Taste for a bargain in your genes?

Dennie Quill, Columnist

My dear friend Joyce has just returned home after spending Christmas holidays with her son and his family in South Florida. This has become a ritual for many people as their children settle with their spouses in desirable locations around the world.

She did the obligatory shopping, of course, and though municipalities like Dade and Broward may be reluctant to admit it, their economies have benefited handsomely from the solid support of Caribbean people. From building supplies to appliances and clothing, Jamaicans are known to source goods from South Florida businesses, and not on hire purchase terms.

But this is about Joyce, who is still smarting from her experience with a smooth-talking vendor.

Enticing deal

Here is Joyce's story. She saw a sign at a gas station which said '6-piece sheet sets 600 tc $20'. She decided that this was too good a bargain to pass up. And if you didn't know it 'tc' refers to thread count, the higher the thread count, the softer the sheet is supposed to be. The older we get the more we yearn for high tc as we go in search of the finer things in life.

So Joyce was very interested. When she approached the vendor, he told her that he even had 1,200 tc sheets, also for the same $20. They came in king- and queen-size for $20. He told her that the sheets had deep pockets, so they could fit the largest king-size (California) beds and that they were made from Egyptian cotton. Joyce was so excited she grabbed two of the sets, paid her $40 and was off with her tax-free bargains.

But a day or two later when she examined her purchase, she was enraged. The first sign that she had been duped is that the package said 'Egyptian comfort'. Without her glasses she had only seen the word 'Egyptian' and assumed that 'cotton' had followed. Then instead of a 1,200 thread count - it said 1,200 series. When she rubbed her fingers over the sheets, they were as coarse as emery board. And it was not six pieces, it was four.

Joyce feels rather stupid that she had been scammed. As she related her story, I couldn't help remembering the age-old advice: "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." For $20, it is not possible to get 1,200 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets - not even at the factory gate. And that's the truth. There were other red flags - this was an itinerant vendor selling his wares out of a van. He charged no tax and gave no receipts.

Examine all angles

As I thought about Joyce's experience, I recalled failed Ponzi schemes like Cash Plus and Olint. Joyce, like many others, got caught by both. Joyce is the kindest person one could ever meet, and it occurred to me that people who are genuine and kind may have a higher level of consumer trust than others. Is this why so many pastors and churchgoers fell for these so-called investment schemes? Sceptics are more likely to ask questions and examine all angles before making a decision.

In this the age of opportunism, crooked telemarketers and scam artists are thinking of various schemes to dupe the unsuspecting, and there is a need to be alert and sensible in making decisions which require you to pay out money.

I urge any up-and-coming social scientist out there to make this a project to conduct a study to help us understand what it is that drives some people to fall for scams time after time. Is it something in the DNA?

Dennie Quill is a veteran media practitioner. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and denniequill@hotmail.com.