I haven't posted anything in a while, sorry.

What's happened lately?

I got scammed.

A student pursuing master's degree in Universitas Gadjah Mada in Jogjakarta insulted Jogjakarta through a Path status and is now cyber-bullied and faces risk of going to prison.

I find it hard to find a suitable company that I want to try to apply for internship.

I have been traveling a lot.

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Scammed!

Beware, there might be some swear words in this post. And it is not censored like my previous posts.

Helpful links:

http://momento.mataku.com/blog/2011/12/15/inextron-penipuan-berkedok-trik-marketing-2/

http://myzone.okezone.com/content/read/2013/05/13/10470/

and many more... just Google: Colvern Indonesia or Penipuan Colvern Indonesia and you will see most of the top articles are about scams. Unfortunately, they're in Indonesian, so if you're a non-Indonesian and you'd like to find out, I hope my post can help you become more aware, or I hope Google Translate will do a good job.

So I went to Poins Square Lebak Bulus on a fateful 9th of August 2014. Who knew that that was a day I'd learn a lesson the hard way?

OTOPlus is the name of the store/showroom that scammed me. And many others. It goes by many names, and the first link from momento.mataku.com has kindly listed some of their scammer company names. First of all, OTOPlus is located next to California Fried Chicken, but I forgot which floor was it. They are a small showroom, does not look nice, and their workers consist of 4 people: 1 who supposedly act as manager, 1 woman named Ifah, Ipah, or whatever, 1 man named Lucky and another man named Ijal if I remember correctly.

Lucky approached me while I was on my way to my car (at the basement). He offered me a detox patch as a complimentary gift but to get it I'd have to fill in a form and sign some stuff he said. I always felt pity for these salesmen/women because it's hard to find passersby who'd actually listen to you, so I listened.

This Lucky guy says he studies at BSI (Bina Sarana Informatika) and is currently at 2nd semester but he works while taking college classes. He constantly praises me, like how come someone as pretty as you don't have a boyfriend? Your skin is so smooth, you must be the epitome of male adoration, etc etc. Maybe the flirting would've worked more if he was good looking. Then another male joined in the praising, and that is Ijal. This Ijal has almost-bald-short-hair, very skinny, and super sweet mouth (again, it would've worked more if he had better looks). This impudent guy dared to touch my calves while praising my smooth legs. Who the hell are you?

They were promoting their foot massager from a Japanese brand called NIIRO. I saw the brochure and I was a bit surprised that all of them were priced nothing less than IDR 10 million. Yes, 10 million. In an ugly showroom. But I was stupid enough to not feel suspicious. They said their foot massager had JADE inside. When they asked me if the massager felt good, well it was so-so, good, but not extremely bad.

Maybe because I'm a female, the bitch Ifah did a lot of the talking. She said she was a dangdut singer and showed her CDs and photos. She is a voluptuous lady. And not in a good way. Bla bla bla and then they said because their company Colvern is celebrating their 17th birthday, they are giving me a chance to win a "doorprize". They had prepared two examples: one coupon said "Thank you for your visit" and the other was "You win a massage machine worth IDR 1,890,000". They said the majority of the coupons were like these examples.

I pulled one, and guess what, I won a portable stove priced at IDR 15,990,000.

4. They are the reason why big companies that hold lottery/sweepstakes always say "We do not ask any money from lottery winners". So if you win a lottery and you have to pay a lot of money to get the prize, then it is a scam. No doubt about it.

5. They will force you to do the transaction right away. If like me, you have credit card from your parents, and you want to call your parents to ask if it is okay to do the transaction, they will not like you calling them (your parents). But they will try to hide their annoyance because they still want your money.

6. If you say you're not interested and keep on repeating maybe until you get annoyed, they will change their attitude completely. They were so nice to you, now not anymore.

7. They are likely to call their sponsors using an old-looking phone. In my case, they used an old wireless phone.

8. If you're a female, they will praise you like you're the most beautiful woman in the world.

Edit: 9. The more someone tries to convince you that they're official, they're trustworthy, by saying proofs that prove their point, repeatedly, the more they are likely to be scammers, or just untrustworthy.


And one word of advice if you have at least one credit card: Find out how to void transactions. On BCA machines it's more confusing than other EDC machines, and that's what made me not know how to void my transaction-- the menus were not helping at all. And if you're still a child financially depending on your parents, it's best to have a credit card with a low limit-- and find a bank who can give supplemental credit cards with low credit card limits. My friend says BCA lets you, but you have to be over 21 and have an official statement of how much you earn every month (pocket money for me), but you'll need a salary receipt for that official statement.

That's all for this post. I hope this helped in a way. I know some of the things I did seemed stupid and it is, but this was a hard punch to the face-- it was a hard lesson but I learned much.