You Break It, You Bought It: The Street Store
This seems like something a con artist in a New York movie from the 80s would have done, so somebody has probably already thought of this one. But since the point of this blog is to aggregate every idea ever thought of, I’m adding it.
A good business would be selling crystal and other expensive looking breakables on the street in Manhattan. It would actually be worthless junk with the appearance of fine china, but you would mark it way up. Naturally, nobody would buy anything from you.
Instead, you would make your money through a very strict “you break it you bought it” policy. In fact, your little shanty store could be called “You Break It, You Bought It.” At the very least, you would have a sign notifying unfortunate “customers” of this rule.
Most of your items would be so precariously positioned that you could expect someone walking by or looking at your junk to break one about every half hour. Every time that happens, you shake your head while you say “tut tut tut”, point at the sign, and collect your hard earned cash. The price tag would be on each item, so it doesn’t look like you’re coming up with a ludicrous price off the top of your head.
Some people might just run away instead of paying, but the items are worthless anyway, and you’d sucker enough hapless fools and tourists to amass a small fortune and retire in a few years.
However, if this rip-off business took off and cheap broken dishes and rich, powerful con artists became the blight of Manhattan, an enterprising legislator could crack down on this by proposing a law that interprets “you break it, you bought it,” to mean that the breaker must pay what the seller paid (wholesale), rather than the price the seller is asking for.
This bill would probably pass, especially if there was an anecdotal horror story like a seller who demanded a million dollars for a broken item worth only 99 cents. If this law were enforceable, it would certainly make the “you break it, you bought it” business model a Quixotic enterprise.
But, until then…
3 years ago