This sounds like the shittest scam ever and one that is very easy to avoid.
I dunno, if you cut someone’s tree down, you’re responsible–even if you thought you had permission.
And the tree’s owner can sue you for comically large amounts of money. Ye olde r/bestoflegaladvice actually had to ban tree law posts for much the same reason that r/nocontext had to ban content from r/crusaderkings.
Yeah I was thinking about tree law lol lol
Why are Americans still dealing with checks in the age of digital banking?
One reason is to avoid card transaction fees. For smaller companies providing often expensive services, like tree felling, they’ll pass on the card transaction fee to the client or recommend they just pay by check to avoid it.
Which is against the agreement with the banks, but here we are.
That same scam is also ran on every other payment method. These would all be prevented by not accepting checks that aren’t for the exact amount and don’t pay the difference in cash to the check writer.
I haven’t had a checkbook in a long time.
I have received a check for some equity with a previous employer. There is barely any bank on the continent that can do anything with it, so I’ll wait for my next overseas trip to cash it.
I receive checks sometimes. My mother-in-law sends them as a gift, for example. But my credit union just lets me take a photo of the front and back through their app, with ‘VIA MOBILE DEPOSIT’ written on the back.
On the other hand, I couldn’t even tell you the last time I wrote a check.
What are you talking about pretty much any bank can cash a check…?
I still have to have a checkbook because my dog groomer and my tree trimmer/gutter cleaner companies both refuse to accept cards. They are small businesses and don’t want to deal with the fees. My options are go get cash every time, or keep a checkbook on hand to write checks. While I understand their reasoning, it’s infuriating that checks even still exist.
I pay in checks for large bills. I fail to see a problem
Why would you use a functional system for the past fifty years that works? Instead of using a third party data harvesting middleman like Venmo/Cash app/Paypal who can reject your purchase because fuck you?
Has no one here ever used a debit card?
Wait, you guys don’t have bank transfers in the USA? I can send money from my own bank account with no fees to every other bank in my country
Yes the us has bank transfers. No you are not special
Many banks charge a fee for wire transfers, in some instances $20. Zelle is free, but not every bank uses it.
We do, but most people are afraid to use them. We have Zelle, which is free. I think the issue is that Zelle isn’t protected. If you send the money to the wrong name/number there is no way to get that money back unless the recipient agrees to it. But there is no law or whatever to force that person to return the money if you are the one who made the mistake.
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Yep, I scan a QR code that they give me and my bank, any bank in my country, will transfer the requested amount to the restaurant in one click on my phone. With two additional clicks I can send a QR code made by my bank to my friend who can transfer his part to me. Both transfers happen within a second.
On the way home, I pay for public transport by bank transfer by holding my card to the reader when getting on the bus, then off the bus. It’s simple and secure.
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It’s called Zelle. We have it, it just isn’t as ubiquitous.
Y’all don’t have a government option?
In Brazil we can send money to each other between bank accounts. There’s even this new and fast system called “Pix”, in which you can, in just some seconds, create a code of a payment request, show it as QRCode, scan it and pay it. It’s pretty neat.
In America, banks would lobby against it, and Republicans would call it socialism.
The problem is, you don’t know if it’ll bounce till you try.
I’m certainly not handing out my card over the phone.
Many companies won’t accept credit cards or debit because of having cheats charge back, and because to avoid companies abusing cards and charging wrong, the onus is very heavily on the comoany. Basically, a charge back means that contractor or whatever isn’t getting paid.
The scam is easy enough to avoid. The first is to know who you’re dealing with, and that they’re authorized to authorize the work. Check the county property maps and match it to their ID. (If it’s corporate, or whatever, then an employee ID or something. Property managers have ways of demonstrating agency.)
Then, take payment before work starts. (Or at least a deposit.)
If that’s too much, then, when an over-payment does arrive, return the uncashed check and ask for a new one. (Or cash it, let the money settle then give the money back.)
I’m certainly not handing out my card over the phone.
Wait till you learn your routing and account numbers are right there, unencrypted, on the check, and there’s basically zero protection against unauthorized drafts in the EFT system.
You can’t take account and routing to most websites and buy shit like you can with the card/expiry/secret.
Is it perfect? No. But my bank should catch that anyhow- because I never write paper checks- I go online and tell them to mail one.
I think you’re assuming that a merchant who collects card details for payment also stores those details. They do not. The information is immediately tokenized and a 1-way authorization token is returned to the merchant. It’s literally what that little spinny circle when you click “pay” is doing. It’s reaching out to the payment network, which is in turn, reaching out to the card issuer who is proxying it to the issuing bank and asking for authorization.
At no point is your card number retained by the merchant. If the authorization code is somehow leaked, it’s literally only good for a single transaction, and can’t be used to generate future transactions.
That’s great for PoS terminals.
Websites are a bit different; you can elect to not store your details, sure, but they’re still running it. Further; you give your card details over the phone, it’s conceivable they can then use it online.
Especially, for example, for food delivery. It’s best practice to not give details over the phone. Originally the whole point of the secret pin thingy (those 3 or 4 digits on the back that are printed and not embossed) were meant to allow you to give the number/name/expiry for the card and have something that prevents this. But these days, most delivery services will just use their website to ‘place’ the order for you.
Because the US detests change of any form, even if it will make things better.
More and more it seems like it’s especially if it’s gonna make things better lol
Boomer contractors who can’t figure out how to take a payment on a mobile device.
This story makes me excited for the day we might someday have a tree-law or perhaps even bird-law sublemmy of our own.
Someday perhaps.
Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
Or a scam-law…
Tree law is a thing, there are big lawsuits in the states over trees.
The Japanese government recently arrested members of a big auto dealership for allegedly killings a few trees in front of their buildings.
In this case, if the perp playing this game is caught, he can be sued for the cost of not only the wood of the tree, but the cost to replace it with the biggest tree possible (including grinding out the old stump, the equipment needed to dig the new hole for the new tree’s rootball, and transportation and planting of the tree itself). To get a large tree costs $1-2,000, never mind the outsized equipment necessary to move and plant it. So this can get quite expensive quite quickly.
Source: used to work in the industry, and had a friend who was a consultant on several cases like this, albeit it was generally malicious neighbors going after trees that weren’t on their property, because they ‘hated the leaves in the fall’ or ‘the tree was blocking their view’.
Tree law was one of the few subreddits that I would actually read everytime I saw a post pop up in my feed. Something so satisfying about a good case of tree law.
You know what could speed this up, is if lemmings were willing to go do some tree crime.
Then we could speed run getting the tree-law sublemmy. In fact I know a good starting template for tree crime…
How would one report a tree crime, doesn’t seem the kind of thing to call 911 about?
The scam in question, from the article:
McKcraken said he never requested a tree removal service and didn’t want any trees at his Forest Hills house — which he’s trying to sell — removed.
“They’re trying to target vacant houses because the owners won’t know,” he said. “So that they can post themselves as the owner, and the owners won’t be home to stop it and won’t be home to notice it if the tree services do show up.”
The Wilson County Sheriff’s Office said the scheme begins with a scammer calling or emailing a tree service company for a quote on how much it would be to cut down trees. After receiving an estimated amount, they send the company a faulty check for more than needed.
Before the company realizes the checks are null and void, the scammer asks the company to pay back the difference.
“They send you a check for $1,500, and they want you to send $500 back to them,” Adam Barbee with Arbor Sense said. “And then that way, they take $500, and you try to go cash the check, and the check is no good.”
That is like, actually one of the oldest scams in the book. I’m impressed.
That’s a pretty interesting scam.
People have been doing similar scam on used car sellers for years.
Example being I post a car for sale. Scammer offers to buy. Scammer brings check higher than the agreed price. Tells me I can deposit the whole check, just give them difference back in cash. Scammer leaves with that cash and the car. Few days later bank tells me the check was no good.
Used to hear about that often enough Craigslist even sent out warnings to sellers.
“They send you a check for $1,500, and they want you to send $500 back to them,” Adam Barbee with Arbor Sense said. “And then that way, they take $500, and you try to go cash the check, and the check is no good.”
If someone sends me a check for $500 more than they should have, I would just have them send me another and void the incorrect one. Checks that don’t match invoices make for sloppy books.
Or just take all the money because they have no legal recourse to correct their own fuck up. They wrote and signed the check, as long as you didn’t lie about the price then it’s all on them.
Makes you wonder why so many are willing to just send some money back.
Usually they camp it in language where they are only able to cut one check (company policy of one check per PO, for example), but they need to pay two people, you and another facilitator such as a transport service. The extra money is to pay for the transport service, which is actually also the scammer.
Good idea.
… and as the article fails to mention… what about the bloody TREES!? Imagine scammers cutting down a century-old, beautiful tree just to make a few hundred dollars. What a scummy, short-term, selfish thing to do. GRRRR.
Stories like this make me consider that humans deserve to go extinct. Maybe raccoons and corvids will do a better job of caring for this planet.
Especially since you could pull this scam with a whole lot of other businesses that wold not result in cutting down trees.
Your mistake is thinking that scammers care about those things.
Oh they do. This is one of the most common types of scams out there. It sucked that I technically had to participate in many attempts at these because I worked as a relay operator prior to there being rules allowing us to disconnect obvious scammers.
If they actually cut them down, could you invoke TREE LAW? Wrongfully cutting down trees can lead to massive fines in the US, since they are so hard to replace.
Raccoons and corvids? What, in the 30 minutes after they defeated the crabs, but before they evolved into crabs themselves?
Once everything evolves into crabs, we’ll be doing a lot better on this planet.
That’s apparently our benevolent creator’s plan.
slowly lifts Old Bay from under the bar
Personally, I was expecting to read about some tree law here.
… In a news story about swaths of people getting scammed, finding it, stopping it, helping others and news notifying everyone possible… Humanity deserves extinction because of some scammers probably in India?
Doomers are fucking stupid.
Those guys are amateurs. Try being the Uk government—compulsorily purchase private land for new rail line, hand lucrative contracts to your mates to clear mature oaks (which they get to keep, worth £5k each), accidentally clear more than is needed, then cancel the rail line.
Or Sheffield council and Amey cutting down healthy trees because they thought it would generate more profit in the street maintenance contract.
I doubt I’ve ever seen a farce as big as the east leg of HS2.
It’s linking London and Leeds. No, it’s linking London and a tram stop 10 miles outside Nottingham. No, it’s linking London to the ruins of the last coal power station in Britain, and a bus stop to East Midlands Airport for some reason, even though London has like 4 fucking airports anyway and they all go to the same shithole cheap Euro dumps that EMA flies to. Ah you know what fuck it, you’re not getting HS2 at all.
Shīt, that hurts me even reading this 😭
One of the worst bits is a lot of the delays and budget problems came because of eco protectors like Swampy blocking construction. So frustrating such an important project to get heavy goods off the roads are attacked by people who should support it - now it could be decades before the British public will trust another major rail infrastructure project.
So, blame eco protectors for the govt inability to prepare and finish a project while conveying its importance to the public?
I’m not blaming swampy for all the problems but if you actually look at the events that unfolded it was a significant part of the issues, people have been very clear about the importance of it and all the documents were there for anyone to view - I’m just saying that the fact eco protesters targeted it is a serious failing of the eco protesters and once again attention hungry idiots doing harm to the thing they pretend to care about.
Why should anyone take us seriously when we try and argue for eco things if we’re attacking the very things we need?
Fucking hell where did this happen?
Well, I used a bit of poetic licence but there’s a case near me in the midlands in which the land owner has been forced to go to the high court (at his own expense) to get any chance of compensation. The tactics being used by hs2 and the Secretary of State are to frighten people into non-action. That is the leg of hs2 that is still (currently) going ahead.
But I’d eat my manky dog-walking hat if it’s the only example in the country.
What a bizarrely specific scam. Shouldn’t take too long until everyone in that line of work in a particular area catches up on it.
Overpayment and asking for cash back is one of the most common scams, it’s hardly specific. You can replace tree felling with just about anything. They’re just the latest victims.
Yeah, and not to diminish or demean any victims, but waiting for any check to clear before reimbursement is a solution, or requesting a new check and ripping / voiding the old one on receiving the new check in the correct amount.
And if someone gets mad at you for that, they’re either scamming you or they’re not being accountable for their mistake.
The scam is old AF, it’s just new targets. If you’ve tried to sell a car in the last 20 years, you’ve dealt with someone trying to pull it. Or rent a room or house, there’s a reason Airbnb is popular with owners, even for long term situations.
Jesus fuck. The scammers are bad enough, but the businesses that don’t recognize the obvious overpayment scam should be somewhat liable. These types of overpayment scams are so common, so well-known, and so blatantly obvious I really have no sympathy for idiots who fall for them.
I have yet to run into a single company who’s AP/AR departments aren’t either overworked, inept, or both.
A lot of this hinges on how sloppy and mistake prone banks are, how all of the overworked/inept AP/AR departments have to work with the AP/AR departments of other outfits who are in the same boat, how ridiculous credit card companies are with their “expense account” offerings, and how too many vendors think “we’ll just keep charging them and hope they don’t notice” is a valid business model.
These scams work on companies because messing up the amount on a check and it not clearing is only MARGINAL stupidity compared to the day-to-day operations they deal with. If the scammers spell the company name right, they’re one up on most accounts payable departments.
