My wife was scammed.
Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but the results were clear. She met someone online, like on Craig’s List, and bartered an exchange of gift cards. Several cards with about $200 dollars on them, plus $10 of actual dollars, changed hands. My wife came away with cards for Starbucks, Borders, and Macy’s, in amounts like $54, $26, and $38, the kinds of stores that fit her personality better than the shoes-and-hardware combination that she had collected over a recent birthday. She was excited, despite the rigmarole it took to make the arrangement work: twelve emails, last-minute trade-off meetings and no-shows, haggled negotiations to get the dollar amounts to almost match. And then she calls me, furious.
The clues were abundant and, at least in hindsight, agonizingly obvious. Over-the-top haggling. The eclectic card collection. The don’t-call-me, I’ll-call-you behavior. The lack of real name. The Starbucks card was real, with the $54 that “Tag” said would be there, but that’s it. The other cards were empty. After five busy days of negotiations, being scammed for $50 seemed, well, it seemed neglectfully cruel.
My wife began to beat herself up, angry at the naturally trusting nature that I find so inspirational. But she called me, so I took over. I had her call the shoe store, the hardware store, to claim the cards were stolen. (After all, they were.) It worked, and we got paper certificates in the mail. Meanwhile, I transferred Tag’s Starbucks balance before she could retaliate. We won, and I was proud. My wife emailed the scammer with an angry but surprisingly fair message. She wrote, “You really thought this would work?” and “I CANCELLED your cards” and “Give me an address and I’ll mail you back your cards.” Trapped behind her own anonymity, there was no response from Tag.
I didn’t understand why my wife was prepared to undo the transaction. Tag had been dishonest, and either careless or malicious. We wrought karmic justice upon her, and at a profit. But when Tag never accepted the do-over, never identified herself, never acknowledged her defeat at the hands of the superior couple that my wife and I comprise, well, that extra money started to burn a hole in my pocket. Had we sunk to the level of someone like Tag? Should I worry that I beat Tag at her own game, earning us more money in one hour than she didn’t after her five days? Does it matter that the scam hadn’t been my idea?
Every time I go to Starbucks now — a coffee, a sandwich, a snack for the kids — I wonder if I’ve used up all $54 dollars. And if I’m free.
This past Christmas, I was convinced I had been scammed. I ordered a pair of teen heart-throb Ugg boots on eBay for one of my daughters. I thought, “Cool. What a deal. And they don’t appear to be from China or some other country that will take months to deliver them.” But the next day, I got an email from eBay actually chastising me for purchasing from this particular seller, that he appeared to be a fraud, and that they had taken his account down. I was furious and started the process of trying to get my money back through Pay Pal. And for weeks, Pay Pal faithfully investigated my claim. And then, inexplicably, but well after Christmas, the boots arrived. I felt incredibly embarrassed. The whole thing was legitimate after all. So I dealt with a different kind of guilt than the one you’re describing above. But guilt just the same. ;)