I will grant you, the letters are usually misleading about how much you "need" the documents. But aside from that, I have hard time tagging it as a scam.
You can pay a guy to mow your lawn, but just because you could do it yourself for free doesn't make him a scammer for charging you. Nor for suggesting your lawn needs to be mowed.
I do need my lawn mowed from time to time, but I don't need these documents. IMO, if I convince you that you need to spend money on something you don't need, and most of that money ends up in my pocket, I am a scammer.
I will grant you, the letters are usually misleading about how much you "need" the documents. But aside from that, ...
"But aside from that," How can you dismiss a key element of the scam & then say you have a hard time calling it a scam? An event needs to be judged on it's totality.
Because you don't "need" most of the products and services being offered. Yet 18 minutes of every hour of television is one ad after another telling you otherwise. Convincing people they "need" your product/service is just basic advertising.
If they were charging $89 to deliver nothing, it would be a scam. But if they can make $89 off of people who are too lazy to go to the clerks office on their own, and they actually deliver what they are advertising, then I say more power to them.
Because you don't "need" most of the products and services being offered. Yet 18 minutes of every hour of television is one ad after another telling you otherwise. Convincing people they "need" your product/service is just basic advertising.
I see where you're coming from & it's not an unreasonable place. There are many 'services' that can be done for free that are sold without rising to the point of being a scam. It's not about a free service having a fee associated with it. It's about the relative value of the service being offered. Car registration in Honolulu is a good case in point. I can go & register a car for only the registration fee or I can pay a company to do the registration for me at a premium (~$80) For my $80 I save a trip to town & few hours waiting in line. I wouldn't call that service a scam although I could do it for free if I chose to. Here's the difference: I need to register my car or suffer all sorts of penalties especially if I drive the car on a public roadway. I'm sure that 1000's of times every day across the nation someone gets into trouble for lack of car registration. What consequence befalls an unwitting home owner who fails to maintain a hard copy of ones public record mortgage documents? How many times a day across the nation does the need for a home owner to have that hard copy into play?
I will grant you, the letters are usually misleading about how much you "need" the documents. But aside from that, I have hard time tagging it as a scam.
You can pay a guy to mow your lawn, but just because you could do it yourself for free doesn't make him a scammer for charging you. Nor for suggesting your lawn needs to be mowed.
Yeah, but the guy cutting your lawn doesn't imply you can't do it yourself or he is giving you any special service unavailable doing it yourself.
Implying that a mortgage is at risk for the lack of having a local copy of publicly available mortgage documents is deceitful. It must be deceitful because it is not true. de·ceit·ful/distfl/ Adjective:
(of a person) Deceiving or misleading others, typically on a habitual basis. Intended to deceive or mislead.
Implying that a mortgage is at risk for the lack of having a local copy of publicly available mortgage documents is deceitful. It must be deceitful because it is not true. de·ceit·ful/distfl/ Adjective:
(of a person) Deceiving or misleading others, typically on a habitual basis. Intended to deceive or mislead.
Agreed, if the wording is saying something along the lines of YOU ARE AT RISK OF LOSING YOUR HOME" etc, then yes it's a scam however, once more it depends entirely upon the wording of the letter, these idiots hire laywers to make sure they can get away with it and stay just within a hairline of the laws on false or misrepresentation.
Agreed, if the wording is saying something along the lines of YOU ARE AT RISK OF LOSING YOUR HOME" etc, then yes it's a scam however, once more it depends entirely upon the wording of the letter, these idiots hire laywers to make sure they can get away with it and stay just within a hairline of the laws on false or misrepresentation.
I would agree that the letter is slightly legal, due to the fine print, but its still worthy of posting in this Scam forum because it is deceptive and worthless.
It would be helpful to post the current names of the companies that send the letters. I regret shredding mine.
Slightly legal? An act is either legal or it is not. Black and white. However, your advice is well taken.
Strictly from my personal perspective I consider the OP described situation more the act of a shyster than a scammer, because as you alluded to legality is an issue. To me a scam means to me a willful illegal dishonest act.
Strictly from my personal perspective I consider the OP described situation more the act of a shyster than a scammer, because as you alluded to legality is an issue. To me a scam means to me a willful illegal dishonest act.
Welcome to the site Blogger ! Shyster, scammer, sleaze, etc... Take your pick, they all work.
The letter is legal, they are offeringa service to provide you with documents.
The point of this is that YES if you KNOW your stuff you can get these documents for very little to no money at the courthouse/city hall etc. I believe most charge the nominal 5$ fee or something, point being, YES you can get this stuff yourself.
They use scare tactics that have almost no chance at occurring to get you to buy it, that to me is not right, it's not illegal unfortunately.
IMO, if I convince you that you need to spend money on something you don't need, and most of that money ends up in my pocket, I am a scammer.
Didn't you just give the job description for the occupation of "salesperson?"
I hope that was meant as humor rather than a fact?
Why, why as a personal consumer...I love professional full-time salespeople! I can't even begin to talk about the products that until I encountered the salesperson that I learned how much I needed the product, a product that I often hadn't even heard about before the salesperson told me about it. Thanks to their sales info I found out I desperately needed the product. The product would "change my life" and for the better big time. It would add years to my life and and improve the quality of it too! I would also look better feel better and be more successful in life. And the preceding just scratches the surface. It doesn't even begin to cover the spectrum of their contributions along the lines I mention. Plus most, not all had great credentials and appeared if not in person on reputable large successful commercial TV and radio stations.
Oh, sure there are some that are not so reputable but no occupation is perfect.