Scam of the Week: Car Warranty
You know not to trust this man. But you may not know not to trust incoming mail that the state of New Jersey has enabled you to receive.
A few weeks ago, I registered my car with the state of New Jersey and their Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC), what most literate states call the “DMV”. Then about a week ago, I got the following piece of mail:
And I’m embarrassed to say, they almost got me. Not that I was about to actually call them or sign up or something, but I was briefly worried that there was indeed something wrong with my warranty and I had to inquire about this with Toyota.
You see, I purchased my Toyota Prius about two years ago exactly and I got an extended warranty that went above and beyond the factory warranty. And it was reasonable to think that the basic warranty would last about two years and the extended warranty might have a problem if I was getting this notice.
But then I examined it more closely and again discovered the same telltale signs that I’ve seen before. No personal information on the card (though there was personal info on the outside). No VIN. No reference even to the model of the vehicle in question. No detailed information at all.
Although I sort of shudder to think about that being the only test, because this information is relatively easy to acquire. I assume that this company got my name and the fact that I have a recently transferred Japanese automobile from public or sold records from the state of New Jersey. How much harder could it be to acquire a few extra compelling details? And if those details had been present, would I really be worried?
Granted, my first call would be to either Toyota’s mainline or the dealership where I purchased the car, not to the scam artists. But I’m a pretty sophisticated consumer of scams and spams. Given that this card came in one of those sealed peel-off-the-perforated-sides official-looking formats that usually indicates a live check, how many people might fall for this? How many NJ residents might confused MVC for MVS?
Clearly, a good number. Which begs the question why we allow this to happen in the first place. Even the staunchest defenders of capitalism must have qualms with the market “solving” by immoral but clever scam artists being able to straight steal from vulnerable and trusting people. I mean, are there no limits on caveat emptor?
Clearly this is a bad time in America’s history to be asking these questions. As the country more and more openly faces the fact that nearly every surviving financial institution in the nation fleeced the American public and the individuals employed therein are getting rich on the backs of everyone else losing their jobs, maybe this is just a sign of other people trying to rise up and get in on the kleptocracy.
Part of the question for me really hinges on whether the state of New Jersey, as I suspect they did, sold this information to the bogus “Motor Vehicle Services” in exchange for much needed cashflow. Because that would pretty much indicate that we’re beyond salvation. When the government is so broke that it can only pay for corporate bailouts by selling information to other corrupt corporations, we pretty much have no alternative to starting over from scratch.
Respectable quality 🙂