In yet another case of tyre puncture scam in Pune, a man caught an alleged scammer on his car's dash camera on Monday.
In the video posted by the man, it was seen that while the commuter was driving his car, two men followed him and told him that he had low pressure in a tyre. However, he had an inbuilt Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) in his car which exposed the lie of the scammers.
The man uploaded the video on Reddit with the topic "Another day, another attempt of puncture scam" and wrote, "Today on Nagar road, someone pointed out that I have low tyre pressure, just before a tyre shop on Shastri Chowk. Thanks to this sub, and my car's TPMS, I immediately knew it was a scam. One of my ride co-passengers also told that she got scammed the same way on her scooty. You can see they started from Bluegrass Tech Park and first cased another car and then moved to me. Later they went ahead in traffic. Be safe everyone and ignore the 'good samaritans' pointing to low pressure, and save yourself from puncture scam."
While in the comment section, several people listed their experiences. One wrote, "Happened with me on Baner Road near BP petrol pump. I was on 2W however. I paused, inspected the air - all was well. Even now 2 days later. In my incident, the guy asked me to stop urgently as rear tyre was deflated and indicated a nearby tyre puncture shop and went away. I, however, continued my journey."
Earlier this year, one of the victims lost a total of ₹6,500 due to deceptive practices at a local puncture repair shop in Koregaon Park.
Here's how do they scam you
In these scams, the fraudsters first convince you that your tyre is flat or has low pressure, then direct you to a nearby puncture repair shop. There, the repairman deliberately makes multiple holes in the tyre and charges Rs 100-150 for each puncture. Since there could be up to 20 punctures, you end up paying a large sum.
In other tyre puncture scam cases, puncture makers were arrested for throwing nails on the nearby street.