Most of us like to think the world is a fair place. We rent-to-own appliances to repair the kitchen, pay to set up a router, and pack on ink cartridges for our printers that seem to have an insatiable appetite for these overpriced refills.
And there’s nothing wrong about it until you pause and think for a moment. Are we all just normalizing the ways companies make a profit off us without even realizing it?
When someone posted the question “What is clearly a scam but is so normalized people don’t notice?” on r/AskReddit it surely resonated with many. Amassing 85.7k upvotes and 47.1k comments, we have some of the most interesting and insightful responses that will make you go “wait a moment!”
#1
Funerals and everything to do with them. The funeral industry has insane pricing. Some of the funeral homes and vendors are even predatory, getting grieving families to pay upwards of tens of thousands of dollars, because “that’s what the deceased would have wanted”.
Image credits: chiggenNuggs
#2
Mobile game ads that show gameplay of a Call of Duty or Skyrim style game but in reality are just a spin-off of Candy Crush
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#3
I just paid for the privilege of setting up my router.
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#4
Diamond rings for marriage.
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#5
Printer ink.
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#6
Reducing a price by 1 cent to trick our brains into thinking a product costs less than it actually is.
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#7
Manufacturers refusing documentation to private repair enterprises and requiring you to get your products fixed by the dealer. Basically, the reason for the "Right-to-repair" movement
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#8
''The customer is always right"Biggest scam of all- the customer is usually an idiot and looking to get free stuff.
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#9
Most mega churches... I remember an interview with Kenneth Copeland talking about how he needed a private jet to spread religion
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#10
The diamond industry, specifically as it relates to jewelry. Everything that the average person "knows" about it stems from propaganda and advertisements created by DeBeers. They aren't rare, they aren't worth what you pay for them, they don't appreciate in value and are a terrible investment. They aren't special.
Image credits: Steelle88
#11
Scientific journal memberships.
Image credits: KungFu-omega-warrior
#12
The games at fairs/carnivals.
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#13
Having to pay $100+ for glasses
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#14
"If you tell me the truth, I won't get mad." -Mom
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#15
Planned obsolescence, where products are deliberatly designed to have a defect or worse performance shortly after the warranty has expired.
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#16
Lotteries
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#17
often, the point isn't the not-noticing, but the having a lack of better alternatives
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#18
Rent-to-own furniture and appliances.
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#19
Those registries that people pay money to “name a star”
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#20
Toothpaste commercial were actors filled their toothbrush with toothpaste too much which is unnecessary
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#21
Internet Data Cap
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#22
Unpaid internships. F*ck anyone who gives unpaid internships! People get exploited like sh*t in that and for what? Most times they don't even count. For what purpose?I get so irritated when someone posts "unpaid but you'll be given a certificate". Shut the f*ck up and do the work by yourself you lazy ass.
Image credits: MojoJojo1945
#23
The school picture industry. $80 for an awkward picture of my baby? Nah, thanks
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#24
Cat food. Look at the cat food at a random store, and see how the design brags about all the healthy vegetables they've crammed into your obligate carnivore's diet. Then check out the ingredients and see how corn, rice, etc. are often the first ingredients. Pet foods market toward humans by trying to appeal to human sensibilities, not genuine desire to provide your cat with the best diet.
Image credits: Hadrian_x_Antinous
#25
Starbucks. I pay $9.99 for 51 oz of Folgers Ground Coffee, roughly 380 8 oz cups. That comes out to about $0.02 per cup of coffee. At Starbucks, a Tall Dark Roast costs $1.85. I could have 92.5 cups of Folgers at home before I pay for 1 Starbucks. My tub of Folgers is worth $703.00 if I were to sell it at the same price as Starbucks. AND I’m using reusable cups every day.
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#26
HOSPITALS OMGLol ask them for an itemized bill (like everything they gave you and how much it costs) and they'll cut the bill down by like 50%.
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#27
Application fees for colleges, apartments, etc.#28
Idk if anyone remembers Power Balance bracelets from the early 2000s. A lot of celebrities and athletes advertised for them and they claimed to improve your balance and overall health. Well being a rubber bracelet made in a factory, it was all nonsense but they still sold millions of units before shutting down. A new company owns them now and you can still buy them though
Image credits: PraiseGodBarebones
#29
The US tax system. “We know how much money you owe, but it’s up to you to figure it out and if it’s not right, we’re going to penalize you for not understanding the convoluted code.”#30
The fact that so many products require you to create an account and register it just to use it. This is starting to become so widespread. Even CAMERAS are doing that [things] now. Pisses me off so much. I don't want to be tied to some stupid cloud BS I just want to use the damn thing.Phones themselves are terrible for this too. I should not need an apple or google account to have a phone I should be able to use it as a standalone device with just the cell service and that's it. All this sort of BS is only so they can spy on you.
#31
Giving credit card details for a "free trial" and auto renewal fine print.Heck, stop it after my trial ends. If I really liked it, I'll pay for it.
#32
Most kids shows are just long advertisements for toys.#33
the Sneaker/Shoe industry.you don't need masses of fancy artistic-looking running shoes collected in boxes that you go and spend $1000-10,000 on at a swap meet...You may as well be collecting very expensive funko pops. You're not going to wear them...and if you wear them you're only going to worry about them while you wear them, and the markup is insanity. I know people who do this, and they are leveraging money they don't really have on something that's going to sit on their shelf and do nothing...It's bad enough that shit like Sketchers (the literal K-Mart brand of shoe) cost over $125 a pop for a really crappily assembled shoe...but to spend in the thousands for what is essentially "Stamp-collecting" is nonsensical bordering on obsessive compulsive.
And don't get me started on women's shoes by design houses. I saw someone dish out $1800 for Loubouton's or something...what are you wearing those foot-destroying shoes for and why would some leather and glue and plastic cost 18 HUNDRED bucks? what a racket.
#34
Minimum wages staying the same, while the price of virtually everything else rises#35
Wish.com#36
Working 40 hours a week#37
Brands high prices (especially clothing )#38
Ticketmaster
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#39
Social media. From their happy beginnings they are now mostly a funnel used to ram as many advertisements into your mind as inhumanly possible. “Sponsored Posts” every third or fourth item - I see you, IG/FB/Red/etc. And that’s not even mentioning the extensive filtering network that “curates” the information you get to see when you are looking for something. “Curated information” is just a nice expression for you being conditioned to form certain opinions / buy more stuff. Social media groom minds
Image credits: Solitary-Dolphin
#40
Doing your own taxes, and paying to use a privately-owned software (or a service) when the government could totally do it for you, send you the details, and ask if it’s correct.
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#41
College textbook prices.It's crazy how ridiculous expensive they are putting even more of a financial burden on students
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#42
Bottled water, like Dasani. Especially in places like an amusement park that mark ups the price a shocking amount. Also the average markup of bottled water is 4000%, which is outrageous, bc water is literally free most places
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#43
EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the Internet that sells some sort of „millionaire education“ .Every single one of them. They are all liars, most of them are not even rich to begin with! They fake it enough that some idiots buy it. You are customers to them. Nothing more.
Image credits: pinocchiosWoodBalls
#44
Annual college tuition increases. Why aren’t they held to a competitive pricing model as opposed to having to take out a mortgage to go to school? Everyone wants to talk about government paying for college education, but there is no conversation on why is it that expensive anyway? Especially when some unis have endowments in the billions that just the interest on those funds could literally pay the tuition for everyone that goes through the door.
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#45
Paying for cable tv. The whole idea of paying was to create a revenue stream separate from that of marketing. There are a few out there (HBO, I think) but generally we pay to access the content and still have to spend 20% of the time sitting through commericals.Then streaming comes in and were free of advertisements again, for a bit. Now YouTube has tons of ads and other streaming services are talking about adding ads as well
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#46
Homeowner's insurance:"Sorry, we're not selling new policies in Your Area right now because Thing just happened" where Thing = earthquake, wildfire, flood, and other things you might ... want to insure against?
"We don't cover That Sort of Problem." where That Sort of Problem = anything that actually happens to your house, due to weasel-wording loopholes
"You submitted a claim? We're going to triple your rates FOREVER after this."
#47
Weddings. My wife and I got married in a post office and could not have asked for a better ceremony. It cost us the price of notary services and that’s it.#48
credit scores#49
Apple's headphone jack removal.Supposedly was to make the phone thinner, but everyone puts a case on anyways. Samsung galaxy S10 was 7.8 mm thick with a headphone jack. Apple removed the jack with iPhone 7, which was 7.1 mm thick. That's great, but every iphone since has been thicker.
And very convenient to remove that, wait till the annoyance died down, then release airpods.
The whole thing was clearly a scam to artificially make bluetooth a borderline necessity right before releasing Apple bluetooth earbuds.
And everyone ate it up.
#50
Any of the food they sell at Disneyland/Disney World. While they are delicious as all get out, you will pay for the nose and not get too much for your money.#51
bottled water(except in certain areas)
#52
mobile games. they draw you in with youtube sponsorships, then once you buy the game, you realize that in order to succeed, you have to pay a fine. i would say that paywalls are both like getting kicked in the nads and getting mugged. the only game i could imagine where you don't have to spend money in order to have a good time is minecraft pocket edition. in short, everyone should either play console/pc for games or spend more time with your family.#53
Most modern manufactured goods. Designed to not last, so you keep buying more.#54
Fashion, but also just clothing in general. No pockets on female clothes? More purses get sold. Thinner layers for women? Have to buy more layers. It gets marketed as being fashionable, but the clothing industry could roll out a marketing campaign for baggy rugged clothing tomorrow and get it trending if they wanted to.Also, the clothing industry is a cesspool of child labor, human trafficking, and it has some of the highest carbon emissions and water waste of any industry on the planet, way worse than flying. One cotton t-shirt takes thousands of gallons of water to produce. Almost any synthetic fabric is a type of plastic, and you release microplastics upon washing.
On top of all that, we have repressive cultural norms and laws regarding the necessity of wearing clothing that come from Puritans and Victorians who thought table legs had to be covered and ankles were sexy. The idea that you should be embarrassed to be naked in front of other people is a cultural phenomenon, not instinct, and you can look at pretty much any tropical tribe to verify this fact that humans are actually generally normal around other naked humans.
#55
Slot gambling. The casino controls how much they are paying out. If they wanted to, they can set it to “100% hold” and the slots will pay nothing. They set it to 7%-10% so on average, you lose 7 to 10 cents for every dollar gambled until it eventually reduces to nothing#56
Hot milfs in your area#57
The fact that you have to pay to bury loved ones#58
Social media looks like free, harmless fun, but is more like selling your soul (and data), makes you addicted and sad. Most people notice, probably, but don't care enough.#59
Health Insurance in the US. Costs a small fortune, never covers sh*t, and you still end up bankrupt if you're not rich and get sick or hurt.#60
Scientology#61
The price for cable and internet#62
Lootboxes in videogames.#63
Payday loans.#64
The Verizon $1 scam.Verizon tacked on a $1 fee onto 8% of their customer's bills each month so over the course of the year, they did it to every customer, about 150,000,000.
Their rationale was: 50% wouldn't notice and just pay the charge or would notice and wouldn't spend anytime fighting a $1 charge. 50% would notice the charge and call to have it removed. Of those, 35% would get frustrated while on the call and give up.
This added approximately $120,000,000 to the bottom line each year (3 total) until caught. Once caught, they paid a $25,000,000 fine.
Image credits: LISHPjuice
#65
Timeshare anything#66
Back to base security system monitoringHuge scam.
My smart home security system alerts me faster than ADT ever did (biggest offenders) When you don’t answer the call, they will send out someone and will charge you a fee
And every-time your system messes up, it will send false error codes to the monitoring station, which they will charge you a huge fee to fix
And oh if you want to disconnect it, they guy i spoke to from ADT was going to charge me $250 call out + $50 for every 15 minutes he was at my house, and the job would of taken at least an hour he they said, they may need to go into the roof
no i just called a security installation Electrictian and he said $50 call out and $30 for every 30 minutes he was there but that was depending on the type of job
He was at my house for 5 minutes
Power off Remove power wires from control box* Protect the wires so its safe Replace cover on control box Done
He only charged $50. Compared to ADTs service which would of cost about $450
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#67
Members of Senate, Congress, and Presidential candidates, collecting money from corporations, big donors, and hiding it in campaign accounts, Pac's and Super Pac's, and then doling it out as they like. They no longer act as a government of the people and for the people.
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#68
Gerrymandering. In most representative democracies, voters choose their elected officials. In the US, elected officials choose their voters.#69
Idk if it's normalized but McAfee security service. In my own experience with the service, it's done literally nothing for me except pop up every time I open my computer or nearly every 4 hours or so. I remember my ex gf's grandma who fell victim for the service. I tried to talk them down from it and not to pay the service but I was much too late for any semantics. So I just took it to memory that every computer already comes with security software and any outside security software, if not installed properly, checked with 100% concentrated power of will, you're going to have a bad time. At least, I'm convinced that the McAfee service is just a virus that makes you pay similar to some of those other viruses that get your photo via your personal webcam, lock your computer and show you a copy pasted photo of a "legal document" urging you to pay a ransom, what was it, ransomware.So my belief is that Even though most people may use McAfee as a computer firewall security service, it's more than likely a scam. Downvote me to hell, but at least convince me otherwise first.
#70
Gasoline prices ending in 9/10s of a cent.#71
Industrial age schooling and the 40hr work week#72
All MLMs They prey on insecure women, specifically army wives to give in. It’s almost like a cult. Guaranteeing new friends, lots of free trips and make 20,000 dollars a month. They are not your friends, the trips are only “free” if you become a top earner And the only way to make 20,000 dollars a month is to get at minimum 100 people in your team that work every single day Most sales from those companies are from the salesperson who is buying it to sell it. And they tell you that you have to buy more to sell more.It’s really gross
#73
Those Keymaster games that usually have something like a Switch and a pair of Beats and stuff.I work part time at an arcade and you physically cannot win a prize until the machine has taken it's retail equivalent in cash.
#74
Herbalife#75
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