In every scam, there is a "smart person" and a victim. In the past 365 days, the China Consumers Association has accepted more than 760,000 complaints, with an average of more than 2,000 complaints per day. In this article, we’ll leave product expertise behind and focus on just one topic—why you got scammed.
For this topic, the deepest understanding is naturally the role of the "smart person" in every scam, so the author found such a friend who used to be a dealer in a digital store among many QQ friends. Before writing, I plan to ask him for advice.
Lao Yu is a dealer I met when I was running the market before, although in my opinion, he is in the regular dealer business.
When I asked him how many people you had seen cheated, Lao Yu said very rudely, "Can you count them? Every day, every hour, either poor or stupid, or poor and stupid."
01/"Poor"
The first reason Lao Yu pointed out was "poor", in his original words: "In the final analysis, we still think that our place (regular dealers) is expensive, and with the money they pay, we will definitely not be able to get it here. If you don’t want to increase the price, you can only get it outside.”
I feel that he has suffered a lot in this regard, and even though he has been away from the market for many years, there is still some anger between his words. When we buy electronic products, we will first determine the budget range. In most people’s minds, the best thing is to spend the least money to buy the best things, but in reality, we also know that this is impossible.
So if you really buy electronic products with such a mentality, it is indeed prone to problems. I have found that many of my friends are not willing to spend too much money on products, but they end up buying scumbags.
The author has a QQ group, and friends in the group also want to buy an electronic product for consultation from time to time. For example, not long ago, I met a person who wanted to buy earphones, and said a lot of requirements. The last time I asked about the budget, the other party just wanted to spend 200 yuan, I don't know what to say, I can only persuade him to increase the budget. In the hands of the "profiteers", there is no doubt that something will come out to deceive him.
Regarding the word "poor", it is not in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense. For example, if you want to buy a 25,000-quality device with a budget of 15,000 yuan, you can still be called "poor". A simpler way to understand is that it is very easy to fall into trouble when it is unrealistic to buy good products at low prices, and deception often happens here.
Lao Yu also gave an extreme example. He said that if you are not short of money, and you buy everything from big brands and go to the official website or flagship store to spend, you will definitely not encounter such a thing. The example is exaggerated and unrealistic, but factual observation tells us that reducing the budget excessively does increase the chance of being deceived.
02/"Silly"
So can a sufficient budget avoid the consumption trap? Of course not, in Lao Yu's words, "In addition to being poor, there are also stupid". Of course, the "stupid" here does not refer to IQ, but to knowledge. Information asymmetry is the main reason for being deceived in the consumption of electronic products. "They can take you because you don't understand," Lao Yu said.
Indeed, electronic products themselves belong to the field of technology and have certain cognitive thresholds. If you really don’t know anything, you can only be led by the merchants. We found that most complainants of electronic product consumption disputes are reluctant to spend enough cost to learn before purchasing.
Of course, we believe that most consumers will not do any homework before buying electronic products, but even so, there will still be pitfalls. We have sorted out two more common models.
The first one is in the brand determination stage. The first thing most people need to determine when buying electronic products is which brand and model to choose. At this stage, if you don’t really understand what the core evaluation criteria for this type of product are, you will be particularly vulnerable to information such as bad advertisements. Coupled with small favors, you will eventually choose a bad brand and be fooled by bad advertisements.
To put it simply, being deceived in this situation is that the previous homework was not done enough. We believe that to have a basic understanding of a category of products, the preliminary study should take at least one or two days.
Insufficient preliminary homework can also lead to another problem, which is to stumble on the details. Some technological products are similar in big technical aspects, but the real difference lies in the details, which cannot be understood without going deeper. I still don't believe you, I think you lied to him and want to sell more money."
The second is to be deceived at the consumption stage. The target brand and model had already been determined, but when it was time to meet the merchant face-to-face, he was shaken by the shop owner's various words, and finally gave up the original plan and got on the thief ship of "profiteers". I believe that there are many opportunities for you to encounter this situation in reality. I have not encountered it myself and some friends have encountered it. The author once made a list of installations for my friends, but my friend "betrayed" and bought home products and mine. The recommendations are very different, and the result is naturally pitted.
Speaking of which, Lao Yu Qiqi said: "Actually, I met those who didn't understand at all, and I came to buy these with a list. He didn't want anything else you recommended, but this kind of person is not easy to be fooled. That's it. It's the easiest to start with half-hearted, I've seen it a lot, that's stupid."
03/"Mildew"
In the end, Lao Yu also sighed: "Actually, if they came in and found a regular store like ours, they could have escaped a deception."
Indeed, everyone's situation when they finally choose a consumption channel is different. If you are lucky, you will meet a reliable dealer, and if you are unlucky, you will enter a "black shop", so after thanking Lao Yu for his teaching, the author again Added an answer to this question - mold.
What is mold? To put it bluntly, it is bad luck. Sometimes due to the constraints of geographical and other objective conditions, there is no formal market formed, and buyers really can only fight for luck.
The first is the channel, which is a hard condition. Although many cities now have large computer cities, and the e-commerce network also covers a large area, there are always some places that do not have these conditions, especially in terms of after-sales maintenance. For example, in some fourth- and fifth-tier cities or towns, it is not fortunate enough that there are not many formal electronic shopping malls, no official after-sales points, and the timeliness of e-commerce distribution is poor, so local novice consumers can only go to those unreliable channels. To buy and repair, in the end will be deceived is a chance.
Here, I will say a few more words about maintenance. Maintenance is a more "black box" market than retail. In places where there is no official after-sales service, consumers really rely on luck to find maintenance, and those with bad luck will be deceived immediately. , without any ambiguity.
Secondly, there is another situation where there is no formal channel to buy gray products. It is all luck that you are not deceived. If you are deceived, there is no official treatment for you. A typical example in this regard is the parallel game console market. If you want to buy a Nintendo Switch, you must either find a friend to buy it from abroad, or you can only buy it from informal channels. This thing is not sold or maintained in China, but if you are unlucky There is no reason to buy a second-hand refurbished one.
However, consumers still have to buy these products in the end when they have a demand, so from the time of buying, they have been prepared to be cheated and cheated. , consumers seem to have no good way.
There are all kinds of traps in the consumer market of electronic products. If you are not careful, you will be deceived. As consumers, among the above three points of "poor", "stupid" and "mildew", only listening The "poor" and "stupid" are very harsh. Knowing more about the product and correctly understanding the relationship between price and quality can help us avoid these unpleasantness as much as possible.
