The title of this post might lead to you think this was going to be a post on the holiday season, but instead this post is about something that is with us year round, unfortunately. There was an article in a local newspaper describing how it is the season of scams in St. Louis and one in particular that has really been prevalent is a scam targeting elderly St. Louis South County residents.
The article describes how a team of vacuum cleaner salesman posing as dealers for the Kirby company get seniors to buy junk vacuum cleaners by displaying and demoing a brand new high end Kirby. They then sell them a used, junk vacuum cleaner that has been placed in a brand new box. In one instance they even grabbed the victim's one year old vacuum while the other "salesman" kept the attention of the consumer.
The article provides a lot of other examples of some of the tricks they used and concludes with some tips consumers can use to try to protect themselves. Maybe one other thing any small business owner can do is make a copy of the article and place it in your store to warn your customers.
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