Falling For It

Well, it’s almost Christmas and you can tell because the ads on my social media are getting more and more weird. Case in point:

Is it me, or does that dude look a little too excited for his bath time, like maybe it’s also his “special man time”? And he looks almost too large for the bathtub—based on my knowledge of human proportions, where the hell are his legs?! At any rate, a one-person spa is absolutely perfect for me—I already take my own pillow whenever I travel, so now I could take my own bathtub with me. I looked up the translation of the company name and in English it means something like “glamorous water” and isn’t that what bathing is all about—being glamorous in the water? That guy in the ad sure thinks so. And the best part is the ad next to it, which is cut off, but that’s the beautiful irony of it–I looked up “glark” and it literally means “to figure something out from context”. So here’s the challenge: can you glark the glarks?

But I’ve had my ups and downs lately because I keep getting scammed online. First it was a purse company that seemed legitimate until I paid for it and immediately got a message telling me that my item wouldn’t ship until I sent a SCREENSHOT OF MY CREDIT CARD. After a lot of back and forth, they finally agreed to ship the item without the photographs and then sent me a fake invoice with a tracking number button that did nothing. So I contacted my bank and the rep in the Disputes department that I spoke to was very nice and he made me feel better about being so dumb:

Me: I can’t believe I fell for this.
Rep: It happens all the time. If something’s too good to be true, it probably is. What was it that you bought?
Me: A Louis Vuitton purse. I mean, I figured it was fake, but I should have known it was also a rip-off—it was way too cheap.
Rep: No kidding. Those things cost a fortune. And the reason I know that brand is because just last week, I had to deal with a woman who got taken for over $1500 for a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes.
Me: …They make shoes?

But I don’t need their shoes. I just want my fifty bucks back. And then, Ken and I decided that instead of moving, we’d turn one of our bedrooms into a secret library room and doesn’t every secret library room need a tufted leather loveseat? I found a perfect one on Facebook Marketplace and I contacted the seller. He told me it was available and when I asked if we could pick it up on the weekend, he said sure, but that he’d need a deposit to hold it, since he had “so many people interested in it”. And that kind of thing isn’t unusual, and he seemed legit, so I sent a small deposit. And that was the last I heard from him. (I even had a friend contact him pretending to want to buy the couch, and he pulled the same sh*t with her—he refused to give her an address for pick-up until she gave him money up front and when she wouldn’t, he ghosted her.) Again, I contacted the bank, but this time, because my e-transfer was auto-deposited, I couldn’t get it back. We actually called the police and filed a report, and the cop said the same thing, after lecturing me for a while about “overseas scams” and “fake IP addresses”. But the best part was that I (and my friend) reported him to Facebook, and they said they wouldn’t do anything because he hadn’t “violated their terms of service”. You learn your lessons the hard way, I guess. This was my face when I learned that I would be receiving neither a very cute handbag or a very stylish couch:

But never mind all of that. Christmas is almost here, and I have a lot to celebrate, including the fact that my publisher, DarkWinter Press, has submitted my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do to the Stephen Leacock Medal for Literary Humour. My publisher can be a real pain in the ass and falls for a lot of scams but she’s very thoughtful so I forgive her. (It’s me. I’m the publisher.) Wish me luck! And if you want your own copy (which I just updated and filled with even more funny stuff) it’s available here:

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and all that great stuff to you and yours!

30 thoughts on “Falling For It”

  2. Merry Christmas to you, too!

    Our culture is in a weird place right now. Every company wants you to use their app, and do everything on line, and at the same time, they keep telling you to avoid scams, and say stuff like, we will NEVER ask you for personal information through email, etc. And I still get regular emails from Paypal with a handy button to click on to “log in,” and same with my bank. Like, look you guys, if I have email, and I have an online account, as you well know I do, then I can figure out how to type in a URL when I want to go to said account and do something. Why do you keep providing “handy links” for this?

    Oh well. Maybe it will get better in 2024! hahahahahahahahahahahaagghhhh

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  3. That guy in the tub has the same look on his face as the creep who got you for the leather couch deposit. In fact, they may be one in the same. He has really short stubby legs, because creepy scammer people all look like that….

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  4. Oh man, I’m sorry about the scam headaches you’ve gone through. It’s literally a playground for scammers this time of year. No one is safe, hell I barely trust Amazon right now. I hope you, Ken and Kate have a very Merry Christmas and a Spectacular New Year!

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    • I thought Facebook Marketplace with a “seller” who lived in the next town would be safe, but the whole thing was fake–Ken even realized later when we looked closely that the dude’s profile pic was a stock photo! People can really suck sometimes!

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  6. That portable tub reminds me of an episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye and BJ get a collapsible tub right in the middle of a heatwave and they try to keep it secret, otherwise everybody would want one. And I wondered why more people didn’t just order their own. If one could be shipped to a remote location in Korea couldn’t several? Also I know how easy it is to fall for scams. I was halfway through the process of buying something before I asked myself, “Why would the library director need me to buy her a video game card?” But I was just so excited to be asked to do something I didn’t check the email address—I just saw the name.
    Anyway I’m looking forward to reading your humour book—part of my happy Christmas!—and I wish you good luck and you and all your family a very happy Christmas too.

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    • There was a big scam here a few years ago when people purporting to be Canada Revenue (government taxes like your IRS) were telling people to send them iTunes gift cards. You wouldn’t believe how many people fell for it. I thought I was smarter than that but then I got fooled by a fake purse company so…Anyway, Merry Christmas to you and your family too!

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  9. Ugh…what an awful experience[s] just before Christmas. Where do these creeps come from, and where does Facebook get off saying that scammers are okay?
    Anyway, I hope you had a lovely Christmas anyway. -hugs-

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  10. wishing you the best, dear – sorry for the problems – my husband has a Persian saying that’s something about the bad stuff diverting worse from happening. just a thought – I absolutely never use my bank id or debit card to buy things – instead I use credit cards which have fought for me when I was shorted by a vendor…

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