Well now well now well now
1) I had the bad luck to get a job in the local Argos last Xmastide as a useless temp who was generally found kipping in the vast cardboard mountain that was the stockroom or rushing about on the pretence of doing work. Scam enough in itself you may think, but I found a wiley way of scraping a touch more than my £5.xx p/h wages off the company.

Round about October/November time, when sensible folk do their Xmas shopping, Argos decided to introduce a crude cashback scheme to entice the gullible into actually wasting money on their overpriced tat: spend over £50 and you got a £5 gift voucher, over a ton and you got a £10 voucher. The trouble was the daft bastards didn't think to advertise this to any extent greater than a rather cursory sign atop the tills, so a good 90% of the punters hadn't a notion they could get their grubby mitts on a few extra 'quid'.

The tills ploughed on stubbornly ahead with printing and authorising the gift voucher despite the fact that the customer had already wandered off, so yours truly took it upon himself to subtly pocket the voucher instead of wasting it by chucking it in the bin. The tills were neither up nor down, the receipt bore no evidence of trickery; in short, the perfect crime. I used the vouchers on various fripperies like a new mobile phone, digital camera, mildly pricey headphones etc. and sold the rest at a pound or so short of their face value.

Total profit: in the region of £40-50 hard cash, well over £200 in goods.

2) After my departure from Argos in March, I became aware of a fundamental flaw in their refund system which I will reveal to YOU, yes you out there in B3tardville: the cashiers are bull-simple/don't give a gnat's cock AND the 30-day money back guarantee is absolutely rock solid.

From there it was simple. Buy an appliance of some kind (I used TVs for the most part) from Argos for a sum of money, say £400. Buy a faulty version of said appliance from eBay/somewhere similar for a smaller sum of money, say £150. Do the ol' switcheroo with the working and faulty items, returning the faulty one within 30 days and getting one's money refunded. Sell the working item on eBay for as much as possible, say £300. Your profit is £300-£150 = £150 and increases exponentially with item value, as faulty items are all around the same price. Don't visit the same store twice inside any length of time or they'll no doubt catch on, mind you.

Total profit: about £2k over an 8-9 month period

3) Leaving the dodgiest till last, I am currently a delivery driver for a local fast food outlet (name withheld!) in the evenings. I get £20 for petrol at the start of the night and then get to keep the delivery charge for each delivery, ranging from £2-5. On an average 5-11pm shift I would make around £50-80, which after taking the £20 petrol money leaves me at an average wage of £6 an hour, not too bad in my books.

To put it simply, I chuck an extra £2-3 on each order which goes directly into my own pocket. This plus the few quid of tips I garner over the course of the night generally leaves me with earnings scraping on the £100 mark, especially on Friday/Saturday nights.

Why is this a con and not out-and-out theft? The breakdown of the cost of the meal is actually written on the bag, generally in black magic marker. I simply say '£39 please' and they hand the cash over, take the food and walk back into their house, minds fixated on the platter of questionable beef with cashews in their paws. This makes it an exploitation of the almost unreal stupidity of Regular John and thus a con. QED.

Please don't flame me :(
(SurferRosa causing the lamentation of the womenfolk since, Tue 23 Oct 2007, 20:51, 3 replies)

The second one IS out and out theft
And they're even kind enough to sometimes give you tips anyway!
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Tue 23 Oct 2007, 22:28, closed)

Aaah damn
Thought as much, if I was ever challenged I'd no doubt withdraw the whole operation.
(SurferRosa causing the lamentation of the womenfolk since, Tue 23 Oct 2007, 23:29, closed)

Wanker.
I go out of my way to ensure I always have a tip for delivery guys... but then I know what the total is before they get to the door so, should we ever meet in a professional capacity, your 'con' would make you a gross profit on that occasion of a swift kick in the bollocks and a few vulgarities.
(misanthrope is so adjective he's verbing nouns!, Wed 24 Oct 2007, 10:45, closed)