Common Scams For RVers
We are living in a golden age of scams. With the extreme interconnectedness of people across the globe paired with a hefty dose of anonymity, scammers have a broad playbook of scams as well as a potential audience. And while anyone can be a scam target, RVers are particularly vulnerable marks and should be on alert for opportunities that are too good to be true.
Life is complicated, and at certain points, we are particularly vulnerable. Significant life changes such as a big move, change of career, loss of a loved one, or some other dramatic event can have us particularly susceptible to a friendly stranger with a life-changing opportunity. And RVers, new RVers in particular, fall neatly into many categories of a mark.
To enter a nomadic life, many have a change of career or put their career on hold. We leave our close network of friends and family behind, only maintaining the tenuous connections through phone calls and social media. And so when an impressive, enthusiastic, and confident stranger offers an opportunity for part-time work for full-time pay, a pricy gizmo that you can’t go without, or educational programs to better be prepared for life on the road, the price tag can seem worthwhile.
And it may be…
But it probably isn’t.
Scammy Products
I remember when we first went on the road. There were a lot of things I didn’t realize we needed, like a proper tie-down system and leveling blocks. Fortunately, there’s a wonderful community out there that will share their knowledge and experience to point out those things. Unfortunately, they can also point out a lot of things you don’t need (and they may not even know the difference.)
The truth is, rarely is a product a complete scam. Usually, it does do something. The scam is generally that the product is either overpriced, not very effective, or unnecessary. And, when living in an RV, those unnecessary items can accumulate fast and make life so much more difficult.
Products That Won’t Work
Why would anyone bother to sell something that just doesn’t work when there are plenty of things that do? A lot of reasons. But they can generally be broken down into a few groupings:
- Fake products take little R&D, so it’s easy to make a profit.
- Fake products often solve a problem that either has no solution or the effective solution seems hard or scary (think about most of the history of weight loss products). People will pay a lot to solve these kinds of problems.
- Fake products solve a problem that is vague and highly subjective. When the question becomes “How does this make you feel?” rather than “Does this work?” there’s a lot of opportunity for tomfoolery.
These kinds of products are most often found in more vague fields like “wellness” but can wander into the more terrestrial realms of RVing. Quite often, I’ll see them in areas that are harder to quantify, like bug-repelling equipment. Obviously, the most effective bug protection is something that physically blocks the bugs, like netting. But netting can be cumbersome and tedious to work with.
Bug sprays can be highly effective but use chemicals that people can feel uncomfortable around. For the most part, these chemicals are perfectly safe on your skin. But that discomfort can seem unnatural and propel people into far less effective alternatives.
Overall, it’s worth interrogating why we are using this product. Is it because a friend recommended it? Is it out of a vague discomfort with the more common alternative? Does this really work?
Products You Won’t Need
RVs are big-ticket items. Anything else can seem cheap in comparison. A flashy outdoor patio set, top-of-the-line dinnerware, and trendy playthings. Often, the scammy products are the ones that either feel like they will take our outdoor living to the next level or help us maintain a sense of home, but in a way that is impractical.
For example, glass is a pretty standard material for cups at home. But glass objects are something to avoid at all costs when in an RV where bumpy roads often bounce items violently. That’s a pretty straightforward consideration. Other products can reach a point of popularity that they can escape the realm of logical thought…
Spend enough time in the RVing space, and you’ll see certain items gain an outsized profile in the community. To me, the ultimate example is the mini cast iron wood stove. This was incredibly popular among conversion products. Skip the propane heater and stay warm with the timeless power of wood.
It even had a bit of a “green glow” about it, as otherwise environmentally conscious influencers tore out their preexisting heater systems in favor of it. It feels “green.” Trees are a renewable energy source, after all. But burning wood is an incredibly dirty method of heat production. Breathing smoke from a wood fire is far worse for your lungs than smoking a cigarette.
Worse still, the stove, accompanying wood, and the fire retardant materials you need around it are just plain heavy. More weight in your rig means more gas needed to move around your home on wheels. At the end of the day, these wood fire stoves look charming but just do not make sense in the limited space and weight-sensitive environments of RVs. A propane or electric heater may not seem as charming, but it makes so much more sense.
Products You Won’t Want
Even when we all have RVing in common, it doesn’t mean we share everything in common. I travel with TONs of shoes because I am a trail runner and rotate shoes by terrain or to allow a particularly wet and muddy pair of shoes to dry out. You probably don’t need that many shoes on the road. And, in an RV, there isn’t a lot of room for items you won’t use.
We devoted a lot of room to our electric bikes. They were exactly what we thought we wanted: big knobby tires to grip those rough trails. Folding frames to fit in our truck. They also were very heavy and took up a lot of space. Yes, we used them. But, after a few years, we offloaded them in favor of smaller, lighter-weight mountain bikes.
We have rotated through a lot of items over the years. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. For example, early on, we bought a pair of very cheap inflatable kayaks. They allowed us to explore lakes and rivers. But, even though they deflated, they were still too large and took up so much space that we quickly gave them to family members who had space in their garage to justify such an infrequently used item. Meanwhile, we were able to get our hands on a set of Kokopelli packrafts. We could have chosen feature-rich rafts with all the bells and whistles, but we have learned that, with how little storage space we have, we want a raft that packs down the smallest.
You? Maybe the extra features would be worthwhile. But it’s essential to be conscious of if you will use any item enough to warrant the space it will consume. Our takeaway: if you think you might like having something, don’t drop everything on the top-of-the-line product. Buy the budget model. Test it. After a few years, you’ll have a much better sense as to whether it’s worth investing in a higher-end model or just freeing that space up for something else.
Promoted Products.
At the end of the day, the reason why you’ll encounter a lot of the products above is because someone was paid to tell you about them. We have said “no” to so many promotional opportunities that had nothing to do with RVing, travel, or our DIY projects. To part the kimono for a short moment, we are constantly approached by makeup, haircare, jewelry, watches, CBD, and general wellness brands that have little to do with us but don’t really care. The margin costs for their products are so high that most of what a consumer is paying for is advertising.
But plenty of people do take this free stuff. And even though there are rules and community guidelines, they may not even properly disclose the partnership. When money and free products come into play, it can be easy for influencers to lose track of what they really think of a product or if it even makes sense.
Do we engage in brand partnerships? Yes. Do they warp our representation of a project? Possibly? I’d like to think I’m careful to monitor my biases and only engage with brands that I have a reasonable expectation of delivering what they say they deliver. But I’m human. And regardless of my best efforts, the rule always applies: “Buyer beware”
Scammy Schooling
We love to learn. Our journey has been one as perpetual students. We do a lot of research and have taken occasional courses like a welding class. We even pay a monthly subscription to a streaming platform with college lectures. Do the sleeping cycles of animals make us better RVers? No, but it’s fascinating. The point is that we believe in continued adult education. But while some of the classes we take may only be useful for a round of pub trivia, some courses out there are downright bad.
It seems like as soon as any online influencer passes a certain threshold of followers, they are now professionals with a class to sell you so you can be just like them. Some of these people are influencers because they are incredibly proficient in what they do. A professional rafter could also have an active social following and offer a program with useful tips to improve your rafting. But odds are, a lot of these accounts come from a shallow well of experience and are simply repackaging information that is widely available online or even giving bad advice.
For example, I think I have an extraordinary partnership. Chris and I get along gangbusters. We do most everything together, and we enjoy doing it. We are experts in our relationship. But we are not relationship experts. I have some opinions on what makes a good relationship. Some of them are even based on empirical research (because I picked them up from professionals who do know what they are talking about). But while I will not step in and tell you how to make your relationship precisely like mine, there are other people who will claim they can.
So, even if you really like someone on social media, maybe even respect them, check that they have more than just a compelling social media presence before paying them to deliver something that could be unreliable or better sourced elsewhere.
Scammy Opportunities
New RVers are navigating a whole new world of possibilities. A lot of things that we take for granted during stationary living are no longer the case. Our local hangouts can rotate on a weekly basis. Friends come and go. Daily rituals are regularly interrupted. But the skills and flexibility that it takes for us to navigate these changes also leave us open to scammy opportunities.
More often than not, these come in the form of some kind of alternative income flow. And often, they hook people with opportunities that have worked for others or at least seem to work for others. And so, like many things, the question is often not so much, “Is this industry a scam?” so much as, “Is this opportunity a scam?”
Become a “Brand Ambassador”
If you haven’t gotten an enthusiastic message in your DMs or a flattering comment on a post emphatically proclaiming what a perfect representative you would be for their brand, just wait. It’s coming. We have had legitimate collaboration requests come to us directly through our social channels. They do happen, But far, far more often, we receive generic outreach messages. They can be easy to spot, like the effusive DM we have repeatedly received from different accounts gushing over our “fur baby” and how it would be the perfect representative for their brand.
For those familiar with us, no, we haven’t suddenly picked up a photogenic fur baby that you somehow missed. We’ve never traveled with pets. This is just a spam approach of brands willing to hand out cheap products in bulk for exposure.
These outreaches can feel targeted. We get messages from outdoor recreation brands, too. But quite often, it’s pretty easy to recognize one of these spam campaigns as soon as you get into a conversation. Most of these accounts use bots. The replies are stilted and often non sequiturs.
My advice is just to ignore these messages. But, say you do go along with it. Maybe you are interested in the product or just curious to give it a try. Here are three likely outcomes:
- You get the product. It’s OK. This can be all above board. The message could be from a legit brand looking for some grassroots groundswell. Granted, if you’re not some major influencer, this product probably isn’t as exciting in person as you had imagined. It’s probably pretty cheap. After all, what brand could afford to spam social media and randomly give away expensive luxury goods? But likely, you’re validated by the gift and are happy to take a picture with it that the brand can now use in further promotional material. Granted, there’s no telling how that picture gets used in the future. Maybe it gets lost in the grid. Maybe you become the unwitting but full-throated endorser of a product you only tried once. Just be careful.
- You might get the product…but you have to buy something first. This one happens all the time. A brand has an “ambassador program.” You sign up, but what was presented as some exclusive access is actually an affiliate program with modest discounts. They’ll likely dangle free products in the future based on your sales, but you’ll have to become a customer before you can possibly get anything in return. (It’s unlikely you’ll get anything in return)
- You get nothing. You answer the brand’s questions, give them your address to receive the product, maybe even your phone number and email address, and wait. But nothing comes through. In this case, that’s because the messenger already got what they wanted: your personal contact information. Expect to be getting more spam in the future.
MLMs
Multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) are having a moment right now. The anti-MLM movement is in full gear, and yet we still see a lot of accounts reaching out with a “life-changing opportunity.” Sure, this “direct sales” group is different. They aren’t like the other ones you’ve heard about. This one will make you a true and successful entrepreneur with passive income, location independence, and other buzzwords meant to play off all our desires to be successful and in control of our own destiny.
The product may be significant. The people may be charismatic. But the net returns will be so obfuscated in downline structures, bonus tables, glossed-over costs, and unpaid hours of work that your losses can be next to impossible to pin down.
There are tons of ways to make money. This is a pretty effective way to lose it.
How to Avoid Scams
I can’t make a comprehensive list of scams. It would take too much time and would be out of date as soon as I published it. And there’s plenty of grey between outright scams and honest opportunities. It would be a nightmare to untangle. We’ll all wind up buying something we regret at some point. We’ll all waste time on an undertaking that bears no fruit. But with each mistake, the best we can do is take some time to assess what we did wrong.
There are a lot of possibilities, but the single easiest red flag to look out for is pressure. Is there a ticking clock to urge you to join now? Could stock run out at any minute? Is there an aggressive representative that keeps demanding your attention? Before you say “yes” to anything, take a moment to walk away and ask yourself, “Why?” If you still want it, take a moment to search to see if this really is the best option. The more time and money that is involved, the more time you should be willing to contemplate the investment before making any commitments.
So, my advice in three words: “Take a breather.”
