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Con Jobs and Rip-Offs

Just because we are living in a near-paradise of balmy weather and relaxed pace of living, doesn't mean you can trust everyone. There are iron grates over nearly every window in both rich and poor neighborhoods, and they are there for a good reason.

Luckily, direct confrontation by armed thugs is a rarity here, though if you drive after dark in Guadalajara you could encounter those. More often, houses left unattended while the owners visit stateside get burgled, or unlocked vehicles disappear from their parking place.

Nor are the criminals all Mexican. An American posing as a lawyer conned several people out of their life savings just in the past couple years (he is in prison in the U.S. now for allegedly having murdered his wife), and various financial scams have bilked Lakesiders of large bundles of cash over the years. I have met several people here who admitted they moved to Mexico to avoid arrest warrants further north.

Some of the people who seem to be collecting for charity are collecting for themselves. (We will have an article on local charities soon, there are many good and deserving causes, but they won't come knocking on your door or accost you on the street). Others are clearly collecting for themselves (begging) and in those cases giving a few pesos will help them more than it will hurt you. But don't contribute to the drug or alcohol habits of those who pretend to be supporting some worthy cause.

Then there are the folks who figure it is easy to get $50 or $100 from one of those stupid and wealthy northern visitors. I had one ring our bell soon after we moved in and ask for a 'loan' of just 50 pesos so he could retrieve a package from MBE that contained a money order he would cash in Chapala. Claiming he lived nearby, he promised he would be back within a couple hours to repay the loan. Knowing MBE often held packages ransom until custom duties (or are they customary duties?) are paid, I thought his story plausible -- so I offered to go with him to MBE and pay the dues so he could get his package. He excused himself to 'lock the door' at his nearby home, and that was the last I saw of him.

Car repair rip-offs are common. I had one prominent repair shop in San Antonio charge me a thousand pesos to replace a master brake cylinder. I found out a week later it was just the same old faulty one painted with a new silver coating. I took the car to Garcia's (just south of the Libriamento exit on the west side of the Chapala-Guadalajara highway) and he put in a new cylinder for 500 pesos that really was new. (I hesitated to mention Garcia's by name because I don't want to go there and find a six week back-log will keep him from getting to my job, but he really does good work for fair prices. He deserves the business, I guess I can't keep such a 'find' secret.)

Short-changing at local stores and restaurants is mercifully rare here. I've only had it happen two or three times in five years, and the amounts were trifling enough that I simply stopped patronizing those places, rather than make a fuss.

One would think that since the small shops tend to be honest, one could be equally confident in the utility bills -- but it doesn't work that way. Last month (July 2005) our phone bill mysteriously sprouted a new charge for 'identificador de llamadas' -- caller ID. We don't have caller ID, don't want caller ID (there aren't many phone-solicitation sales here, one good side-effect of high calling costs). An extra 25 pesos in TelMex coffers for nothing. We tried to have it removed, but so far have been unable to do anything. The office says you have call 'this number' and of course nobody answers the phone at that number. I've also had long-distance phone calls appear on the bill that I know were never made from here, but the amounts are always small enough that it is easier to pay than spend hours trying to get them to correct it.

The CFE have a cute little scam they run, and there is nothing you can do about it. Our bill is always around 200 pesos for about 240 kilowatt hours. For the June bill they 'estimated' the meter reading. Nothing on the bill indicates it is an estimated reading, but '12500' is too round a number to occur by chance, and besides it should have been closer to 12600. OK, so we have a low bill one period (each bill covers two months). The next bill comes, and we are charged for 321 kilowatt hours (80 of which should have been on the preceding bill). But the rate you pay increases with the amount you use. So the first 150 kilowatts are .58 pesos each, the next 100 .959 pesos each, and above that 2.024 pesos each. So basically, they shifted 70 kilowatts from the .959 peso rate to the 2.024 peso rate by charging us for it in the second period, rather than the first when the electricity was actually used.

Now you rich folks might laugh at my concern over such trifling amounts, but those of you considering retiring here on a limited fixed income might want to allow for these 'extras' when figuring out if you can afford to live here. And all of us can take pity on the poor Mexicans who work for $10 a day and have to put up with this same sort of pilfering.