Many of you may have heard of the "white van" speaker scam before -- the company uses teams of guys driving around in a van to sell their cheap speakers. The guys claim that the speakers are actually $1000+ speakers, and that they have some "left over" from a custom installation that they want to unload for cheap. Every now and then threads like this pop up in forums as people actually encounter one of these vans. Lo and behold, I walked out of the office after lunch today to go to a meeting downtown and two guys in a tan minivan rolled up next to me in the parking lot and asked if I needed some home theater speakers. I was running behind, or I might have taken a few minutes to hear their pitch just for some laughs. Instead, I just said "nope" and started to get in my car. -- the guy asked if I was scared, and that if I was scared I ought to just admit it, then realized I was a lost cause and drove off. Anybody in or around Memphis might want to be on the lookout... Oh, and if the guys in the tan minivan are reading this, sorry fellas -- I'm keeping my Paradigms.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Thats pretty funny GONK. but, you should have told him you were scared. Real scared of what those cheapies sounded like!

Cool website. I was suckered into these peices of junk in college. Over the next ten years I started learning about hifi and modified those babies probably 15 times...

Lined the insides with 3/4" plywood to reduce cabinet vibration.

Added fiberglass batting.

Bought new woofers.

Added awesome tweeters - Heil AMTs. Very high end in its day.

Threw away the midrange completely and covered up the hole.

They still sounded pretty crappy.
Sold 'em at a garage sale for $30.

Settled for Snell K-2s.

My dear old Dad fell for this scam a few years back, he bought some Phase Linear speakers. 12" woofer etc. They even came with a pretty nice sales brochure. They sound like cheap speakers to me. The scam was performed on a Church construction site of all places.

I got hit up by these guys in college. They claimed to have received "too many speakers" for a delivery to a local bar and they wanted to offload them cheap. They showed me a crumpled, hard to read piece of paper that looked like an official invoice claiming to illustrate the "mistake." The next little trick they pulled was to pull out a legit stereo publication saying there was a write up about their product. He flipped through the pages and pretended to not be able to find the article. He then quickly pulled out his stock brochure giving the idea that the same info would be in the real magazine.

In the end I didn't buy the speakers. All and all, I had to give these guys credit for a mildly slick high pressure sales pitch. It was rather fun to watch their little confidence scheme play itself out in front of me. I definitely recommend listening to shysters like them if you get the chance. It certainly was entertaining for a few minutes.


[This message has been edited by Joshorr (edited October 16, 2002).]