.
That health insurance doesn’t cover your eyes or teeth
3.
The price of printer ink.
4.
Mum "influencers" using their kids as bait to advertise products. Absolutely despicable.
5.
That it’s considered normal to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding/ring/bachelor party
6.
America’s tipping culture. The fact that businesses have put the burden on consumers to pay their employees livable wages is a joke
7.
Subscription services for f*****g everything
8.
For profit prisons
9.
Paying hundred of dollars per month for health insurance and then insurance not paying for anything until you’ve hit your deductible (usually thousands of dollars per year) and then after hitting your deductible insurance only paying for a certain percentage of your care until the end of the year until your deductible resets and you pay out of pocket all over again until you hit the deductible and even after hitting the deductible your insurance is fighting tooth and nail not to cover anything.
10.
Unpaid lunches that extend your work day.
11.
A fee to pay your bill.
12.
Not as accepted as it was but the idea that alcohol is safer than other illegal or recently legalized substances
13.
The right (or refused right) to repair. Absolute b******t that i cant fix my own s**t.
14.
Five day work week
15.
Ticketmaster
16.
College bookstores
17.
TurboTax. They lobby the government to make it difficult to do taxes without their software. I lived in the UK and it took literally 15 min to do taxes on bad government software
18.
Middlemen/Brokers eating up the profit and inflating the prices in pretty much every business.
19.
Herbalife
20.
Political promises
21.
Claw Machines
22.
Student loans
23.
On a lighter note, Santa Claus, Unlike other scams, I am 100% OK with this continuing.
24.
Justice System. Crimes are punished unequally. Whether it's because of how laws are written, socioeconomic background, judicial discretion, DA's refusing to prosecute, or ect.
25.
luxury skincare. go to a dermatologist. pay less. get real results.
26.
I don't think it's a scam, but the prices like "4.99$", when it's clearly 5$, but they know most of the people will tend to think subconsciously it's 4$
27.
As an academic scientist pick one of these two: We use tax payer money to fund biomedical research, which we then write up into a research study and pay the Journal so that they can publish the said study only for the journals to turn around and put them behind a paywall. We also use taxpayer money to fund years of biomedical research, which occasionally results in a groundbreaking drug/treatment, which then gets licensed out (usually) by a pharma company, which then marks up the price and turns around and charges the taxpayer an absurd amount of money to use the said drug. Edit: Additional salt to the wound: Do you guys know Moderna (which made the mRNA covid vaccine) and the NIH (the federal institute that performed initial pre clinical research on the mRNA vaccine and also literally funded the research) are in a patent dispute over the vaccine?
28.
Arbitration clauses in almost every service provider contract. Tricking you into giving up your access to the court system. Nobody talks about it, but they should.
29.
Reddit awards.
30.
Worked at CapitalOne Investing for a while. Came to understand that the 401(k) system is merely the base layer of a congressionally-sanctioned Ponzi scheme to prop up our stock market. If 401(k) contributions were to dry up tomorrow, the entire house of cards collapses. There is now legislation that proposes increasing the contribution limits and even making 401(k) participation MANDATORY for some employers. A healthy financial system wouldn’t need such measures.