Foo - What is the biggest ripoff industry in history?

OK, this is a pretty lame topic but this morning it seemed the jewelry adverisers on the radio were out in force.

Jewelry is in my opinion the single most idiotic ripoff business there will ever be in the history of the world. Gemstones are assigned values so ridiculous it is insane. Not to mention that the labor used to retreive gemstones still resembles slavery ( especially the diamond industry ) in many cases.

I just cringe evry time I hear a DeBeers's diamond advertisement or any other jewelry marketer.

I do however have an apreciation for gemstones used by ancient civilizations for artistic works. But todays jewelry market is all about displacing you from your money for a fragment of a rock that realistically cost almost nothing to procure and cut and mount into a setting compared to what you will pay.

Second biggest ripoff industry has gotta be automobiles.

Big Rips:

Jewelry
Water (bottled, tied for first)
Furniture
Auto
Carpet/ other flooring

in that order.

Water! I almost forgot about bottled water. A dream come true for companies like Coca Cola, you pay as much for a bottle of Desani water as you do for coke. OMG!!!

The greeting card industry I feel is the biggest rip-off

Clothing the average markup is 300% most are 500 to 600%.

Clothing the average markup is 300% most are 500 to 600%.

I completely forgot about the clothing industry. I really hate seeing some trendy prick wearing faded jeans that are supposedly "in"

Insurance. "You're in good hands with Allstate" The only place they have their hands is in your pocket. Look in any city... Who owns the biggest buildings? Insurance companies.

'nuff said.

Cigarettes, branded prescription medication, motor vehicles, bicycles, computers!

The jewellery will hold it's value, will not give you health problems, don't pollute and as far as the once humble bike is concerned anything over €1000 is excessive for the ordinary Joe Soap cyclist!

Doctor. They cry poor as they take off in their Mercedes. Meanwhile you wait an hour to see the doctor 5 minutes and get charged $150.00

1. Pharmaceuticals (in the States only)

Doctor. They cry poor as they take off in their Mercedes. Meanwhile you wait an hour to see the doctor 5 minutes and get charged $150.00


We have a few doctors on the forum, I am sure we will hear the other side of the story. In this time and age, I personaly would not want to be a Dr.

religion. o course.. back in the old days when ya had to pay to get a churches blessing and ya had to be religious to not be split in half or burned alive... maybe it wasn't such a rip off. :D

the government and it's damn taxes... damn f'ers!!! if they were a company they'd be bankrupt and in prison... but noooo.. we have guuuns.. and a flaaag so we can't do any bad or inefficiency.

Credit cards.

OK, this is a pretty lame topic but this morning it seemed the jewelry adverisers on the radio were out in force.

Jewelry is in my opinion the single most idiotic ripoff business there will ever be in the history of the world. Gemstones are assigned values so ridiculous it is insane. Not to mention that the labor used to retreive gemstones still resembles slavery ( especially the diamond industry ) in many cases.

I just cringe evry time I hear a DeBeers's diamond advertisement or any other jewelry marketer.

I do however have an apreciation for gemstones used by ancient civilizations for artistic works. But todays jewelry market is all about displacing you from your money for a fragment of a rock that realistically cost almost nothing to procure and cut and mount into a setting compared to what you will pay.

Second biggest ripoff industry has gotta be automobiles.
Hey Sam good point and check this out too:
http://www.iht.com/articles/516941.html

don't they chop people up in those diamond rearing countries?

The cost of a music CD or software for your computer.

Toilet paper. . . It's a rip off EVERY time.

cars and car insurnace have to be the worst as far as i know

You buy a new car the minute you drive that damn thing off the lot it loses mad value ... i keep buyin used and i pay cash ... i dont need to be owin someone money every month and these hondas are so damn bulletproof i dont have to worry about reliability ... both that i have owned had over 100k when i purchased em and my 91 civic had 180k on it when i sold it.

Life Insurance, The only way you come out a winner is by dying young before you pay a fortune in premiums. The older you get, the less it costs the insurance companies when they pay out.

another thing thats bad is the music industry ... cd's should have dropped to under $10 by now they cost less than a cassette to produce.

Toilet paper. . . It's a rip off EVERY time.

yup. i just take a shower afteward. the brown water only lasts a few minutes. :o

Lawyers. Some of them would steal the copper pennies off an old dead man's eyes before the coffin was lowered into the grave.

Koffee

Lawyers. Some of them would steal the copper pennies off an old dead man's eyes before the coffin was lowered into the grave.

Koffee


um. alot of people would do that nowadays.

Banks

Biggest ripoff is vodka. $18 for 1ltr of ordinary grain vodka? In russia vodka used to cost 2ru/ltr!

1. Pharmaceuticals (in the States only)

I took my son to the doctor yesterday for his asthma. The doctor visit would have cost cost $150, the three prescriptions I had filled for him would have cost another $200. Ridiculous! In this case, I have to say thank goodness for his health insurance.

1. Pharmaceuticals (in the States only)

I take Claritin for my allergies.

When it was prescription it was about $3.00/pill.

When it went OTC Claritin dropped to about $.80/pill.

Now that you can get the same medicine as a generic it has dropped to about $.08/pill.

I realize that R&D needs to be compensated, but that is a huge difference.

Amusement parks. Namely, Cedar Point. Skiing industry, airlines, and gourmet coffee.

1-furniture
2-insurance

i wish to petition to take pharmaceuticals OFF this list. not only do they ADD value to your life, but their prices in the US are reflected by the laws and bylaws of the FDA. The dirtiest secret is the FDA's changing policies towards the late 80's that reduced the patent life of a drug from 18.5 years to under 11 years today. That means that the avg cost (now at $980 million) to bring a drug to market needs to be recouped in a much shorter time. Imagine if you had an invention, and after 11 years of pumping it up (marketing) you lost your right to exclusively market that product.. over and over again. The FDA is most prohibitive. We do use other countries as our guinea pigs (US is a very litigous society)>>>it sometimes takes 3-4 years to bring a drug to market in the US where it is already on the market in europe. (the patent life begins to tick from application, not from market)

hope you have a popular disease guys. because the financial incentive to invent a drug that will only benefit 20,000 is a $$ loser for any company.

3-lawyers. they make a game out of lawsuits. its a game that they can manipulate.
4- there is no doubt that poor craftsmanship from the automobile industry is responsible for more people staying poor.

Clothing

I agree!!

;)

Amusement parks. Namely, Cedar Point. Skiing industry, airlines, and gourmet coffee.

WHAT :eek:

Fifty bucks for 16 hours of unparalleled fun is pretty good. You sound spoiled having the the worlds greatest coaster park at your back door.

The diamond industry. DeBeers is one of the few classic market monopolies still in operation. Once it loses control of the market (as it eventually must), the price of diamonds wil crash. Also, electric utilities deliberately sat on unused generating capacity, with bogus "maintenance" outages, during the CA energy crisis to artificially inflate prices.
These execs would be in stir in any civilized society.

Pharmaceuticals, Insurance.

The drug industry spends way more every year (2 or 3x, depending on the company) on advertising and corporate officer salaries than on R&D.

The insurance industry sells a product, and that is a promise to make you whole if you suffer a loss. If you have ever had to file a claim, you know that a lot of times the last thing the insurance company wants to do is deliver the product they sold you.

How about any company/industry that includes "planned obsolescence" or "planned lifetimes" in its strategy?

Easy, the biggest rip off is the Girls Gone Wild series...

Easy, the biggest rip off is the Girls Gone Wild series...

why? (unfortunately haven't seen one yet)

Anything involving multi level marketing

Doctor. They cry poor as they take off in their Mercedes. Meanwhile you wait an hour to see the doctor 5 minutes and get charged $150.00


I wish I had a mercedes.

No doubt some doctors are well off, but some aren't. The average pediatrician in south georgia makes only $40,000 a year, that's with over $100,000 in student loans and working at least 80-90 hours a week. The average doctor in Georigia makes less than the average chiropractor in Georgia and the average plumber. (At least plumbers have to get up in the middle of the night as well as the doctor.) When was the last time a chiropractor met you in the ER at 3:00 am?

If you want to complain, orthodontists work 35 hours a week , no call, no being woken up at 2:00 am to see a patient and still has to work over 12 hours the next day, they make at least $350,000.
Doctors aren't crying poor, but if some plans (medicare included) don't even pay, (medicaid pays an internist $30.00 for an hours worth of physical) overhead does not get met. Employees of doctors still demand their 401 benefitss, pay rsises, vacation time, excellent dental and health benefits, but the patients don't believe they deserve it.

As for long waits, can't tell you how many times a patient comes in with 2 of their family members and want their illnesses or needs addressed, a cough turns out to be a heart attack in evolution and has to be admitted to the hospital, their stomach virus is really a ruptured appendix (or should we tell them to wait since this will run everyone late.), they want 10 pages of disability papers done right on the spot despite telling the receptionist they are in for a simple cold, etc. (It can take 40 minutes due to complexity and if done wrong, they lose their benefits) Some doctors I know actually have never had someone wait more than 30 minutes but they piss people off if by telling them they need to make another appoointment for their family members ( 1-2 days later) or wait later in the week for them to fill out their disability papers despite the fact that the deadline is that day. (they lose their benefits temporarily.) and they no longer see or follow their patients in the hospital and has a stranger, hospitalist, take care of all thier patients that need to be admitted.

As for the $150.00 I can break it down for you right now. For the average gen practioner, $50 goes to the doc, $10 goes to the nurse and equipment (speculum, gauze, ekg etc.) , $40 goes to malpractice , and the other 50$ goes to office manager, telephone receptionist, nurses aid calling in prescriptions full time, and the insurance specialist and their associated salaries and benefits.

How about our Social Security System?

You and your employer pay over 15% of your gross salary into this scam, and in the end, you get almost nothing. Put that 15% in anything else, and the average man retires a multi-millionaire. Beat that scam!

WHAT :eek:

Fifty bucks for 16 hours of unparalleled fun is pretty good. You sound spoiled having the the worlds greatest coaster park at your back door.

I still go, as I have been for 20 years(and I'm only 20 years old), but I HATE paying $3.00 for a bottle of water that I have to buy because its so damn hot out, and the drinking fountains there suck. Don't get me wrong, I love Cedar Point, but I still feel it is a rip-off. Another big one is concerts.

Most hollywood movies- the ticket prices, that is.

Online forums that ask for donations. These guys make money HAND OVER FIST.

Salad bars and self serve all you can eat restaurants. You generally get very crap food, still pay close to the same cost, are usually expected till still leave a tip for someone who has done no work and you get to make the food which is never as good as what you can make at home.

A truely brilliant scam imo.

Government retirement plan (in canada anyways)...I have been contributing for years and I am 100% confident my gov't will waste it all away and just eventually call it a tax.

Real estate.
$28,000,000 apartments and $160,000 parking spaces.

Most hollywood movies- the ticket prices, that is.


Plus the popcorn they try to sell you.

Anything and everything Disney.

Hollywood makes all the money from your $8.00 movie ticket. The theater makes very little of that due to the heavy costs of buying the rights to show the movie etc. So the theater jacks up the concessions to make their money.

Why? Because famous actors/actresses think they deserve $100 million a movie.


Oh yea, and athletic shoes. Feels weird buying a $80 pair of shoes that cost all of a dollar to make.

Starbucks

Starbucks

Amen to that!