rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance I Made a Scammer Lose $50,000

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

0:00 Intro 0:08 Bait and switch 6:34 Church review 8:15 Rid of me 11:02 My boss 12:31 Comment 13:21 EM and kids Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The city I live in has extremely inflated vehicle values compared to the surrounding areas. If you buy the same car from a neighboring state, you can often save $3,000 to $4,000 without really trying. When I buy a new vehicle, which happens every 3 to 4 years, I always look in the surrounding states to compare pricing. This story happened 5 years ago, and the malicious compliance is still going on to this day. I was shopping for a brand new car, and I found one that matched my specs about 12 hours away in the neighboring state. It was priced about $5,000 cheaper than in my state. After looking up flights, there was a one-way direct flight that took me to

their local airport for around $175. Plus, the gas to drive back, I was looking at a total of maybe $275 to save $5,000. Absolutely worth it in this situation. I reached out to the dealership, negotiated a bit, and agreed on a price. I let them know that I'd be flying in to pick up the car, and I offered to pay in full in advance of the flight. They told me that all they needed was a $1,000 deposit, and the car was considered mine. We signed a contract and I paid the deposit. Then I booked the flight. Here was the first sign of something gone awry. When I showed up at the airport, the dealership was supposed to pick me up.

This had been arranged in advance. A quick phone call later, and I grabbed an Uber to take me the 20 miles to the dealership with a promise of them covering the cost. No big deal either way. The second sign of things gone awry. When I showed up at the dealership, the salesman I'd been speaking with asked if I wanted to walk the lot with him to look at a few cars. Yes, cars, as in plural.

Questioning what he meant by that, we walked into the lot to see these cars that he was talking about. Were these some special type of gold-in-laid, full-self-driving, full-self-flying Amaze-mobiles? No, they were not. When I point-blank asked to see the car that I was buying, the one with vehicle identification numbers such-and-such, listed in the signed contract with a deposit on it, I was told that it was no longer available.

The salesman offered to show me similar cars, which would have been fine were we able to come to similar terms on pricing, but all these cars were outrageously priced. An important note for later is that there was never a mention of any incentives for giving 5-star reviews. Fast forward 2-3 hours later, I'm now convinced that this dealership never had the specific car on the lot, and that this was 100% a bait and switch gone wrong. The dealership was unwilling to sell me a similar vehicle at a similar price to our

negotiated one. There was more than a $5,000 difference in what they wanted versus what I signed. Also, they were unwilling to pay the flight costs for this bait and switch scenario. A heated discussion ensued between myself and the GM where he told me, go ahead and leave a bad review. But you're not getting any free money from me. I took an Uber to a nearby hotel and booked a flight back home for the next day. Total cost?

Around $750. Cue malicious compliance. This dealership had an average Google rating of right around 4.5 stars and around 400 total reviews. Pretty solid for a dealership. That night, while I was sitting in the hotel room, I had some time to burn. I spent a couple of hours creating new email accounts just so I could leave multiple reviews for this dealership.

All said and done, I left around 20 one-star reviews over the course of that night. And then I sort of just stopped caring about the reviews. At this point, my focus shifted to recovering my lost travel expenses. A few days after getting back, I sent the dealership a demand letter for $750, which they promptly ignored. Since we'd signed the original contract over state lines, I was allowed to file a small claim suit in my state, which I did. The dealership never showed up to court, and I received a default judgment for $750. I did collect on that, by the way.

It took a few certified letters, a few phone calls, and about a year, but I did get a check for $ bucks. As you can imagine, I was still not a happy camper. What they had done was wrong on so many levels. All my friends knew the story about the bait and switch, and the fact that I flew to the dealership on a one-way ticket only made it that much worse. Each of my friends left a bad reviewer too, but nothing more than a normal mad customer. I don't know how it started or how it ended up lasting as long as it has, but at some point I had some time on my hands and I left another bad review

for this dealership. Just one. Not two. Not three. One. In doing so, I noticed that all the reviews I'd left right after leaving the dealership were gone. Probably taken down for being fake, or because I'd left so many at the same time and the dealership reported them. I wanted to make sure this dealership wouldn't do this to someone else, so the next day I checked to make sure that one bad review I'd left was still there. It was. And hey, while I'm here, I may as well go ahead and make another account and leave another one-star review.

Fast forward two to three years. This has now become a habit. Every time I have a few minutes to spare, I create a new account and leave a one-star review for this dealership. Their current rating? 1.9 stars with nearly 3.5 thousand total reviews. I am personally responsible for at least half of those reviews. When you open the dealer's website, one of the large banners that flashes

across the screen advertises $50 for a 5 star review. Something about showing your review to a salesman to get a $50 Visa gift card. It's been this way for about a year after the bait and switch occurred, right around the time that my one-star reviews began to accumulate. Assuming I'm responsible for half their reviews, and the fact that the dealership only has 3.5 thousand total reviews, they've paid $50 per review for at least a thousand reviews, likely more than that. Meaning that their policy to pay for reviews has cost them $50,000. And they've still seen their average rating drop consistently

since telling me to go ahead and leave a bad review. Wow, it's crazy to think that it would have literally been cheaper for this dealership to just give OP a car than to piss them off. Our next Reddit post is from Massive Discount. I'm from Germany. We're a very litigious society, so much so that businesses can sue individuals for writing bad reviews. In fact, per German law, it's up to the individual to provide evidence that what they

wrote actually happened. Or else, the individual can be forced to take down the review and pay legal costs to the business. I'm a tradesman and I did some renovation work for a church in a small town. The church did not pay me. I take 50% upfront and the church cheated me out of the second half after I completed the job. The church only had one other review on their website. I promptly got a legal letter from the church demanding that I take it down unless I want to be brought to court. The church could easily argue that they paid me in cash

and I would be out of luck according to German law. Okay, I complied with their demand. I took down the review and I posted a new one stating that I'm a tradesman and the church threatened to sue me for writing a simple review. I also attached the legal letter from the church as an image in my review. Fast forward a few months, I received an angry call from the clergyman. He said my review had caused several tradesmen to either ghost him or ask for complete payment up front. He claimed that I'd cost them thousands and that I would burn in hell for hindering God's work. I then asked them, what is your religion's founder's view on honesty, compassion, and forgiveness? Cue a moment of radio silence, followed by him hanging up the phone.

No legal letter yet. Anyways, I can now substantiate my review. Does anyone else see the irony of a church screwing over a carpenter? Our next Reddit post is from Taswegian. A few years back, I was the IT contract and supplier manager at a large company. church screwing over a carpenter? Our next reddit post is from Taswegian. A few years back, I was the IT contract and supplier manager at a large company. I'd been there for over 25 years and I had a lot of corporate knowledge, having worked in multiple roles over that time.

Also, I was very well paid due to the length of the tenure and my experience at the company. A new a-hole boss gets hired and proceeds to get rid of people he doesn't like and hires his buddies into various roles. The workplace culture took a nosedive pretty quickly. I knew my time was limited because I wasn't in his inner circle. Seeing the writing on the wall, I started looking for and applying for other roles. This a-hole boss gets me in his sights and decides to get rid of me, looking to move one of his recently hired buddies to my specialized role.

To be clear, this other guy doesn't even understand what I do, because my job needs a lot of technical knowledge combined with contract and legal knowledge. My boss tells me that he wants to move me on to an upcoming project and finish off what I'm currently working on and not take on any new work. Due to my experience at this company, I knew that there was no new project or even a significant budget for one. But I'll do what I'm told. I wrap up my work and tell him that I'm ready for this new project.

He says, sit tight, it's not far away, and don't start doing anything else. So I just sit at my desk, applying for other jobs, and waiting. One of the jobs I applied for comes through, and I get an offer on a Friday morning. That same afternoon, the A-hole boss comes around and says the project isn't happening, and since you have nothing else on your plate, we'll have to let you go. Ha! Called it. I know that there's heaps of work backed up, and the shit is gonna hit the fans soon when contracts aren't renewed, services are cancelled, etc.

Also, I note from my employment contract that they'll have to pay me a generous sum. I say, okay, but I guess you'll have to pay me my exit fee, right? Sure, he says, not knowing what he's agreed to. So I go through the redundancy process, at the same time I accept the offer of the new job. Come my last day at work, I happily accept the $200,000 payout. The guy's face goes pale when he hears about this amount, because this comes out of his team's budget.

Then I walk out the door and into the new job the day after. I love my new job. Less stress, great culture, great team, I wish I'd left earlier. But then, I wouldn't have gotten this payout if I'd resigned. Now, four weeks later, I hear the shit is hitting the fan. They had to advertise for a new person for my old role because no one knows what I'd do because apparently my job was easy. My boss didn't even ask me to document what I did before he handed my job over to his buddy. Our next reddit post is from

Funpen. I used to work for a company where the boss had this habit of demanding that we stay late, even though there was absolutely no work to be done. It was one of those toxic environments where productivity was measured by the hours you spent at your desk rather than the actual output of your work. One day, after wrapping up all of my tasks well before the end of the day, my boss came over and told me that I needed to stay late because that's just how things are done around here. Mind you, there was literally nothing left for me to do. Now, instead of arguing or trying to reason with him, I decided to play along with his ridiculous demand for overtime pay.

I nodded, grabbed a book I'd been meaning to read, and settled back into my chair. For the next two hours, I sat at my desk, flipping through pages, occasionally pretending to jot down notes, and looking as busy as possible. At the end of those two hours, my boss came by to check on me, expecting to see me toiling away at some imaginary task. Instead, he found me reading a novel. He looked puzzled and asked, what are you doing? With a straight face I replied, well, you asked me to stay late, so I figured I might

as well put in some overtime. This book has been on my reading list for a while. Needless to say, my boss was speechless. He couldn't really argue with me since he had asked me to stay late, and I was technically still on the clock. From that day forward, he never asked me to stay late unless there was actual work to be done. Malicious compliance at its finest. Down in the comments, we have this story from Just Some Guy. I had a contracting gig with a large financial services company.

My little group was part of a much bigger department that generated the annual tax forms. These people were incredibly busy from January 2nd through April. The guy who ran the department issued an edict that everyone had to put in 10 hours each day and work Saturdays if necessary. Our little group had nothing to do with these tax statements, but people complained when they saw us leaving at 5pm, so we were told that we had to stay late as well. I asked if that applied to me and the other contractors, and I was told, everyone, no exceptions. We were happy to, since we were being paid by the hour.

When we submitted our invoice for January, the guy almost wet his pants and decided that the overtime rule didn't apply to us. Our next reddit post is from Scared Fruit. I'm a 17 year old girl and my mom, who's 41, took me out to get makeup the other day for a friend whose birthday is coming up. We entered the store and everything was going really well. I was checking out concealers while my mom was on the other side of the shop looking through various shades of lipsticks. Enter Entitled Mother in her late 20s with her Devil Spawn. I say Devil Spawn because her kids were misbehaving wildly, and she didn't bother even once to tell them to stop or anything. Not even a minor rebuke. And I say Devil Spawn because that about sums up these two kids. They were running wild around the shop, throwing testers around and being a general nuisance.

My mom stepped in when the kids started poking their slimy little fingers into the lipstick testers. I get it, they're just testers, but ew. People are likely going to use those to decide whether they like the shade or not, and god, who knows where those fingers have been. Like, one of them was legitimately picking his nose a few minutes ago. My mom, having four kids of her own, looked around to find their parents.

The entitled mother was the only other one in the shop besides us. My mom called out to the entitled mother, and this is how the conversation went. Excuse me, are these kids yours? Yeah. Can you please tell them to stop touching the testers? They're not toys.

If it's such a problem, why don't you handle them? Oh boy. My mom left the shop for a few minutes and signaled me to not follow her. She came back with two buff security guards in tow. The kids were still poking their fingers in the testers. The guards walked up to the two kids and in the deepest baritone ever, one asked, "'Excuse me, what are you doing?' The kids looked terrified and cue the waterworks.

The entitled mother immediately stormed over and began reprimanding the guards for scaring her poor little angels. She then saw my mom nearby. "'You did this? How dare you teach me how to be a parent! My mom said, you told me to handle them, so I handled them. The lady screamed more obscenities at my mom, the guards, and anyone really, but the guards weren't having it and told her to leave.

She created quite a scene, but thankfully, she left. My mom had quite the story to tell at dinner. That was r slash malicious compliance. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast, because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.