FBC – 342 – How NOT to get swindled by unscrupulous salespeople

How NOT to get swindled by unscrupulous salespeople.

Today, I want to tell you a story about how some salesman was trying to trick me into buying his stuff. Unfortunately, some people fall victims to some of these scams and hence I wanted to share my experience and show you a simple trick to make sure it doesn't happen to you.

All the details in this episode.

If you are serious about finding a way to get a glimpse of true freedom and get as close as one can be, then click on the link below.

https://martinebongue.com/profit-machines

Key Takeaways

The fastest way to spot a scam is the pressure. Legitimate businesses give you time to think. Scammers need you to decide before your logic kicks in.

If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Trust your gut, do your research, and never let urgency override common sense.

Urgency You Did Not Create Is A Warning, Not An Offer

The best manipulators do not sell you a product. They sell you a clock. Buy now or lose it forever, the price triples at midnight, only three spots left, and suddenly you are making a real decision with a fake deadline pressing on your chest. I have been rushed into things I regretted, and the pattern was always the same. The pressure did not come from me. It was manufactured to stop me from thinking, because thinking would have killed the sale.

So I built one simple rule that has saved me more money than any negotiation tactic ever did. If the urgency is coming from them and not from my actual situation, I slow down on purpose. A genuine opportunity survives a good night's sleep. A trap needs you to act before your own judgment catches up. That single pause has protected me from bad tools, bad partnerships, and bad deals more times than I can count. I have told some of these stories on the Freedom by Choice podcast and in my story. On the psychology of pressure and persuasion, Harvard Business Review is worth your time, and HubSpot's blog covers how ethical selling actually looks. When someone else is holding the clock, put it down and think.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the biggest red flags in a sales pitch?

Watch for extreme urgency (“this offer expires in 10 minutes”), emotional manipulation, refusal to give you time to think, and vague claims with no proof. Legitimate businesses do not pressure you into instant decisions.

How do I protect myself from online scams?

Research the seller independently. Check reviews from multiple sources, not just their website. Ask for references. If they get angry when you ask questions, walk away.

What should I do if I think I have been scammed?

Document everything immediately: emails, receipts, screenshots. Contact your bank or payment provider for a chargeback. Report the scam to consumer protection agencies. Act quickly because time limits apply to most dispute processes.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://anchor.fm/freedom-by-choice/support

I want to tell you about the not so good stuff, because this is something that could actually happen to you guys. If you have a little bit of experience then it can actually help you.

So this morning, I have this guy who tells me that, oh, man, I know these people. They can build the best email servers on the planet. I can introduce you to the dude. He built some servers for me. I'm sending eight million emails a day. I'm making so much money, they're the best. They will do this. They'll do that.

And so I start asking for some information. Oh, all right. Sounds interesting. How's that working for you? Can you show me some stuff. And he said its best if you talk to the dude, but the dude is in India right now and he's sleeping. So let me arrange something.

So I'm like, oh, that's good. That's really cool when people introduce you to other good people. Right. So I don't actually know the guy very well. I just found him because he was an affiliate manager or something like that.

So he creates this chat with this guy in India and eventually he wakes up and we end up on a call. So the dude starts giving me the pitch.

And the first thing I said to the other guy was, look, I want to hear your side of the story because I'm more interested in what the clients are actually thinking more than the dude who is actually trying to sell you stuff, because obviously that person going to tell you that it's all rainbows and unicorns but I like the honest opinion of someone just using it. So can you give me a little bit of information I know us to do?

So he explains how you can send X many emails and this is something actually important, right? When people tell you that you can send that much, it doesn't matter how much you can send. What matters is how much of that is actually delivered, OK, and how much people are actually reading because you can give me a server, I can send three million a day. But if out of these three million emails, only ten of these emails are getting read, yes, I'm sending me three million emails, but still, it doesn't help me.

How NOT to get swindled by unscrupulous salespeople

So he was blabbing and he wasn't listening. So eventually I had to be kind of rude and I said, dude, like, stop one second. You can tell me everything you want. But what I want is for you to just share your screen and show me some campaigns that you have running.

The numbers don't lie. It's not that I don't trust you. I want to see some numbers. I want to see these so-called campaigns when people are sending all these emails and I want to see the results.

So he starts showing me some campaigns and they suck. Their stats suck. 0.8% open rate and stuff. Some have like two percent open rate. And I'm like, oh, what about this campaign? Yeah, there was a problem on the server at the time. And after ten minutes, I'm like, OK, please find me just one campaign, because out of everything I hadn't seen one that actually had anything acceptable.

The results were not good and the big domains were not showing anywhere near big enough open rates. Well, you know, I didn't want to be rude anything. I mean, so obviously there is a problem there. Yeah. But you know what, we can work together to make it better. But the dude was actually trying to argue and trying to justify it.

And so eventually when he understood that I wasn't going to buy, you know, I told him, look, my main thing I wanted to see was the important domains. I wanted to see how you perform there. And from what I've seen, it's not going to work out for me. So, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not going to move forward. Then the dude started being like, really? He just hung up as if I'm an idiot.

But anyway, the lesson here is that the numbers speak louder than words. OK, so obviously a salesperson is going to try and sell you stuff. But ask for a demo, a live demo, because people will show you some demo or some test environment where all the stuff that looks so nice and all that stuff. Yeah, you're going to have this and that.

You ask the person, dude, share me a screen, and show me a live environment. Some campaigns, some history. And from there, it's a more realistic vision than expectation of what you might get because I don't know how much he wanted me to pay for this kind of server.

And if I didn't know anything about email and someone told me, oh, man, you can put as many emails as you want on the server, you can send as much as you want, I would have paid and maybe some of you guys would have paid too.

But no, it sucks. So actually it sucks. So, you know, if it happens to you, just ask for a live demo.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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