I’ve been scammed once in my life. That’s not counting paying £9 for a pint of beer, or buying pot in University only to find out it is a lump of wood: when I was 18 years old I was scammed out of £400. Back then that was a lot of money, and if I’m honest with myself, it still is now.
My Cumbrian schoolmates had come down to London, where I was attending University (a re-branded 90’s polytechnic) and we had been on a night out. We’d been to the Ministry of Sound, a top dance venue at the time, and having been up all night there, we were wondering the shops of Oxford Street for some morning entertainment. It was then that we stumbled upon the auction (not auction site, an actual auction) that was Trio-Crest.
I can still picture that slightly overweight, early-forties cockney that was running the show. He stood on a stage holding up all manner of cutting edge technology and appeared to be auctioning it all off at unbelievably low prices. The crowd of onlookers were in a frenzy, these bargains were too good to miss. ‘Where are you boys from?’ he shouted in our direction. ‘Cumbria!’ We all shouted back, sounding like the retards that we were. A couple of us pulled out after the £7 aftershave, they smelled a rat. Not aftershave. One of us went to £75, I can’t remember what he bought but it was worthless. I went to just shy of £400. He was selling a video camera and I really wanted one of those, and they were usually over a thousand, and this one came with all sorts of other shit, and I’d just received my student loan. When I opened the box to find a fixed focus SLR copy from China that was worth less than £10, I realized I’d been had. I recounted the events in my head, and realized that the language he’d used throughout the auction was purposefully ambiguous, and that the things he’d shown the crowd, and the descriptions he’d give of those things were not actually very specific, and that legally he was probably in the clear. Scammed.
I also struggle with this as my parents have always labeled my apparent optimism as naivety, which is why I am keen to impress that I knew what I’d done with the accommodation in Bend represented some risk.
It was the last piece of the puzzle when I was back in Keswick. When we got to Bend, in the car that we bought in Eugene, we’d need somewhere to stay. Motels were expensive and too small for our ridiculous amount of luggage, AirBnB again seemed overly expensive for anything more than a fortnight, so I was incredibly self satisfied to find a place to suit our needs under the ‘sublets’ section of Craig’s List. $1200 for the month, a bit small but good until we found something semi-permanent, and it had a hot tub which the kids would fucking love. Bills and wifi included, bish bash bosh.
In retrospect I wish I’d gone for the AirBnB option, perhaps going cheap was ultimately my downfall, but $1200 seemed in the right ball-park so I pursued it. Money up front was required, and since I’d read how tight the rental market was in Bend, I thought it reasonable. The obvious problem was, I could not view it.
I walked round it on Google Earth, and the exterior seemed to match up to the pictures I’d seen. I asked for more pictures but the seller said he didn’t have any. He was an agent, so fair enough. I even sent an email explaining my reservations at paying for a property I had not viewed, to which he sent a diatribe of claims to regulations on letter headed paper, with office numbers I could never call due to the time discrepancy, but his language was professional, and all the way up to his emails and receipts of confirmation on receiving the $2200 I wired to him suggested nothing but a professional outfit. The communication was superb, all the way up until my sporadic emails sent from Eugene. In fact it wasn’t until we began our journey across the Cascade Mountains that he truly fell into radio silence, and both Simone and I began to smell a rat of our own.
What popular saying do you think this cartoon illustrates?
His lack of responses said to me one of two things: he’s received my emails, his responses have not got through and someone will be there to meet us at the property. This still didn’t explain why he was not picking his phone up, maybe he was on holiday and had left the reception in the hands of a colleague? Alternatively: he is not there and there are people in our property and we have been scammed, and yes, I’d read about this happening prior to booking and booked nonetheless. The closer we got, the less I enjoyed of the spectacular views, and the more likely it seemed that that the latter of my predications was more accurate. Discussing that outcome seemed perversely to make it more likely somehow, so we elected not to and to play it by ear, if that were to be the case.
As we circled the ambiguous address in the car and became increasingly frantic, it began to dawn on us that our suspicions were again well-founded. The address we had been given in our final receipt had a different house number, I hadn’t noticed, and it was one that did not actually exist. The pictures we had been given were of another property on that street, one that clearly already had tenants. The property I had paid for did not technically exist, the house I’d walked around on Google Earth had people in it. The realisation left me pacing up and down the street whilst quietly trying to come to terms with our situation and left Simone sobbing on the kerb at the end of what had already been, a fairly traumatic week.
I’ve only cried twice in my adult life. Once was on leaving my friend Stuart, who had been knocked over by a car in London. It was on leaving the hospital having been told by the nurses to say goodbye, as he lay on life support breathing only via the assistance of a large, mechanical machine, that I returned home on the tube, coming to terms with the fact he was dead and I cried. That and when Georgie chopped the top of her finger off: that happened on my watch and I felt responsible.
When I walked to the bottom of the street to gather my thoughts I’m pretty sure I shed a tear. Not for the money – I reckoned it to be £1700-£1800 which was a stinger, but not a deal breaker and there was a remote possibility one of our insurance packages might cover this sort of thing (although at the time of writing it’s not looking peachy), but because the stress and anxiety I’d been suffering in the previous couple of weeks was not going to come to an end. The opposite in fact: I now faced what could be several more weeks of motels and property hunting, frittering money away and living on top of each other and possibly others. And the kids, sweet Jesus the kids.
Stan came over as I sat on the kerb and wrapped himself around me. I’m not sure whether it was out of genuine sympathy, or he was just knackered. Either way I reckon it cut a good Athena poster, and possibly convinced Jane, from the property neighbouring ours, the one that had people in it, to sit down, rub my back and offer me some comfort. More than that, she offered to put us all up. All of us.
Simone was at the same time being comforted by another neighbour, Claire (possibly). She had made us both a cup of PG tips, which at the time seemed unfathomably considerate. Some old fella from the house opposite came with popsicles for the kids and it even started to get a bit weird when a well to do middle aged man, who was called, I don’t know, lets go for Bob came over with a roll of money in his hand offering it as a whip around that they’d had. That to me seemed too much (in a good way) and whilst it still intrigues me to know how much was in that roll, I politely declined.
Jane’s husband Mike was already clearing out the spare rooms at which point it seemed almost rude to decline them, so we agreed to their kind offer. Mike then proceeded to jab himself in the eye with a plank of wood he was removing on our behalf and his face swelled up frighteningly. He took a very stuff-and-nonsense type attitude to it, but Simone and I now felt absolutely terrible that our intrusion was causing actual physical injuries.
The girls didn’t seem to give a monkeys, and if anything were revelling in the drama and attention. Anyway Mike and Jane had a hot tub, so what the hell. For me it was a low, and probably the first time I genuinely started to question the wisdom of our venture. I also started to question the wisdom of their leader.