Yesterday, I received a call from Liberty Counsel, a group dedicated to the fighting the war against gays, defending the war against Christmas, and stopping the creep of Shariah Law. They wanted to ask me a few poll questions, and as a reward, they offered to give me a two-day cruise to the Bahamas for free (port charges not included). All the poll questions were push-poll robo-call questions designed to elicit a “yes”. (One went something like “ObamaCare will force you to purchase a government-required insurance program and fine you if you don’t. Do you want this repealed?”) I answered them all the way that a Fox News viewer would, just to find out the catch on the cruise.
When I pressed the button to indicate that I wanted my free cruise, I was connected to a happy, helpful guy who started asking me personal questions. One of them was whether I had a credit card. Before we got too far, it turned out that I needed to have a companion on the cruise. I could ask “up to 4”, but I needed at least one. They asked if I had a spouse. I answered “Yes” and gave them a male name (I think it was “Bruce”, I can’t remember.) At that point, the call devolved, because the salesperson wanted to get Bruce on the call. Bruce was at work, I said. Can we call him there? Sorry, no, Bruce is a busy guy. After it was pretty clear that we were going nowhere without Bruce, I hung up.
During the call, I was given this URL, which goes to a webpage that has no mention of a cruise. I asked the salesman repeatedly to mail a written offer for the cruise, and the operator told me that wasn’t possible, because they would be sending me the actual tickets when the call was over. The whole thing had the hallmarks of a scam, and it would be unremarkable except for the way that a supposedly Christian non-profit rightwing organization used a teabagger IQ test as a filter to find rubes stupid enough to fall for their con. If that doesn’t encapsulate the last 3 years of Republican politics, I don’t know what does.
Cat Lady
You should have told them Bruce was a Nigerian prince.
estamm
I get these calls all the time. The ‘poll’ is always different (although they all involve ‘hot button’ topics, which probably gets more people to do the poll). And it always involves receiving a ‘free’ cruise. I’m not sure what the scam is, but it obviously is one.
Southern Beale
OMG I got that same phone call!!! It started out with a recording, and I accidentally hit the wrong button, I wanted to find out more about them as it sounded super fishy to me.
They wanted me to take a survey and they said one of their benefactors was giving away this cruise.
Glad you stuck with it.
ant
time share bullshit.
those things are crazy. they start at prices that would buy a small house, but end up at about %10 what they start at.
gotta be one of the biggest scams out there.
Comrade Javamanphil
This post is very uncivil, calling patriotic tea partiers stupid rubes. Ruth Marcus is not amused.
DanielX
Considering the number of people who were sending money to Snowbilly Snooki right up to the day she formally announced she wasn’t running, I am neither surprised nor shocked. The only question is how much the grifters promoting this scam will rake in.
Southern Beale
This is SOP for wingnut groups, by the way. I got an e-mail from some fundie Christian group fearmongering about this or that, can’t remember what it was now, but if you followed the link they offered — for a price — a chance for you to fax your senators, House representatives & the White House a letter saying you opposed whatever heinous thing they were doing.
I mean, you can do that shit for free, people. I think the upper level was like $200 to fax everyone all at once!
No shocker that the right wing fraud machine targets the vulnerable.
DanielX
PS – Ruth Marcus can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
Waldo
The “free” cruise scam has been around forever. I guess the good news here is that the rubes would otherwise be signing over their SS checks to fake candidates like Cain or Newt — the GOP’s idea of a cruise to nowhere.
hells littlest angel
Congratulations on having the presence of mind to play along. The Liberty Counsel is a subsidiary of Liberty University. This is a headline, verbatim, from their web site:
Liberty Counsel’s Lawsuit Against New York Same-S*x Marriage Proceeds
That’s right. These degenerate motherfuckers are such fucking perverts they can’t bring themselves to spell out the word “sex,” even when it refers to gender. To do so perhaps could cause one’s penis to do a salute to Satan.
Schlemizel
It has always amazed me how much these Christianist types feel they have to lie in order to peddle their goods. Like Amway they are never honest about what it is they want to talk to you about. They feel they have to trick people into their pitch and then feel free to trick them out of money. Then there are all the fraud faith healers and con artists like Patty Robertson.
It seems to me if you thought you had a decent product to sell you would be honest & up front knowing the quality of the goods would make the sale. If you suspect you have a lemon you need to unload that is when you lie & cheat.
Xenos
Evangelicals and Mormons seem to fall for, then desperately promote, the most ridiculous multilevel scams. Of course, having cred within a somewhat insular group gets you a lot more marks, even within a relatively sophisticated population – see, e.g. Bernie Madoff. But if you add to that a tendency within that population to discredit disinterested authority, and to hold to such shibboleths as young earth creationism, then you have a really ripe crop of rubes and fools to take advantage of.
Mark S.
Some douchebag from a conservative think tank has three inconvenient truths for you OWS hippies:
1. You can’t tax the 1%. New York and California have already tried that. I’ve never heard of federal taxation.
2. Immigration. Apparently, these hippies love immigration. People picking lettuce and cleaning motels have a lot more to do with inequality than anything Wall St. or 30 years of Reaganomics have done.
3. The breakdown of the family. Think how much better it would be if every household had two minimum wage incomes instead of one.
I put more effort into snarking on this than this guy did in writing it. It’s some lazy ass right wing babble.
mols
I got a call that promised a free cruise and the question they asked was on a scale of 1 to 5, how much did I approve of the Democrats in Congress and their actions regarding the country’s debt crisis. (What debt crisis?) Whenever I pressed a 4 or 5, it just kept asking the same question, so eventually I hung up. It was a pretty obvious attempt to make sure people answered in the preferred way since they’d be hoping to get their cruise. I keep that in mind whenever someone quotes poll results that aren’t from Gallup, etc.
TheMightyTrowel
Awesome. I love scamming phone scammers. Well done.
Mark S.
From the Liberty Counsel’s website:
Liberty Counsel’s Lawsuit Against New York Same-S*x Marriage Proceeds
Sax? Six? Sox? Oh my, s-e-c-k-s! Thank God they put the f*cking asterisk!
But in the article, they leave out the asterisk when they quote the judge.
db
Looks like a spinoff from Liberty University.
This Jesus-politico but tax-exempt crap is outrageous.
DougJ
They should have offered free meth and hookers.
Original Lee
Wow. Just wow. Thanks for hanging in and hanging up!
Cat Lady
@Xenos:
There’s a reason Amway recruits come out of the evangelical churches. Fred Clark from The Slacktivist did a thorough investigation of the persistence of the zombie Proctor and Gamble is demonic trope that has been thoroughly and completely debunked, but surprise surprise, there’s money to be made from the rubes.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
My father-in-law was a WWII vet and once he got on the mailing lists it was katie-bar-the-door with these fuckers playing on patriotism. Quite a few originated in Canada.
Soonergrunt
@DougJ:
They should have offered free meth and gay hookers.
There. FIFY.
Ben Cisco
@Mark S.:
I object to this sentence on the grounds that “right wing” and “babble” are redundant.
__
Also, it says the same thing over and over and repeatedly, too.
Larry Craig
“My spouse? Oh you mean Mohammed? He’s at the mosque right n–” *click*
grandpa john
wow a whole 2 days free. Even if they did actually come through on the cruise its still a ripoff. for 2 days extra expenses would come to more than the cruise was worth, port fees, gratuities, travel expenses, parking fees, ect. Any cruise less than 5 days is a waste, and I prefer 7. as a matter of fact we are loading the car now , heading to port canaveral and 7 days aboard Norwegian Sun leave it to the rest of you to hold the barricades while I am gone
Ben Cisco
Oh, the joys of ditching a landline – I am blissfully free from push-polling and other general assholery.
Ben Cisco
@Larry Craig: BWAHAAHAAHAA!!
Ben Cisco
@DanielX:
There, that’s better.
r€nato
@Schlemizel: born ag’iners – especially the ones that adopt a youth-oriented marketing approach – LOVE to do this. The youth-oriented churches will hold concerts on the weekend, for instance, promising cool bands and such but NEVER disclose that there’s a Jesus pitch involved.
This past spring there was some sort of big event that was promoted as a festival all around town, on billboards and such. The only clues I had that it was really a secret Jesus pitch, was that the lawn signs were on the grounds of evangelical churches and I recognized some of the names of the speakers as Jesus-botherers.
Yes, why do they feel the need to con you? Because if it’s for Jesus then anything is OK? That’s the exact same mentality that excused war, oppression and torture in the name of the One True Faith™ for centuries.
MattF
I’m a little disappointed that the gentleman on the line didn’t declare himself to be your brand-new best friend.
mk3872
Does anyone else here find it absolutely hysterical that this is supposedly just a horrible abuse of the U.S. Constitution:
Yet the idea was espoused and propagated up by conservative think-tanks years ago? These are the same people that produce Teabagger-IQ folks’ favorite Republican candidates, ala Romney & Gingrich …
Villago Delenda Est
@Cat Lady:
Amway meetings have the same tenor and rhythm as a tent revival session. It’s really quite fascinating to observe the parallels between the two…the cadence of the primary speaker is just like some televangelist huckster. The Amway meeting is just more openly about worshiping Mammon.
Jerzy Russian
@Schlemizel:
Oh Boy! Your mention of Amway brings back a whole lot of bad memories.
Many years ago my daughter liked to go to Easter egg hunts. A few of them were at churches, and usually you could just come by and hunt for eggs and candy. The worst ones were at the fundie churches, and there was never any mention in the notices that the kids had to sit through other activities to learn about Jesus. My daughter decided for herself at age 8 or so to stop going to these.
mds
@Mark S.:
He’s right. His follow-up will contain a plan to get those immigrants unionized and on the path to citizenship so they stop dragging down the averages.
Eh, a bit off the mark, Mark. Since a proper two-parent family has a stay-at-home mother, he means how much better it would be if every household still had one minimum wage income but more people to support with it. In fairness, though, his follow-up will call for a steep increase in the minimum wage to better support traditional nuclear families.
PurpleGirl
Ah, Amway… the DeVos Family… Dick DeVos, son of a co-founder of Amway, and his wife are the deep pockets of many a right-wing organization. They are also members and deep pockets of the education reform club. Truly evil people.
A friend of mine got involved with Amway as a seller. I tried to talk her out of it before she paid them anything but she insisted the company and idea was good. (This was their e-marketing scheme. She lost her money.) Another friend tried the Amway thing about 30 years ago, didn’t lose her money but didn’t make very much either and if that supercharged type-A personality couldn’t do it, I know no one can. She dropped out within a year.
Barry
The whole key, BTW, is that they get your credit card number. I’ve seen this pulled on my father (who didn’t fall for it) is that they’ve always got some ‘minor charge’ that they have to collect money for. That time, it was for taxes on the tickets, supposedly.
Then they presumably charge the living sh*t out of your card.
Sophia
Everyone should see Go.
The Other Bob
This is no different than Beckkk’s trip to Isreal.
One of my co-workers and her husband went. As I recall, it cost somewhere around $5,500 per person, which is about double what a similar tour should cost. After she returned she was dinged an additional $1,000 for each of them for extra fuel charges.
What a bunch of fools.
The Other Bob
@PurpleGirl:
Ah, you forget Dick Jr. and his wife Betsy. Also, Betsy’s brother is Eric Prince, owner/CEO/whatever of Blackwater/Xe.
jibeaux
Assuming mistermix is a mister, using the male name for a spouse is genius. They kind of gave away the game by insisting on calling him instead of shrieking and hanging up, though, no?
Tim Cooper
@Cat Lady:
Fred Clark is basically a 12th level Paladin. Slacktivist is a great place to for thoughtful analysis from an evangelical about just how evil and wrong that kind of stuff is.
FMguru
IIRC, the “free cruise” wasn’t on a giant gleaming 4-star Princess superliner but some leaky barge with peeling paint that was one step above being considered a “scow”. Oh and there’s no amenities and nothing to do except listen to timesharing/MLM pitches.
r€nato
@The Other Bob: well, that’s $13,000 less they had to donate to neanderthal Republicans. Win!
malraux
@jibeaux: They (the cruise/timeshare/mlm company) probably don’t give a damn about the gender stuff. They want to talk to both people at once because it’s easier to sell them on the scam. If once partner is away, then they will look really skeptically at “free” cruise tickets. If the company can get both people to buy into the idea, then it’s more likely to work.
The scam company likely just wants to get prospective leads and doesn’t care about politics at all. Liberty University just wants a way to get people to sit through their push poll. Its win win from both points of view.
Chrisd
@Jerzy Russian:
I’ll never forget my first and last accidental visit to a cryptofundie “Haunted Forest”. Expecting the standard frights, it took me awhile to realize that the AIDS Deathbead and Drunk Driving Car Accident were not creative goofs. Not being able to leave until you CHOSE HEAVEN over HELL was scary, but not in the way they intended.
Useful travel tip for deep Jesusland visitors: always determine the sponsor before taking in any putatively “secular” holiday activity.
Kristen McFarland
This remains a rather mystifying topic for people who claim not to believe in God..clue me in please..as progressives, liberals, whatever Kool Aid you happen to imbibe, why even go there, if God isn’t your thing…why even discuss it…or are you just bored with nothing better to do…as far as scams go, what better way to go than to use Jesus?? I mean the entire premise is ridiculous and you waste your time on this? Geez..idiots on the hoof….k
Kristen McFarland
This remains a rather mystifying topic for people who claim not to believe in God..clue me in please..as progressives, liberals, whatever Kool Aid you happen to imbibe, why even go there, if God isn’t your thing…why even discuss it…or are you just bored with nothing better to do…as far as scams go, what better way to go than to use Jesus?? I mean the entire premise is ridiculous and you waste your time on this? Geez..idiots on the hoof….k
dollared
Mistermix: You’re missing a zero in that last sentence.
dollared
@Kristen McFarland: I’m not sure I understand. You mean we shouldn’t care if there are businesses using false appeals to Christianity to scam money from people?
Cris (without an H)
@Kristen McFarland: what
uptown
@Kristen McFarland
What does belief in God have to do with being called on the phone by scammers? BTW – many folks on the left believe in God and Jesus sure sounded like a progressive to me.
debbie
I got this call a couple of hours ago. Disconnected as soon as I heard that a few answers would get me a free cruise. Ha!
La Gata Gris
@Kristin McFarland – sweetie did you even bother to read the actual post? I don’t mean skim it, or guess at it, but actually read it. It was about a right wing scam. Scamming people is something I thought Jesus would not approve of…
What many commenters were noting is that so many fundies run scams or are very vulnerable too scams – something I’ve noticed myself many a time. Something about that craven, authoritarian mindset seems to leave them very vulnerable too it. And from your bonehead comment, I definitely get the vibe you too have spent too much time in fundy land. Don’t worry, with exercising your frontal cortex and some therapy, you can get over it, I’m sure.
Paul in KY
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): My dad gets the same shit.
Paul in KY
@Kristen McFarland: Fuck off.
Liberty Counsel
Mistermix is mixed up. Read this explanation and then you will know that Mistermix’s article is totally incorrect. It doesn’t matter how the survey-taker answers the questions, they still get the cruise. Here is what the automated survey call from Liberty Counsel actually said: “Please listen to this very important message. This is not a sales call. This is Beth from Liberty Counsel we are an international nonprofit educational organization active since 1989. We have carefully selected your household to participate in a short 30-second research survey pertaining to President Obama’s Healthcare program. And, for participating – you will receive a FREE 2-day cruise for two people to the Bahamas – courtesy of one of our supporters. Gratuities and a small port tax will apply. To begin the survey, Press 1 now. To decline the survey and be removed from our list, press 9. Thank you.” There are at least four reasons why the 2-day cruise for two is free with only a small ($59) per person port tax fee: (1) Word of mouth advertising and cruise company branding; (2) Many passengers choose to spend more money on upgrades, optional land tours, etc.; (3) Whether a ship leaves port empty or full, it costs the same for the cruise company, which would rather fill the empty spaces with potential customers; and (4) People who enjoy the cruise are likely to cruise again in the future. So you see, Mistermix’s article is full of mistakes. Calling the cruise offer a “scam” is defamatory.
mistermix
@Liberty Counsel: It is not defamatory to call an offer that purports to be FREE but actually costs $118 for two people a “scam”, because that statement is merely the truth. A scam is an effort to deprive someone of their money by means of a trick. The trick here is not to divulge the amount of the port “tax” up front in order to give the false impression that it is so small that it’s not worth discussing. The second part of the scam is to couple this dubious offer with a set of poll questions to give the impression that the offer is part of a legitimate poll. The poll is not legitimate because the questions, which you chose not to print, are clearly worded to elicit a specific response (in other words, it’s a “push poll” not a scientific poll).
Your response raises more questions:
If you weren’t trying to be deceptive, why was the amount of the port cost not disclosed during my 10 minute call with your associate?
If this was advertising for the cruise line, and a branding opportunity, why isn’t the name of the cruise line divulged during the call, and why haven’t you divulged it in this comment or the page you linked to?
And I notice that you don’t mention the amount of the gratuity charged. Is it mandatory?
Finally, if I were to take this offer, what would the meals cost? What sort of other on-ship charges would be taken out of the credit card that I must provide as a condition for boarding the ship?